ServiceNow, Inc. is an American software company based in Santa Clara, California that develops a cloud computing platform to help companies manage digital workflows for enterprise operations. Founded in 2003 by Fred Luddy, ServiceNow is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the Russell 1000 Index and S&P 500 Index. In 2018, Forbes magazine named it number one on its list of the world's most innovative companies.

History
ServiceNow was founded as Glidesoft, Inc. in 2003 by Fred Luddy, and later incorporated in California in 2004. Luddy had previously served as chief technology officer for Peregrine Systems, an enterprise software company based in San Diego, until 2002. In founding the company, Luddy intended to provide the same services previously available from the then defunct Peregrine Systems.

Luddy was the only employee until mid-2005 when  in venture financing from JMI Equity allowed Glidesoft to hire five additional people. In 2006, the company changed its name to Service-Now.com. In 2007, ServiceNow reported an annual revenue of  and opened their first Silicon Valley office, in San Jose. 2007 was also the first year that the company "went cash flow positive".

, 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. At this time, the company was sometimes known as "Service-now". By April 2011, the company had named Frank Slootman as chief executive officer.

In June 2012, ServiceNow became a publicly traded company following a  IPO. Shortly thereafter, the company relocated its headquarters from San Diego to Santa Clara, California. It was taken public by Morgan Stanley one month after they took Facebook public.

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.

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.

Acquisitions 

July 2013: Mirror42, an Amsterdam-based software developer
July 2014: Neebula Systems, an Israeli cloud computing tools company
February 2015: Intréis
June 2016: Brightpoint Security
January 2017: Machine learning startup DxContinuum
October 2017: San Diego human-centered design firm Telepathy; the acquisition doubled the size of ServiceNow's internal design agency, the Design Experience Organization
October 2017: SkyGiraffe, an enterprise mobility company backed by Microsoft Ventures. SkyGiraffe formed the basis for ServiceNow's Mobile Platform, released in March 2019.
April 2018: VendorHawk, a software-as-a-service management company
May 2018: AI startup Parlo
October 2018: Data analytics company, FriendlyData
May 2019: Appsee Ltd., an analytics startup
November 2019: Fairchild Resiliency Systems
January 2020: Loom Systems, Passage AI, and Attivio
June 2020: Sweagle
November 2020: Element AI
March 2021: Intellibot
May 2021: Lightstep
August 2021: Swarm64 and Mapwize
October 2021: Gekkobrain
June 2022: Hitch
October 2022: Era Software
July 2023: AI-powered platform G2K

Platform
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 .

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 laptop's, 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.

ServiceNow script is written in JavaScript. In July 2023, the company released a generative AI speech-to-code feature, which the research firm Valoir estimated could reduce relevant work time by 40 percent.

See also
 IT service management
 DevOps
 BMC Software
 ERP software

References

External links
 
 

Software companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area
Companies based in Santa Clara, California
Cloud computing providers
Cloud applications
IT service management
Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange
Software companies established in 2003
2003 establishments in California
2012 initial public offerings
American companies established in 2003
Software companies of the United States