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My company tries to get information from the client network to populate CMDB more effectively with ServiceNow Discovery. ServiceNow Discovery is a much more reliable software or process that helps our company get more information about our network components.
ServiceNow has a very effective product offering named Discovery, which is a fairly easy-to-use and impactful tool. In our company, we don't find any hurdles when it comes to ServiceNow Discovery. ServiceNow Discovery is easy to implement, and its scalability features are quite easy to use. ServiceNow Discovery can scan networks very quickly and populate the CMDB very well without much programming requirements or effort. The tool is completely a low-code tool. All the other exercises that our company needs to do for an effective scan are quite easy with the solution. It is quite easy to understand ServiceNow Discovery.
On the patent side, my company faced some issues with ServiceNow Discovery. In the subsequent releases of the product, ServiceNow promptly addressed the patent-related issues in the tool.
More utilization of AI in ServiceNow Discovery can really help our company. Though it may be a very high-level area, I feel AI's functionalities can be leveraged effectively for ServiceNow Discovery. Instead of AI, even GenAI should be introduced in ServiceNow Discovery.
I have been using ServiceNow Discovery for six years.
The product provides great scalability features. When our company started with ServiceNow Discovery, I saw that from the client network, we issued a lot of payloads, and such a payload can be easily accommodated in ServiceNow. ServiceNow's ability to easily manage the big payloads we receive from the client network is a super feature or super offering from the solution that helps our company.
Three or four years back when I needed some support from ServiceNow's support team, I found them to be quite knowledgeable and wonderful since they really helped us and addressed our issues promptly. ServiceNow's support team is the best.
I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.
Positive
The solution is deployed on the cloud. The tool has very little scope if deployed on an on-premises model. Some companies have deployed the tool on an on-premises model, but our company works on the cloud-based version of the product.
The product can be deployed automatically on this cloud, so the whole process takes just a fraction of a second to complete.
Though I am not much involved in the pricing part, I know that it is a bit costly. As per a general discussion I had with the stakeholders, I figured out that it is a costly tool. There is a need to make additional payments apart from the licensing fees for better support services from ServiceNow.
I did not consider any other solutions in the market since my company heavily depends on ServiceNow. Even my company's clients have completely stretched the use of ServiceNow in all their processes, so my organization has to obviously go with ServiceNow Discovery for now.
In terms of the tool's integration within our company's IT environment, we often need to integrate with third parties to get clearer information about the CIs precisely. My company has integrated Microsoft Intune and other cloud networks into ServiceNow Discovery, and it really helped our company get relevant information about our CIs.
The tool definitely helps our company with asset management and compliance since it provides a deeper insight into the asset management part. Asset management covers not only hardware but also software assets. ServiceNow Discovery is really helpful in gaining more insight into software asset management as well as hardware assets. ServiceNow Discovery is quite helpful to address our company's IT asset management overall.
To make IT infrastructure management easier, ServiceNow Discovery offers scheduled management. Presently, you can automate the complete IT infrastructure management process in ServiceNow Discovery without the need for much human intervention, but you need to define your IP ranges so that the tool can scan the whole network and give a result. On top of the aforementioned functionalities, the tool's effective log management provided by ServiceNow really helps our company if we get stuck somewhere.
I recommend the product to others since it is a powerful tool and a solution that can be considered as the starting point of the other processes, especially if you want to implement software and hardware asset management effectively. For event management and service mapping, ServiceNow Discovery should be implemented initially.
I rate the tool a nine out of ten.
Primarily, we use Discovery to discover and maintain our CIs (Configuration Items). It also has the potential for subscription management, but we're not currently using it for that.
One of our key use cases is tracking laptops assigned to employees within our organization. We need to monitor their usage patterns and performance. We start by using Discovery to populate a database with details about computers, servers, and SNMPs.
Then, we integrate with a third-party tool for monitoring. If issues arise, they raise a ticket in ServiceNow, allowing us to proactively address problems.
ServiceNow offers many other features with Discovery, but it takes time to learn and implement them effectively. We've started with out-of-the-box solutions, customized them to our needs, and are gradually upgrading our processes.
So, it does take some time for someone to learn Discovery, or any other ServiceNow product.
I also primarily work with ITSM modules like incident, problem, and change management. I also use IT Operations Management (ITOM) products like Discovery, Service Mapping, and Operations Management.
We use Discovery and Operations Management to manage our CIs. Additionally, we use incident, problem, change, and knowledge management for ITSM (IT Service Management). It's like a ticketing service.
Discovery patterns have helped identify and map our services more accurately. Discovery connects all the CIs (Configuration Items) together.
In ServiceNow, there is something called a schema map that will show in which data center, what things are present, how many virtual agents are there, and how many people are working.
For example: Think of a scenario where my Wi-Fi in a specific area is not working – let's say Wi-Fi in D Block. Two employees from that block raise tickets saying that Wi-Fi is not working. Without a tool like Discovery, I don't know if the Wi-Fi access point is broken, if the service package has expired, or if there's a power issue.
So, I would check the subscription status of that Wi-Fi access point and send the support team there. They will resolve the issue. That way, everything is interconnected. Multiple people from the same router raising tickets means there is some problem with the router itself. That's how it helps.
The best thing about Discovery is maintaining all the CIs in one place.
I can sort the data, export it to Excel for manipulation, and build reports like how many computers or servers we have and their capacity.
ServiceNow also offers agentless Discovery, where we can see what software is installed on laptops.
We can even run commands to discover all the software on a PC. This helps us see if users are missing any of our essential tools and services. That's a great thing about Discovery.
The initial setup could be made easier. We hired professionals to implement it, and they trained our employees for ongoing processes.
The initial setup was done by experts, and then they prepared our team to handle common errors.
I'm relatively new to it. I've been using it for about a year. Before that, my focus was on ticketing services.
In India, there's a higher demand for ticketing services within ServiceNow, so we don't get as many requirements for Discovery. With more clients using cloud services, we've started using Discovery in the last couple of years.
ServiceNow Discovery is very stable, but it depends on our infrastructure. Discovery uses a MID server, and if we allocate a good amount of resources, like 16GB of RAM and 500GB of space, it works well.
If you don't provide the minimum required resources, it can sometimes hang. But in our case, we had enough resources, so it ran smoothly.
It might take some time – for a complete discovery, it can take six to seven hours – but that's still better than some other services.
We have a team of three to four people who monitor Discovery. We've set up a VPN for Discovery purposes, and all laptops are connected to it. We use usernames and passwords for the discovery process.
Employees use the devices, but they might not be aware that Discovery is running in the background.
Our monitoring team will check if anything goes wrong. Discovery will generate tickets, and then they'll investigate and ask the help desk to resolve any technical issues.
The customer service and support people are pretty good. They will help you. If you have any problem, they'll provide a solution. That's a good thing about ServiceNow. But understand that they'll give you the solution, and you need to figure out how to implement it.
They suggested that we hire experts for the initial setup. ServiceNow has partner service providers listed on their website. You can hire someone from there for the initial configuration and then manage day-to-day tasks with your own support team. That's how we do it.
Before this, we didn't have a proper software setup. We used a different system, but it had issues. Sometimes we had laptops in storage without knowing, or we would buy new laptops and assign them to new hires when there were existing ones available.
So the company was thinking of getting a new system. Since we were already using ServiceNow for ticketing services, we took a Discovery subscription and started using it.
We have both configurations, cloud and on-premises. We use AWS Cloud.
We hired professionals to implement it, and they trained our employees for ongoing processes.
ServiceNow have documentation, and it's good, but it can be difficult for a beginner to understand. If you're an expert, it's easier.
We discussed this with the experts, and they confirmed that the documentation covers common problems and solutions. However, it takes some effort to dive deep into them and resolve issues.
ROI (Return on Investment) is good. ServiceNow don't disclose the price publicly. They'll assess your organization's needs and then come up with a price.
ServiceNow is expensive.
My recommendation depends on the organization and how big it is. If it is a large organization with thousands of laptops and many servers to monitor, then I would suggest going with ServiceNow. However, ServiceNow is costly.
Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. It's a great tool, but there are two reasons for the slightly lower score.
In our case, the deployment took three months. We had an expert for three months who analyzed our system, developed a solution, and then implemented it. This process is necessary, but it did take a significant amount of time.
