ServiceNow and Cloudify – 5 Tips for ServiceNow Success

Anyone who has been in IT for a while knows that having great tools is necessary but not sufficient to achieve success. To gain true value from your tools and technology, you need to put the right processes in place to drive business change.

This article will take you through 5 ways you can prepare for successfully taking advantage of ServiceNow – and how Cloudify’s Environment-as-a-Service infrastructure management can significantly help your users.

1. Implement in IT first

ServiceNow is a tool that’s meant for the C-suite. But if you want to make sure that your project is successful, you need to have an IT team involved as soon as possible. 

You can get started by piloting the platform in your IT departments before expanding further into your business units or other departments. That way, you can work out any kinks before pushing out production apps.

This is critical because they will be responsible for setting up most processes. They also know how to make use of this software better than anyone else on your team and can identify ways to make it better with their expertise.

The sooner you include your IT teams, the sooner you can hit the ground running, which means fewer roadblocks and better chances of optimizing business growth.

2. Start with High-Visibility Processes

The first step when implementing ServiceNow is to focus on high-visibility processes. These are mission-critical processes that need to operate around the clock. For example, when a user requests a new application, the CIO and the project manager must approve the request.

This approval process can be automated with ServiceNow’s approval workflows. When a new request comes in with an associated dollar amount higher than a given threshold, CIOs can quickly automate the creation of self-service portals for developers and users. IT can use pre-approved profile changes to ensure standardization across the organization while tracking and auditing all changes.

DevOps can use ServiceNow Cloudify to streamline critical operations from coding to release. They can deliver applications at tremendous speed while also enjoying a high level of agility and cost savings. The EaaS eliminates the need for manual interaction from IT or developers – all processes are fully automated. And when business changes occur, they can be done quickly by simply changing a model instead of building or deploying new infrastructure or modifying code.

3. Build Repeatable Processes

A core tenet of ServiceNow Cloudify is the idea of automation: rapidly building, deploying, and maintaining infrastructure in response to your business needs.

ServiceNow Cloudify makes the automation of IT operations faster and more efficient by providing an integration solution that helps you automate rapidly. Since this is about rapid automation, you do not want to get into the trap of repeating the creation of processes in the same old ways. Now, there are various ways in which this can be done:

Environment modeling: Define your high-level application architecture by using pre-built application templates or manually creating your own templates. The available templates can be used to model your entire application stack or just a specific component that is required within your environment.

Designing your environment: Allocate resources to the environment components defined in your models. This includes defining the cloud platform, network topology, network links, and sizing the required resources based on business requirements.

Enforcing configuration compliance: Define the configuration parameters of each component in the environment, such as security settings and accounts. These parameters are enforced during deployment and when new components are added to an existing environment.

Exposing your environment for self-service provisioning: Use ServiceNow Cloudify as a self-service provisioning portal to enable IT teams to quickly launch resources for development and testing purposes.

4.  Enhance ITIL Knowledge 

Many organizations looking to implement ServiceNow Cloudify give up on their efforts because they lack knowledge in cutting-edge technologies and cloud computing.

ITIL is a set of industry-standard service management best practices that guide IT professionals, on the best way to manage the IT lifecycle within an organization.

You will need a team of people with a good range of skills such as:

Cloud computing experts who can help you through the change management process after implementing ServiceNow’ Cloudify, Human resources (HR) experts who understand the implications that cloud computing brings to the organization, Legal experts who know how to use the right contract framework when bringing in partners, and so forth. 

Investing in ITIL training helps improve the efficiency of the IT department and gives decision-makers a better understanding of how the IT infrastructure works so they can make more informed IT decisions.

This is particularly critical in DevOps. There is a need to react rapidly and adapt to changing business requirements while ensuring IT services are delivered in the most secure, efficient, and cost-effective manner.

5.  Build a Culture of Coordination 

At the core of ServiceNow are the people behind the IT organization. This includes executives, managers, and staff members from multiple departments participating in IT service management (ITSM).

When implementing ServiceNow Cloudify, organizations need to create a culture of coordination between these people—those responsible for the infrastructure, development, and operations groups.

Automating frequent and recurring business processes can save companies significant time and money, but that doesn’t mean you should automate every process. When it comes to service management, you need to know which processes are good candidates for automation to get the most benefits from your investment.

Coordination requires collecting input from multiple groups (IT, operations, finance, etc.). Integration requires knowledge of the components and the ServiceNow Cloudify core framework to ensure that the entire solution is consistent. Communication is necessary to ensure that the entire team knows what work is being completed and how the pieces will fit together. This is where the role of a chief service officer comes in; someone who can train employees in best practices and work alongside them as they implement ServiceNow Cloudify.

In a nutshell 

Environment-as-a-Service (EaaS) is the next evolution for ITSM IT systems management. Using Cloudify’s EaaS, your organization can respond to business needs faster than ever before, without sacrificing flexibility or scalability.

A lot of companies run IT departments as a black box. They don’t know what’s happening inside that box, so they have no clue what they’re paying for. As a result, they’re not able to make smart decisions about how to modernize their environment.

The first thing you need to do is establish some methodologies and processes to standardize your environment. ServiceNow Cloudify can help with that.

Cloudify is perfectly capable in offering seamless CI/CD automation for ServiceNow clients. The platform is geared toward delivering real-time automation for infrastructure requests, flawless management of approval flows, and humanless pre-approved environment changes to drive business success with DevOps and ITSM.

Use our five tips to successfully manage your cloud IT operations using ServiceNow and Cloudify. 

You may want to read more about ServiceNow value stream management.