ServiceNow was founded as Glidesoft, Inc. in 2003 by
Fred Luddy, and later incorporated in California in 2004.[4] Luddy had previously served as
chief technology officer for
Peregrine Systems, an enterprise software company based in San Diego, until 2002.[5] In founding the company, Luddy intended to provide the same services previously available from the then defunct Peregrine Systems.[5]
Luddy was the only employee until mid-2005[5] when US$2.5 million in
venture financing from JMI Equity allowed Glidesoft to hire five additional people.[5] In 2006, the company changed its name to Service-Now.com.[6] In 2007, ServiceNow reported an annual revenue of US$13 million and opened its first
Silicon Valley office, in
San Jose.[7] 2007 was also the first year that the company "went cash flow positive".[5]
As of January 2011[update], the company had 275 employees in its San Diego, Chicago, New York, Atlanta, London and Frankfurt offices, as well as a partnership with
Accenture who had more than 100 ServiceNow consultants.[5] At this time, the company was sometimes known as "Service-now".[5] By April 2011, the company had named
Frank Slootman as
chief executive officer.[7]
In October 2019, the company announced that CEO
John Donahoe would be succeeded by
Bill McDermott, formerly CEO of
SAP SE at the end of the calendar year.[9]
In May 2023, Nvidia announced a partnership with ServiceNow to bring AI services to major corporations. This partnership aims to utilize company-specific data in the new AI service, distinguishing it from the AI advancements made by OpenAI and ChatGPT.[10]
Acquisitions
July 2013: Mirror42, an
Amsterdam-based software developer[11]
July 2014: Neebula Systems, an Israeli cloud computing tools company[12]
January 2017: Machine learning startup DxContinuum[15]
October 2017: San Diego
human-centered design firm
Telepathy; the acquisition doubled the size of ServiceNow's internal design agency, the Design Experience Organization[4]
October 2017: SkyGiraffe, an enterprise mobility company backed by Microsoft Ventures. SkyGiraffe formed the basis for ServiceNow's Mobile Platform, released in March 2019.[16]
ServiceNow is a
platform-as-a-service, that allows for the operation of enterprise and technical management support systems, such as
IT service management and
help desk functionality. The company's core business revolves around management of "incident, problem, and change" IT operational events. Their fee model was based on a cost per user (seat) per month, with that cost ranging down from US$100.[5]
The platform is packaged into different suites of applications called "modules", which are tailored to various business processes. Some of these areas include
Governance, risk management, and compliance,
audit,
business continuity planning,
disaster recovery,
vendor management, and
environmental, social, and corporate governance. A commonly referred to benefit of the platform is that many of these modules are interconnected, such as the IRM suite (Integrated Risk Management), which will automatically create issues and assign tickets based on various risk and audit findings, findings that can be found through the manual or automated performance of different activities such as evidence requests. There is also a
data and information visualization report creator called Performance Analytics.
The ServiceNow platform resides on what is known as the CMDB,
Configuration management database. The CMDB holds all enterprise data, including
master,
transactional, and configuration data. In practical terms, any assets that are part of a business, from data centers, employees, to employee laptops, are known as 'CI Items' in the CMDB. These components, which make up an enterprise, can be configured, tracked, audited, and the relationships between the various CI items can be assessed.[38]
ServiceNow script is written in
JavaScript, with database queries being made using a proprietary object-oriented API called Glide.[39] In July 2023, the company released a
generative AI speech-to-code feature, which the marketing research firm Valoir estimated could reduce relevant work time by 40 percent.[40]