What is ITOM and why is it important to ITSM?
Businesses of today are faced with an extensive list of technical solutions, both on-prem and in the cloud, with which to manage their business services and systems. As the complexity of IT infrastructures increases so does a business’s ability to maintain service levels. If new systems and processes are not aligned and synchronized across a business, it can result in a lack of visibility, which can negatively impact critical services.
Information Technology Operations Management (ITOM) helps manage and mitigate this situation, by delivering:
Increased Productivity – reduced outages and faster resolution times, resulting in a better customer experience.
Improve Efficiencies – time can be saved by streamlining the management of infrastructure and service components, optimizing operational agility.
Enhanced Engagement – employee workflows and productivity are maintained, partner relations improved, and end customers experience a better service.
“IT Operations Management (ITOM) software is intended to represent all the tools needed to manage the provisioning, capacity, performance and availability of computing, networking, and application resources — as well as the overall quality, efficiency and experience of their delivery”
How does ServiceNow ITOM work?
ServiceNow is the market leader for ITOM solutions, used to integrate data from multiple monitoring tools to provide a clear, view of business services and IT infrastructure health. This process enables detection, diagnosis, and resolution of service issues to be more efficient, minimizing the impact to your business.
ServiceNow ITOM provides a set of tools that can be seamlessly built onto your existing ServiceNow Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) system.
There are three levels available from ServiceNow, Standard, Professional, and Enterprise, if you go for the high-end Enterprise package, you get their full range of ITOM applications:
Discovery finds and populates your Configuration Management Database (CMDB) with all your business applications and devices, effectively combining your entire IT infrastructure into one place rather than having to manage it across multiple systems. This process is complex to set up and will require you to make some compromises to your security system, for more on this topic check out our blog on How to overcome security challenges with ServiceNow CMDB population.
Service Mapping is coupled with the discovery process to find and map Configuration Items (CIs) so that you gain full visibility of the CIs that deliver your business services. This gives you sight of how your CIs interact with each other as part of complex business services.
Event Management allows you to pull in events from multiple business systems (e.g SCOM) along with a rule-based model to automatically generate alerts and issues from these events. This is surfaced in a dashboard of information that can be used to monitor the health of your IT infrastructure and will send alerts to notify you of any issues so that the impact on your operations can be minimized.
Operational Intelligence is an add-on application for Event Management that uses machine learning based on historical data to proactively scan for potential anomalies in performance thresholds that may impact service.
Orchestration enables code-less automation of 3rd party products and applications so that management tasks and remedial actions can be initiated.
Cloud Management gives you full visibility of your cloud operations, enabling you to streamline both cloud and on-prem applications. It creates an on-demand environment whereby cloud-related costs can be better controlled, and cloud applications can be automated to better manage your total IT estate.
Start your ITOM journey the simple way
ServiceNow’s suite of applications is impressive and if you are a large enterprise then it will certainly pay back if you have the time, resources, and budget to implement and manage it.
But, if you are just starting out on your ITOM journey; want flexible pricing options, or simply want a much simpler set up, then Cookdown’s SCOM Connector for ServiceNow will be much better suited to your needs.
Our solution comprises of two tools: Alert Sync and Discovery, which can be sold individually or as a discounted bundle.
Cookdown Alert Sync converts critical SCOM alerts into actionable ServiceNow incidents using real-time, two-way synchronization to deliver the following functionality:
Specialized for SCOM – configure handling of SCOM monitors vs. rules and push alert details through to incidents.
Alert correlation - prevents incidents being raised when a server is down to reduce unnecessary alert storms landing in your to-do list.
Flexible customization – tailor workflows and processes using native tools in both SCOM and ServiceNow.
Two-way sync – ensure alerts and incidents are coupled for the entire lifetime of an issue.
Event Management - totally compatible with ServiceNow Event Management.
Native solution - Alert Sync is the complete package; made up of a SCOM Management Pack and ServiceNow certified store app.
Cookdown Discovery coupled with Alert Sync creates the perfect environment for ITOM success.
Cookdown Discovery synchronizes SCOM and ServiceNow to fast-track the population of your Configuration Management Database (CMDB). It requires no agents, no firewalls, or permissions. Our true integration process pulls Configuration Items (CIs) from existing systems, to uncover the full contents of your IT estate.
Discovery can also be tailored to the needs of your CMDB, providing flexible mapping options and scheduled discovery settings. Integration connections can also be extended to any Microsoft or third-party Management Pack, such as Azure and Oracle.
So, if it is a simple setup, flexible pricing, and ease of management you want from your integration tools then Cookdown is the answer!
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