ServiceNow June11 Release Delivers More Social IT and New User Interface to Build on Company Vision for IT 3.0

SAN DIEGO, June 16, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- ServiceNow, the creator of cloud services for enterprise IT management, today announced the immediate availability of its June11 release introducing more social IT, a new runbook automation process pack for Amazon EC2 cloud, more updates to ServiceNow IT service management (ITSM) platform services, and two completely new applications. The June11 release builds on the concept of IT 3.0 introduced in the ServiceNow Winter 2011 release.

(Logo:  http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110511/LA99967LOGO)

The ServiceNow vision for IT 3.0 delivers technology that is more practical and people centric to make evolved IT process possible. IT 3.0 is familiar usability, cloud services and social IT, bringing together technology, process and people to transform IT. The ServiceNow June11 release helps customers take another big step toward IT 3.0.

Fred Luddy, ServiceNow chief product officer, said, "IT organizations select ServiceNow because they know there is a better way to run IT and deliver service to the business. We are giving IT professionals the tools to become heroes through process automation and success in the cloud.

"The ServiceNow June11 release extends IT service management through an extensive list of core platform enhancements. But it wouldn't be a ServiceNow release without some new things never before seen in enterprise software. We redesigned our user interface to work the way our customers work.  The 'Facebook imperative' is alive and well at ServiceNow so we're making ServiceNow even faster, more familiar and more social."

IT 3.0 in June11

The June11 release extends ServiceNow Live (initially released in February) to allow for groups, follows, and tagging. The stream of actionable information in ServiceNow Live forms a living and breathing knowledge source that moves at the speed of the people using it. This knowledge collective can be shared, searched, tagged, grouped, subscribed, liked and linked as individual users personalize information to work for them. ServiceNow Live also creates an invaluable source of data allowing IT to track, analyze and act upon trending issues and topics in the first-ever zeitgeist of IT data based on the first-ever social CMDB.

Charles Betz, Enterprise Management Associates research director, blogged, "ServiceNow's social platform is clearly robust and includes the ability for users to interact collaboratively and subscribe to updates on topics of interest (in fact, such subscriptions are implemented as events from core data entities, making anything developed on the platform potentially social-enabled). Social is clearly more than a bolt-on for ServiceNow."

The June11 release also delivers UI11 as a new user experience, and a new IT search engine for faster, more scalable and configurable IT search. UI11 simplifies the ServiceNow user experience by accommodating more information within the browser while making the information that matters most to the user immediately available. UI11 introduces flexible panes within the browser in addition to sidebar bookmarks and "flyout" functionality for services like ServiceNow Chat.

@st0n3 tweeted, "June release of ServiceNow has some pretty amazing UI improvements..."

@scotteberly tweeted, "Awesome new UI for #servicenow June release!"

In addition, the new ServiceNow IT search engine logic is faster, more scalable and provides type-ahead functionality, "did you mean?" suggestions, and other features found in popular Web search engines.

ITSM Core Capabilities

The June11 release continues to build on the core ServiceNow ITSM foundation and includes improvements to change management risk assessment and to the service level agreement management engine.

New change management risk assessment surveys based on configuration item data and relationships in the ServiceNow CMDB help change managers and change advisory boards more accurately gauge change risk. Survey results are included in change records for a clear audit trail.

Meanwhile, SLA management enhancements allow customers to further customize and extend SLA logic without impacting other IT management processes.

New Applications

The June11 release also delivers ServiceNow Data Certification and ServiceNow Managed Documents as two new applications to support IT compliance efforts. Data Certification manages the ongoing validation of IT data by automatically assigning certification tasks to the appropriate team members and tracking progress to satisfy compliance requirements. Managed Documents allows users to check in and out of documents, track revision history, and provide automated notifications for approvals. Each of these new applications is included in the ServiceNow customer subscription.

Other Functional Improvements

As part of the June11 release, the following components of the ServiceNow platform have been significantly enhanced:

• IT Governance, Risk and Compliance (IT-GRC): create policy maps and track audit observations;
• Runbook Automation Process Pack for Amazon EC2: adds to current IT automation capabilities for VMWare and PowerShell;
• BSM maps, ODBC performance, list editor navigation, planned task simplification, workflow, condition builder, additional integration capabilities, and more.

Licensing and availability

ServiceNow offers a simple-yet-flexible subscription model with volume discounts available. ServiceNow has delivered three major releases per year for more than five years to provide customers with the leading SaaS for IT. Thousands of ServiceNow customer instances were seamlessly updated with the June11 release on June 3, 2011. Through the release update, customer customizations and configurations were preserved and service availability remained uninterrupted.

The ServiceNow modern approach to ITSM is drastically different from legacy alternatives. To learn more, a live, no-registration-required instance of ServiceNow is always available at http://demo.service-now.com.  Register here to attend the ServiceNow June11 overview webinar on June 29, 2011 at 9 am Pacific.

About ServiceNow

ServiceNow was created to break all the old rules of enterprise IT management software. Born in the cloud, ServiceNow makes IT immediate, social and intuitive. From the beginning, the company set out to give IT people powerfully simple cloud services that just work. Today, the world's most recognizable and innovative companies rely on SaaS from ServiceNow to transform IT to achieve IT 3.0. Founded in 2004, ServiceNow was recently named by Inc. 500 as one of the fastest-growing companies in the world and is the undisputed market share leader in SaaS for IT. For more information, please visit http://www.service-now.com or http://blog.service-now.com.

SOURCE ServiceNow