ServiceNow Discovery Reviews

I have utilized ServiceNow Discovery for cloud management, specifically for basic AWS discovery. If you're having a VPS, it is also considered in discovery, and that falls under the cloud management part as well.

ServiceNow Discovery comes in a bundle with everything, including CMDB, which makes it much easier to use. I have used other tools in the past, such as ScienceLogic and other tools that also fall under Discovery.

I have used the relationship mapping feature of ServiceNow Discovery, and I would say it is a good feature. With relationships, we can create dynamic relationships and establish relationships based on CIs that are not coming from Discovery and map them accordingly. This is a good part of ServiceNow. We also have basic IRM rules that we use while conducting a discovery so that we can filter CIs based on the filters we are putting in place. It is a valuable part of ServiceNow.

I have found the dynamic inventory capabilities useful in ServiceNow Discovery since it is much easier to use than going to a third-party tool and getting help from there.

ServiceNow Discovery has schedule jobs for every discovery that we conduct. We can set a schedule to run hourly, daily, monthly, or weekly based on what we need, allowing us to have accurate data based on our requirements.

ServiceNow Discovery has impacted our multi-cloud operations mainly on the operational expenditure side of things. If we have a report available at all times, it helps us generate cost reports around it, which is quite helpful.

The impact of ServiceNow Discovery on my organization's strategic planning depends on various factors. Some customers have their own discovery tools which they do not want to switch from, even if we explain why ServiceNow might be better, because they have been using them for a long time. Some customers are dynamic, so we need to have some kind of proposition that comes with ServiceNow. Sometimes, we need to talk with ServiceNow people themselves to give them a bundle offer in which we can have Discovery and ITSM at a much more affordable price than the competitors, so that is our main goal.

Currently, I would say there might be a possibility if we can use some AI discovery features that could be helpful for our organization. If we can get discovery jobs running based on AI schedules, that would be beneficial. I believe in the coming future that I want to see myself working more with ServiceNow in this capacity.

I have been working with ServiceNow for more than 2.5 years.

I would rate the technical support by ServiceNow as good. Sometimes, I believe one or two tickets took longer than two weeks, but other than that, they are quick with the resolution. In two to three days, we have fixed almost everything that we faced.

Regarding pricing, I have not dealt much with it. I am more focused on the feature side of things, so I cannot comment on the latest pricing because it is dynamic as well. Sometimes it is cheaper for others, and sometimes it is not, based on the negotiations that take place. It is not a fixed price, and I cannot comment on it more on an organizational level.

I have mentioned ScienceLogic and I am dealing with other tools besides ServiceNow and ScienceLogic. ScienceLogic has its own set of features in ServiceNow itself. They have their own application which is helping us with the integration of Discovery and discovery of CI. On that side of things, it is good. We have various other customers for this.

I have been providing ServiceNow Discovery to my customers mainly through reselling and partnership channels. We have built some features around it for other customers that they wanted to implement in their organization. I am dealing mostly with other vendors, not directly from ServiceNow, but from other vendors. I would give ServiceNow Discovery a rating of between 8 and 9 out of 10.

It all depends on customer requirements. When there is an RFP or a customer requirement that comes from an organization, we as a partner help implement their required solution.

ServiceNow Discovery is not the only discovery tool we deal with, as we work with multiple other discovery tools. Once you know one discovery tool, it is not different from any other tools. I have been working with discovery tools for maybe around 25 years. With ServiceNow Discovery specifically, I have worked for the past four or five years.

ServiceNow Discovery has normal discovery of CIs, as well as horizontal discovery for understanding Service Mapping.

Small companies will not be able to afford ServiceNow Discovery from the pricing perspective. Hence, they will not opt for ServiceNow Discovery as a solution, either as an ITSM solution or ITOM solution. It will not be affordable. I am specifically talking about the Middle East and Africa region.

ServiceNow ITOM is particularly not very strong in terms of monitoring capabilities. They do not have any monitoring tool. They use event management from getting events from other tools. In that front, they had a roadmap for going for an open-source solution, but I have not seen that materialize. There is a lack of tools perspective for monitoring. Perhaps they do not have a plan because there are hundreds of tools available, and they prefer to focus on integration and event management.

More than being helpful, it depends on the customer network. If the customer network is watertight, many of the functionalities will not work. That is not a mistake of the product. It is due to excessive security on the network, with multiple places where they state, 'I will not open the ports. I will not do this.' That is more related to customer cybersecurity and security personnel who decide how it works.

Small companies will not be able to afford ServiceNow Discovery from the pricing perspective. Hence, they will not opt for ServiceNow Discovery as a solution, either as an ITSM solution or ITOM solution. It will not be affordable. I am specifically talking about the Middle East and Africa region.

The service quality varies case by case. The 'follow the sun' model, where the time of raising the ticket and where it lands, plays a crucial role.

Positive

We are a ServiceNow partner in India. We serve exclusively as a professional services partner in India.

The dynamic mapping functionality is good when it comes to identifying all components within a given network segment.

One of the last times I used ServiceNow Discovery, it was an on-premises implementation. The ML part was missing, and it did not work. This was not because of ServiceNow Discovery implementation issues, but because the functionality was not installed on-premises. While most organizations use ServiceNow Discovery as a SaaS platform, in Saudi Arabia they were using it as an on-premises implementation.

It is too early to comment on anything on the AI front. AI is the buzzword for everybody, but nobody has a real use case. More than AI, machine learning could help ServiceNow Discovery gather additional information, and AI can build upon that. Both AI and ML, other than ChatGPT applications, are not really entering that arena yet. It is yet to be proven.

I am managing pre-sales for my organization and not working hands-on. My teammates handle the implementation work.

I rate ServiceNow Discovery 7 out of 10.

ServiceNow Discovery was adopted by my organization. We use ServiceNow Discovery for discovery and ITSM.

The most beneficial features of ServiceNow Discovery for maintaining my IT infrastructure are the CMDB top and discovery of network switches.

The areas of ServiceNow Discovery that have room for improvement are getting custom reports on the relationship between CIs that are not on the same table.

I have approximately five years of experience working with ServiceNow Discovery.

I would rate the stability of ServiceNow Discovery as nine, as we never had downtime.

I would rate the scalability of ServiceNow Discovery as six out of ten. It receives this rating because it can be difficult to troubleshoot when the discovery is failing.

I would rate technical support for ServiceNow Discovery as four. This rating is because there are features on the tool that never worked and despite calling our support, there were no results.

Neutral

Before ServiceNow Discovery, I used BMC Discovery. I switched from BMC to ServiceNow Discovery because it was a critical decision, and the main difference between them is that we wanted a cloud-based platform.

The initial setup of ServiceNow Discovery was not difficult for me. The setting up of ServiceNow Discovery was quite easy.

We use a system integrator to deploy the ServiceNow Discovery solution.

I think the price of ServiceNow Discovery is cheaper than BMC.

I have some experience working with these solutions. I have worked with both BMC and ServiceNow Discovery. I would rate ServiceNow Discovery overall as seven out of ten.

I am primarily using ServiceNow Discovery, ITSM, HR, and software asset management.

ServiceNow Discovery helps with operations, audits, and allows people to assess how a particular change in infrastructure impacts other components. I would rather tie it with more operational benefits and less with strategic benefits, at least at the stage where I am now in the implementation.

A CMDB debugging tool to give indication about the errors that appear would be appreciated.

I have been working with ServiceNow Discovery for five years, and I am the implementer running it in-house.

I haven't conducted a huge ROI type of exercise regarding whether we use ServiceNow Discovery for cloud management. I cannot tie CMDB at this stage with strategic planning regarding ServiceNow Discovery ability to maintain accurate data in CMDB.

The pricing information for ServiceNow Discovery was requested but not provided.

The feedback process is conducted via call that takes approximately 10 minutes or slightly longer, where we discuss features, what users like about the tool, and what needs to be improved.

A CMDB debugging tool for error indication would be a valuable addition to future releases of ServiceNow Discovery.

Mr. Hemant Aurora serves as Director of Information Technology at Privax LTD.

We started using ServiceNow in 2017 for ITSM, primarily for incident, change, and problem management. 

In 2019, we adopted ITOM, utilizing Discovery, Service Mapping, and Event Management. Currently, we heavily customize these suites, building our own UI pages and CSM pages. We are also exploring IT Business Management for next year, potentially looking into service portfolio management and customer service management.

I like how ServiceNow Discovery scans servers and network devices through SNMP. 

Most fields on our forms are auto-filled, reducing manual maintenance for our infrastructure team. Post Discovery implementation there is hardly any maintenance. There are three to four fields that are customized. Otherwise, 90% of the data is auto-filled. 

Discovery can also run in bulk, which is helpful for organizations that cannot run it during weekdays.  

With identification rules, if a configuration item (CI) isn't in the CMDB, you can simply add the IP address, and it will be automatically added based on criteria like name or serial number, making CMDB maintenance easier.

I feel that credential-less discovery could be improved. The data quality could be better because the kind of data we get into the system is quite limited without credentials.

Another suggestion is to make the logs easier to use. When a discovery fails, the logs can only be properly interpreted, and the root cause analysis can only be done by those with in-depth knowledge of how discovery functions and the overall architecture. For someone with basic knowledge who isn't well-versed in discovery or ITOM, it becomes difficult. These are two areas where ServiceNow could improve.

I have been using it since 2017. 

It's quite stable and reliable. I haven't seen Discovery fail due to any inherent flaws. When a discovery fails on one of my IPs, it's always an infrastructure-level issue with the server. In the last four years, I've hardly seen any issues with Discovery. There was a bug related to SNMP in the New York version, but that has been rectified, and we are currently using the Vancouver version. It's been a long journey of improvement, so it's quite stable now.

Regarding scalability, there are different cases. 

• For on-premises CIs and servers, you just need basic credentials. 

• Cloud infrastructure: ServiceNow Discovery also has the capability to expand and discover CIs on the cloud level, such as AWS and Azure. So, in terms of scalability, it's quite good and mature.

The only problem we might face is if there is something behind multiple firewalls. For example, if a CI sits behind three firewalls, and Discovery fails even after opening some ports, further investigation is needed. I think this is only a problem in very large organizations with complex network setups requiring multiple ports to be opened. Otherwise, it's quite scalable in nature.

The customer service and support are excellent. So far, all the cases I've raised have been handled well.

We used HP Service Manager before. I joined this organization in 2015, and HP ServiceManager had been used since 2011. From 2011 to 2017, we used HP ServiceManager for roughly six to seven years. We have been using ServiceNow since 2017.

The version of HP ServiceManager I used was quite lethargic. The UI wasn't good. ServiceNow, on the other hand, offers features like Smart Search and filters for easy searching. These features are not available in HP ServiceManager. Even the CMDB and the way ServiceNow represents relationships is superior.

For administrators, updating CIs in bulk and other tasks is quite easy in ServiceNow. Anyone with a simple certification can do ServiceNow administration. You don't need to understand algorithms or workflows like you might in something like Java development. 

In HP ServiceManager, you couldn't do that because it was a slow tool. They say they have improved, but I haven't seen HP Service Manager since 2017.

It's very easy. You basically need to get the credentials and set up a MID server. Then, you need to input the credentials across all your configuration items (CIs). If your network devices are using SNMPv2, you can use the SNMP string and IP address of your MID server. For SNMPv3, you can ask your network team for a simple user ID and password to add to your credential list. The rest is pretty straightforward.

In cases where a server is behind a firewall, not in your domain, or in a DMZ zone, you need to open certain ports toward the devices and the MID server. Otherwise, the deployment is very easy, and even someone without ITOM experience can do it by following step-by-step instructions.

Only one person is required to deploy the solution. If your site is big and you have more than 50,000 CIs, and a limited implementation window (like 48 hours), then you might need a team. 

However, for smaller environments with only 3,000 to 4,000 CIs, one person can deploy it in a day. You just need to do the prerequisites, and then the system does the rest. You just need to verify it after it's complete.

Regarding maintenance, the only thing we need to do is manually refresh our list of CIs. ServiceNow Discovery does not have the artificial intelligence to tell us if there are servers that have not been discovered. For example, if we have 2,000 servers today and then an additional 2,000 are added next week, I have to manually add the new IP addresses to the list. 

ServiceNow Discovery does not have the capability to suggest undiscovered nodes. I think that is one thing ServiceNow could improve, by having Discovery suggest undiscovered nodes to users.

We have definitely seen a return on investment, especially with the reporting capabilities of ServiceNow. 

However, Discovery brings in a large amount of data, and we are not able to use 100% of it. We have created reports and used software asset management and hardware asset management, but there's still a significant chunk of data (50-60%) residing in ServiceNow that we are unsure how to utilize.

It's not cheap. BMC offers a similar discovery feature for a lower price. For example, if the ServiceNow ITOM suite costs $1000, BMC offers it for $600. However, we haven't explored BMC Discovery yet, as a small proof of concept (POC) was done this year but stopped due to internal reasons. The pricing for ServiceNow Discovery is definitely high.

It's on a yearly basis. We renew our contract for three years at a time. Our current contract is valid until 2026.

For those without budget constraints, they should go for ServiceNow because it is the next big thing in the market. I don't see any other ITSM tool that comes close to what ServiceNow offers.

For those with a good budget who are skeptical about implementation and scaling, they should start with ITSM, like we did, and then gradually move on by buying smaller modules and exploring the platform.

However, if someone is buying ITSM and wants to maintain a CMDB in ServiceNow, they should definitely buy Discovery. We bought Discovery at a later stage and had to put in a lot of duplicate effort as a result.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

I am using ServiceNow Discovery for purposes like CMDB and inventory management. It’s part of my process to integrate various tools.

The workflows are beneficial as they allow tasks to be assigned to respective teams without the need for coding. The user interface is intuitive. Notable features include notification settings and integration capabilities. Cost optimization and contract notifications are also useful as they provide insights into user time spent on tickets.

Improvements could include implementing chatbots to simplify ticket creation. Currently, each new product must be manually created if it is not already available in ServiceNow, which can be cumbersome.

I have been a user of ServiceNow for ten years.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate the stability at nine. It is a stable solution.

The solution is notably scalable. I would rate it as a nine on a scale of one to ten, indicating it is highly scalable.

If I understand ServiceNow on a technical level, the installation is straightforward, and typically just one person is enough for the implementation.

One person is usually enough for the installation and implementation part.

I am not seeing significant ROI beyond breaking even on what I spend.

ServiceNow is considered more expensive compared to other products. If I were to rate the pricing on a scale from one to ten in terms of expense, I would rate it quite high.

I would rate the overall solution as eight due to issues surrounding template customization and expensive pricing. 

Overall, I give the solution an eight out of ten.

The primary use case for ServiceNow Discovery involves collecting software and hardware data from devices, enabling comprehensive mapping of services and applications, including SLAs and KPIs.

ServiceNow Discovery has an area for improvement, particularly concerning its global deployment in a company with data centers worldwide. The current limitation requires having mid servers or discovery servers in each data center for proper discovery, hindering the ability to discover assets across continents such as Asia Pacific and Europe. BMC Discovery allows for global discovery with only a few servers.

We have been using ServiceNow Discovery for four and a half years.

I rate the platform's stability a ten out of ten.

The platform is highly scalable. However, we encountered a few minimal issues related to customization and development. I rate the scalability an eight out of ten.

In the organization where I work, which is a large company with over 250,000, most of the organization uses ServiceNow Discovery. In the technology sector, where I am based, there are 1000 executives actively using and consuming its functionalities daily.

A few months ago, we decided to obtain an IT service management component but noticed that all relationships, including data relationships, disappeared. We raised a case with ServiceNow support and passed it around to different engineers, changing it every week. It took approximately one year without significant help. At one point, we received an email suggesting the solution might not suit us. Later, they developed a new functionality that works fine now.

We were using BMC Helix Discovery before transitioning to ServiceNow Discovery. We evaluated both solutions. ServiceNow stood out as more mature, particularly in the CMDB's IT service management domain and data consumption. Despite recognizing the need for improvement, we opted for it for overall maturity, capabilities, and better costings.

The product is complicated to implement. However, once deployed, it is easy to run and maintain. I rate the process an eight out of ten.

We implemented the whole platform between 2019 and 2020. It took us six months to complete the setup. We required 30 to 40 executives to work on the deployment. We have a team of three developers, three operation executives, and a technical lead for maintenance.

We implemented the product in-house with the help of the vendor.

The product generates a return on investment.

Setting up and licensing for ServiceNow can be expensive, especially for enterprise service management. However, it helps with significant cost savings in various areas. In particular, in two Oracle and SAP implementations, ServiceNow efficiently managed licenses and resulted in substantial cost savings, exceeding $6,000,000 per year.

ServiceNow Discovery has played a vital role in improving service visibility through automated IT service management processes, including change and problem management.

For our organization, the most beneficial feature is its mapping functionality. With the introduction of service mapping, there has been an automatic transformation in the change management process. This transformation is evident in the increased maturity of service owners and technical teams supporting various areas and applications. Its out-of-the-box capabilities have allowed us to convince teams that utilizing this approach can predict and prevent issues, particularly impending outages. We encountered challenges using the previous solution where the maturity was lower, resulting in system issues and financial losses.

The platform's significant benefit lies in automating ITSM processes, including incident, change, problem management, and effective element management. This real-time insight allows for prompt error messaging to impacted applications and services. It enables service owners to visualize and control the infrastructure.

I rate it an eight out of ten.

We're running Discovery on several IP ranges to discover objects in the network. We can run Discovery on-prem through APIs or use it with cloud environments like AWS and GCP and Azure. 

Discovery enables us to get an accurate inventory that's updated daily. It eliminates human error and the need for people to update configuration changes manually. We have not implemented them yet but plan to set up alerts on CIs that are being audited to see if there are any changes. 

We would like more flexibility with the licensing. Discovery is bundled with ServiceNow's ITOM license. It was more affordable when it was sold separately, but we bought a package license to get more functionality out of the CMDB. We'd prefer to buy only the pieces we need instead of taking things we don't want or solutions that aren't yet mature enough to use. 

I rate ServiceNow Discovery nine out of 10. I've been in other situations where we didn't use Discovery because we leveraged SECAM more. I don't think ServiceNow Discovery is necessary, but it's native, so it does some extra things we couldn't do without it.

To get the most out of Discovery, it's crucial to emphasize the planning phase of deployment and understand the network topologies so that you're looking at the right IP ranges and finding what you expect. People are often spinning their wheels because they don't know what they're doing and haven't put in the work before they roll it out. You'll run into problems, and it will be painful for the users.

Our company has historically used the solution for IT infrastructure. We started deploying the solution in 2017 and have moved through nine versions since then. We are partners with ServiceNow and have a very good relationship with them.

Recently, we established a complete platform that will allow us to do IT infrastructure software and OT assets for manufacturing. We have planned a very long journey with ITSM and Discovery. 

We are working on a new deployment in Asia that includes the new Discovery version on Orchestration and the Automation Engine in Tokyo. We will soon be onboarding HRSD, Legal Service Delivery, OT for manufacturing, and ESG. We have a developed a very complete roadmap.

Our company deploys for enterprise businesses ranging from 10,000 to 1.5 million employees. 

The most valuable asset is relationship building because the solution discovers and builds auto relationships in a way that makes cleanup very easy. Normally, when you discover data you get a lot of junk so only 30% of data might be useful. 

With the solution, it is easy to establish a relationship and discard the 70% of data that you don't want to use. 

The solution should improve the classes of discovery assets to disregard more junk data. The most painful task is eliminating the 70% of junk data. 

Currently, you can define classes of configuration items to discover, but the process is very limited so it still picks up a lot of junk data. 

I have been using the solution since 2009. 

The CTO of ServiceNow was a manager at my previous organization where my team was responsible for innovating ServiceNow manufacturing. 

I have presented white papers on ServiceNow knowledge in Europe and Vegas. 

The solution is quite stable. The only thing you have to be careful of is following best practices while maintaining it. 

The scalability is very good and very easy. You can keep adding mid-servers, expanding your database, or adding servers. When you scale up, you just have to go through the solution's entire cycle.

Scalability is rated a nine out of ten. 

Paid support is very good. Normal support is pretty bad because you can keep logging tickets but nobody responds. 

The training materials are really good so you can train your team without depending on support to solve issues. 

Support is rated a five out of ten. 

Neutral

The initial setup is not super easy but is much more convenient to use when compared to BMC Discovery. We use the solution to discover assets on-premises as well as in the cloud via an Azure data connector to the Azure platform. 

Setup is rated a seven out of ten.

We implement the solution for customers along with implementation partners. We have multiple partners because each one has their own unique set of skills. We work directly with ServiceNow to choose partners through the co-development team. Right now, we are working with HCL and DXC. 

The solution's deployment time depends on the environment you want to discover. 

At my prior employer, a team of five people discovered 67,000 servers across the US for HCSC. It took four to five months to set up. Discovery, cleanup, and completion of the CSDM layer took an additional four months. The entire project with deployment of the complete CSDM layer was done in nine months.

Our current project targets 1,700 servers so it should take us about two weeks. 

Ongoing platform maintenance requires a very minimal workforce. The solution alone isn't maintained, but the complete ITOM platform is maintained. One person maintains the ITOM that includes the solution. Another person maintains the data. 

The solution itself will not give you much ROI and will be a very expensive investment. 

You have to club the solution with a gamut of services. You need to use the complete CSDM layer for data servicing, data modeling, monetization of services, capacity management, configuration management, and future predictability. Only then will you achieve an ROI. 

The solution is not inexpensive so pricing is rated a three out of ten. 

The solution is much more convenient to setup and use than BMC Discovery. 

Proof of concept for the solution doesn't make much sense. It totally depends on the capability of your partner. Choose the partner very carefully while you plan to use the solution. If you get a very competent and capable partner, then life will be easy. If you have a partner who only does technical implementations, then that won't help you. You need to have CMDB and CSDM experts on the team because the solution is for CMDB and CSDM. If you don't design your data model really well, then the solution will not give you much result. 

The solution is not fully automated so you still need to make some effort. You have to go through the complete remodeling cycle for non-useful data elimination whenever you add a new LAN segment or new mid-server on a new data center or service. It is a little bit of effort, but it is worth the effort. 

Based on the necessary but important effort, the solution is rated a seven out of ten. 

I primarily use this solution for IT Operations Management (ITOM) and IT Asset Management (ITAM) within a cloud-based SaaS environment. We implement it for IT asset management and SAP S/4HANA integration, utilizing the Discovery feature to populate asset management systems and maintain an accurate Configuration Management Database (CMDB).

The solution has significantly improved our organization's IT service management by providing accurate and reliable data, crucial for maintaining an up-to-date CMDB. It has also enhanced our ability to assess the impact of IT changes and failures, leading to better incident management and service continuity. The user-friendly setup and robust support further contribute to operational efficiency.

The product's discovery feature is valuable due to its accuracy, reliability, and the high prestige associated with the information it provides. The dependency mapping feature is also critical for understanding the relationships between IT configurations, infrastructure, and applications, essential for effective impact analysis and change management.

The continuous improvement in the quality and customization of the product features would be beneficial, particularly as more customers rely heavily on its capabilities.

I have had experience working with ServiceNow Discovery for about six years.

The platform is very stable, undergoes rigorous testing, and is regularly updated with new features, making it a reliable tool.

The solution scales effectively to meet organizational needs, and I have not encountered any issues with its scalability.

The support team is responsive and offers multiple channels, including web chat and community forums, which effectively resolve issues.

Positive

I previously used HP's IT asset management tool. We switched to this platform due to its superior capabilities and the broader range of features it offers, which were not available with the HP solution.

The initial setup was straightforward and user-friendly. The deployment process is quick, especially once the customer provides the necessary information.

The deployment was managed in-house, and the process was smooth due to the solution's easy setup.

The ROI from using the solution is substantial. It has helped save costs on licenses and improved operational efficiency, with savings of around 20%, although this varies depending on the customer.

The product pricing is fair and reasonable for the value it provides. However, it is important to factor in the ongoing maintenance costs, as the system requires professional upkeep to ensure optimal performance.

I rate ServiceNow Discovery a ten out of ten.