The primary use of ServiceNow Automation Engine is to enable CMDR to identify all the different feeds and systems, allowing for an accurate inventory. This process involves integrating IAM. Additionally, the Engine aims to consolidate everything for disaster recovery, enabling the identification of relationships between various service chains, applications, and their respective owners.
Provides better ecosystem control and duplication control but have duplication issue
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
If a device were to go out, we need to know who did it and which service centers need to be notified. Additionally, if we need to bring a service back up, we require an order to either bring services back online or take them offline. The goal is to build efficiencies in these processes. For instance, consider a manufacturing client: if their systems go offline, many factory workers may be idle, which can be very costly for the client. We aim to increase uptime and ensure continuous operation.
What is most valuable?
The solution provides better ecosystem control and duplication control. It aims to capture all the various elements across different systems, including ServiceNow.
What needs improvement?
The whole automation process still has a problem with duplication. They identify an asset, relate it to its physical architecture, and interconnect without us. The automation for this process is not great.
Some elements may still be offline, and their updates may not be fully automated. While there is an automated tool for updates, it doesn't always work as expected, especially when dealing with multiple automation processes. Another issue is duplication, where the same device might be recorded by different systems in the CMDB.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using ServiceNow Automation Engine since last year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We've never had a problem with ServiceNow stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The tool scales very nicely. The scalability looks very promising, and we don't see any limitations.
We plan to increase our licensing usage capacity over the next year. Due to significant M&A activity, we anticipate various organizational changes throughout the year that will impact usage.
How are customer service and support?
The ServiceNow support is available and accessible. We have developers, so we encounter many issues. Sometimes, certain functionalities don't work as intended, but the team is responsive and works with us to address them.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is complex. During deployment, we identify the assets we want to include and the site, among other details. We ensure everything is translated into a common language using a CML-type discussion, allowing consistency across all elements. We aim to standardize everything by using JSON as our common input format.
We are deploying existing features, so most of the work is straightforward. We do need some developers, particularly ServiceNow developers, to be involved. However, there isn't a lot of additional work required. We need some licensing from ServiceNow to enable these feature sets, but there aren't many other requirements.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The solution is expensive. The primary expense lies in licensing from ServiceNow. Additionally, there are costs associated with development and labor required for integration.
What other advice do I have?
The automation will take care of the ongoing upkeep and maintenance. It's the setup, integration, and deduplication engine, and it will probably take us better than a year to get all the different feeds we want into the system. So, it's a slow integration. Once set up, nothing breaks, and it works. The maintenance is minimal.
The tool is a mature product that offers comprehensive automation capabilities.
Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten because it requires significant manual input for automation, which isn't the case with many other CMDR tools. It captures a lot of information during the automation process. However, it cannot automatically identify and align resources, like assigning virtual machines to specific assets.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Microsoft Azure
