ServiceNow Discovery Reviews

We use it to gather information from cloud environments such as Azure and GCP. The aim is to conduct scans for various assets, including laptops, desktops, servers, and software. This process extends to retrieving details from the client's database within their cloud infrastructure.

We have several integrations established to receive CI data from various sources. We synchronize this data uniformly. Discovery feature plays a crucial role in consolidating this information into a single repository.

One highly valuable aspect is the use of service accounts, which automates the process of identifying underlying nodes and associated assets. With this feature, there's no need to manually input all IPs or details; instead, it seamlessly navigates from node to node, capturing the relevant assets and relationships automatically.

The current limitation in out-of-the-box features, particularly for fields in tables like servers or laptops, necessitates time-consuming customization through pattern matching involving coding. A more beneficial approach would be to have additional features in the default configuration for easily adding different sets of fields. The manual pattern-matching process is not only time-consuming but also presents challenges during system upgrades, demanding revisits to ensure compatibility.

I have been working with it for one year.

Following the installation and configuration, we encountered minimal issues, and the system has been operating smoothly since then. I would rate its stability capabilities eight out of ten.

Its scalability for data retrieval is robust, but licensing is based on the number of CIs discovered, not usage duration. For instance, purchasing a thousand licenses for a year means tracking the count of CIs discovered. In a production setting, where the number of CIs may grow, planning is vital. Consideration of the roadmap and expected growth is crucial, as bulk license purchases may lead to unused licenses, emphasizing the importance of thoughtful planning. I would rate it eight out of ten.

They primarily provided out-of-the-box solutions. However, when specific modifications were required, we found limited information or resources on their website. I would rate it six out of ten.

The initial setup involved engineering lower environments, acquiring a mid-server, and formulating precise queries to extract necessary data from third-party sources. This included understanding the infrastructure, identifying service accounts, collecting IP information, and checking for firewall configurations. Once these preparatory steps were completed, establishing connectivity became possible, followed by the ongoing configuration of switches and other required elements. After ensuring the data flow in the system environment, a similar process was replicated in the production environment. I would rate it six out of ten.

In the deployment process, encountering challenges arose when determining the appropriate mid-server to use. The standard server couldn't be utilized, leading to the setup of distinct mid-servers for different environments to facilitate the discovery phase. However, the absence of clear rules for configuring user IDs and providing access made this task difficult. The lack of a visual representation or clear documentation compounded the complexity. The system was layered, with folders nested within folders, each requiring specific access. The Proof of Concept and the subsequent deployment phase spanned three months. The deployment was handled in-house by a team of two individuals.

Scaling down other integrations becomes a cost-saving benefit for any company. While our implementation is relatively recent, and there's still much progress ahead, my initial estimate would be a seven out of ten for the effectiveness of ServiceNow Discovery.

The pricing is determined based on the CIs.

The system is quite robust and encompasses a comprehensive set of features. While the initial setup might pose some challenges, once installed and configured correctly, it proves to be a reliable solution for the long term. I would rate it eight out of ten.

I can't discuss the use cases related to the product since I don't have many projects to deal with in my company that need the use of ServiceNow Discovery.

The out-of-the-box probes and patterns in ServiceNow Discovery are great features.

ServiceNow Discovery is a great tool. ServiceNow Discovery should be updated to provide its users with more out-of-the-box information and attributes to support the routers and switches from Cisco. It would be great if the tool could handle more out-of-the-box functionalities to retrieve the information for routers, especially those from Cisco, including the updated devices.

I have experience with ServiceNow Discovery. My company has a partnership with ServiceNow.

Stability-wise, I feel it is a good product.

I do have experience with other tools similar to ServiceNow Discovery, but I don't remember the names of the tools I used in the past. Compared to the tools I have used previously, ServiceNow Discovery can be considered a useful product if someone wants to use an agentless solution, meaning you don't have to install any agent in your system.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

The solution's deployment phase takes around a month to be completed.

I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.

ServiceNow helps us keep our CMDB updated and populated with all the necessary information. 

ServiceNow Discovery works better than other products I've used. 

In a few instances, ServiceNow has failed to discover some basic things. Some other tools are better at network discovery than ServiceNow. I'm not talking about database servers or any other infrastructure—only networking. Cloud discovery could also be better.  

We have used ServiceNow Discovery for nine or ten years.

I rate ServiceNow Discovery seven out of 10 for stability.

ServiceNow Discovery is scalable enough. It could work for businesses of any size, depending on the use case. For example, if you're working with mostly cloud infrastructure, you might want to use something that is specifically designed for that. 

I rate ServiceNow support seven out of 10. Their support technicians can usually provide a solution, but they sometimes lack adequate knowledge and we need to escalate through multiple teams. 

Neutral

Deploying ServiceNow Discovery is straightforward. It takes three or four months, depending on your use case. For larger use cases, you might need seven to 10 people, including various kinds of solution architects. 

The price is somewhat high, but if you're buying multiple products from the same line as a bundle, you can get a discount. However, if you buy Discovery as a standalone product, it will be expensive. 

I rate ServiceNow Discovery eight out of 10. When implementing Discovery, you must first understand your use case and the solution's capabilities before you dive into it. ServiceNow might not be able to do everything you want out of the box, but it's customizable.

We use the solution for configuration management.

Compared to other solutions, it is easy to implement.

The solution can prioritize the discovery of IP ranges. The product automatically places all Discovery CIs into the correct class within the CMDB.

Pricing could be improved to better accommodate various customer needs and business models. It ultimately depends on the specific requirements and budget constraints of each customer.

I have been using ServiceNow Discovery for eight months.

Compared to other solutions, the support is good. It's very fast and comprehensive. We have great integrated support from our community.

Positive

The initial setup is very simple and takes eight hours max to complete. It is a subscription module.

The solution is expensive.

I rate the product’s pricing a seven out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.

ServiceNow Discovery enables us to efficiently implement and discover all our assets within the organization. It's agility and ability to provide comprehensive information with correct CI relations and ServiceNow Service Catalog offerings. Compared to other solutions, it's easier to comprehend the entire structure.

It retrieves accurate information from the CIs within the company, establishing correct relationships with users, owners, and other processes such as incident and change management. It also improves the relationship between the CMDB and all the infrastructure components.

There are some specific challenges, such as discovering VIPs or Citrix machines, these issues are manageable. ServiceNow offers integration with third-party products through REST APIs and predefined connectors, facilitating seamless interoperability.

Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

I use the tool for IT change management. 

I am impressed with the tool's incident problem change management. 

The product should improve its customer interface, web interface, and front end. I would like to see the integration of keyboard chat with the solution. 

I have been using the solution for three years. 

I would rate the product's stability an eight out of ten. 

I would rate the product's scalability a seven out of ten. The tool's discovery component was quite difficult to scale up. My company has thousands of users for the solution. We have plans to increase the usage. 

The tool's tech support has a slow response. We have encountered scenarios where there was a lack of response even. They didn't really understand the nature of the problem. 

Neutral

I evaluated the value of the BMC solution and found it to be better. 

The tool's setup was complex. It would rate its setup a six out of ten. The product's overall deployment took two and a half months to complete. We required five staff to complete the deployment process. 

We did the solution's deployment in-house. 

I would rate the product's pricing a six out of ten. We had availed some discount from the standard pricing. Even then, the tool's pricing is expensive. You have to pay some vendor service fees for the product's implementation. 

I would rate the product a seven out of ten. You need to consider the tool's alternatives before choosing the product. 

Our primary use case for the solution is compliance, understanding our assets, and mapping it against our business for services.

The ability to build CI relationships against our portfolio, services or applications is valuable. It has given us an understanding of each layer from a server application, network and the topography of how it's linked to an application or business process.

The price could be lower.

We have been using the solution for approximately four years.

The solution is stable. We've had some hurdles because whenever we changed networks, IPs or hardware, we forgot to ensure it reflected in ServiceNow Discovery. So we've added it as part of our process, but the solution has been stable. I rate the stability a nine out of ten.

The solution is scalable. Twenty-five people are currently using it in our organization. I rate the scalability a nine out of ten.

We haven't had many instances where we connected with support but when we have it has been a good experience. They provide a resolution within a good time frame. I rate them a nine out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward. We initially had challenges because we had very tight security and firewalls that were a bit off, so we had to set up many rules around it to ensure the solution worked. Deployment took approximately three months.

We implemented through a vendor team, specifically by an integrator FlyForm.They are one of the best integrators we have used.

The solution is a good product, but it is slightly expensive. It is one of the most costly applications in terms of subscription costs. I rate the price a five out of ten.

I rate the solution an eight out of ten. The solution is good, but the price could be lower.

Our company uses the solution's to discover infrastructures. The ServiceNow instance is in the cloud and the Discovery servers are on-premises. 

We have five licensed configuration management practitioners and 3,000 end users. 

Cloud Discovery is valuable because it finds global, public cloud infrastructures and updates the integration management database, service catalogs, and asset management details. 

The store is a key differentiator because it offers many compatible third-party and OEM plugins for cloud integrations like AWS, Azure, Adobe, and Microsoft. For example, there are service providers for license and asset management, there is a mid-service for Quantum Discovery, and there are plugins from AWS for service or asset management and CMDB integrations. 

The solution too high priced. 

I have been using the solution for seven years. 

The solution is stable but some work is required. 

Only IP-based assets are discoverable. It takes time to get the related OIDs for newer models and patches do not come easily. Sometimes, we have to do research and discovery from the OEM's website to understand and manually create the required OIDs so the solution can identify the actual assets. 

Our main challenges are with network devices for Meraki and proper discovery for storage or backup solutions. 

The solution is very scalable. 

Technical support is always helpful. 

The setup is a bit complex. 

We implemented in-house which can be done if you have administrator or architect-level knowledge. 

Our implementation took ninety days. We went from on-premises Windows and Linux to Windows desktop laptops, to AWS, to Azure. The last step was SaaS integrations for applications like 365, Adobe Cloud, and Creative Cloud. 

The solution is very expensive. Our use is somewhere close to 50GB per user each month. 

We evaluated Manage Engine's ServiceDesk Plus, Jira Service Management, and Remedy. At the end of the day, the solution was the best fit during that time for our organizational strategy. 

Right now, we are looking for an alternate because the solution is very expensive. 

I recommend the solution and rate it an eight out of ten. 

This is a part of ITOM. We use the product to identify servers and network equipment in our data centers.

To some extent, it has improved the way our organization functions. 

Discovering of network related equipment was an area where we had lot of success with.  This was after we helped identify issues with loopback interfaces and such. 

It is stable. 

Support is okay. 

It does create quite a few duplicate CIs, you need to monitor and clean them up.  

The initial setup is complex. 

We do not need any extra features. 

Printer discovery is limited, Server or Workstation categorization depends on OS, which can lead to wrong labeling. 

I've used the solution for the last two years. 

The solution is stable and reliable. The performance is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

This product is not exactly scalable, or, at least, we haven't really had a chance to test its scalability potential. 

We have about six users on the product in our organization. 

We are only using 40% to 60% of capacity. We are not planning to increase usage. 

Technical support is hit or miss. They can be helpful or not, depending on who you get. 

Neutral

We had a different solution. However, the previous product was not customizable, which is why we switched. 

The solution is complex to set up. It took us nine months to implement the product. 

We need four to six people in order to deploy the solution. 

We did have someone help us with the implementation. 

We have seen ROI to some extent. 

We tend to deal with three-year licenses. I'm not aware of the exact pricing of the product. You do not have to pay for acquiring extra features. 

We're a customer. This solution goes hand in hand with ITOM. 

I'd rate the solution at a six out of ten.

We use ServiceNow Discovery to look at assets, processes, and some process mining. On the other hand, we use ServiceNow ITSM to capture tickets and move away from Remedy. We also use ServiceNow ITSM APIs for contract management, focusing on change, configuration, release, incidents, and problems.

One of the most valuable features of ServiceNow Discovery is the automated discovery that helps identify dependencies, and then my company gets a report on that. My company has many applications, whether developed internally or bought off the shelf, and my company needs to know which application has a dependency on what. Sometimes, developer teams make changes to applications, which then causes other ecosystems to crash, which is where ServiceNow Discovery comes in.

Another valuable feature of the solution is security management related. The security landscape in this post-pandemic world is very different, so you don't want to have insecure access to any of the applications, especially ones focused explicitly on service management and service delivery for clients. Hence, my company also uses ServiceNow Discovery for more secure access and communication using certificates between different parties involved, which is beneficial.

ServiceNow Discovery has matured since the last time I got on the bandwagon, but its integration with legacy apps is one area for improvement. Right now, the ServiceNow Discovery APIs cater more to newer apps, whether the apps run on AWS or Azure, and it's much easier on more recent apps versus on-premises apps that don't necessarily have the proper API interfaces, such as REST or JSON. You need to do a lot of manual work to properly integrate ServiceNow Discovery with legacy apps compared to integrating it with newer apps.

ServiceNow Discovery isn't a plug-and-play solution, which is another area for improvement, as that causes a delay in the overall process. Making it a plug-and-play product is helpful.

ServiceNow Discovery offers out-of-the-box reports, and though that's okay, allowing easier report customization would improve the solution. Currently, customizing reports isn't as straightforward as some of the other tools in the market. It's challenging to build custom reports in ServiceNow Discovery. You can use the basic reports offered in the solution, but if you need analytics and more advanced reporting, there's a lot of work to be done.

The product also lacks training resources, which is another area for improvement. It would be very helpful if ServiceNow included some advanced training with the sale. Most team members have to either go online and search on Google for more advanced training. There's no issue with the basics as they're straightforward, but the white papers don't necessarily come with very good use cases of how someone has implemented an intelligent workflow. If ServiceNow could provide more ServiceNow Discovery videos, certification, or cheat sheets to make the overall implementation and configuration of the solution faster, it would be quite useful.

An additional feature I want to be added to ServiceNow Discovery is an integration studio that helps you map into legacy apps. It should be drag-and-drop and very visual.

I also want the ServiceNow Discovery pricing model to be more of a pay-as-you-use. The challenge right now is whether it's a subscription or whether it's perpetual. The licensing model costs a whole lot more than other solutions, so even though my company uses a public cloud to run ServiceNow Discovery, that doesn't mean you can enjoy the same benefits, and whether you use it more or use it less, you incur the same costs, which is not necessarily a more accurate positioning of how the overall business works for a particular year.

Cost-wise, ServiceNow Discovery seems to be from an era where it is more on-premise than sitting on the cloud, even though it is a cloud solution. ServiceNow should have a pay-per-use licensing model so that if my usage increases, I can pay more, rather than needing to pay the same amount whether my usage increases or decreases.

I've been using ServiceNow Discovery for two and a half years now. I've used ServiceNow ITSM longer, in particular, seven to eight years now.

ServiceNow Discovery stability is an eight out of ten because it never crashed. Still, sometimes, it has pending critical workloads because it needs connectors and visibility based on company protocols.

The stability of the solution isn't an issue, but its predictability is, though that has improved. There used to be dependency mapping issues where some critical workloads were excluded, so support worked on it, fixed it, and gave my company a patch.

ServiceNow Discovery is scalable but comparable to a Lego block set. You can do what you want with it, and you can do anything with it, but the question is "how easily can you scale it?"

If you were to look at commoditized functions as automated discovery and getting visibility into your workloads on the cloud, it's not rocket science, and it's pretty quickly done. However, when you're in an enterprise scenario where you have legacy apps, then the scaling, although it's possible, scaling ServiceNow Discovery becomes more complex.

Scalability-wise, it's a seven out of ten, and it's not merely about how many ServiceNow Discovery instances you're using or how many projects, but whether setting up reports, finishing service maps, etc., is easy.

The level one and level two technical support for ServiceNow Discovery were satisfactory, but the more senior support wasn't because only a few senior support was available. We had to wait at least three to four days to get more senior resources to help us with critical issues, and sometimes, they were not very strong, but basic support, for example, people who create tickets and get details from us, have been okay.

I'd rate the ServiceNow Discovery technical support as seven out of ten.

Neutral

The initial setup for ServiceNow Discovery was very straightforward, and you don't need to do much to set it up. After you set it up, that's when you'll have to take more steps. For example, when you configure intelligent workflows and integrate third-party apps, and if you want to put in graph connectors, that takes time.

I'd rate the ServiceNow Discovery initial setup as four out of ten because it takes time to configure and set up the workflows. My company expected to complete the setup in three months, but it took seven months to get it done.

ServiceNow Discovery has very broad pricing, so it becomes costly. It would be better if it had a pay-as-you-use licensing model because the total cost of ownership is quite high.

The ServiceNow Discovery unit price is comparable to other products, but if you look at the packaging, the TCO is much higher than others.

Overall, I'd rate the ServiceNow Discovery licensing costs as five out of ten.

My company works with various products. It partners with different platforms to build websites that run governance projects, provide RPA solutions, etc. For example, my company works with ServiceNow, Blue Prism, and Automation Anywhere.

ServiceNow is one of the platforms my company uses for internal IT request management, as well as an engine to help with the governance tool my company developed for clients and usage internally that helps with contract management.

I'm currently using both ServiceNow Discovery and ServiceNow ITSM.

Within my company, twenty to thirty people use ServiceNow Discovery, and each user has a different purpose. Some users use it internally, while some use it for client projects.

My rating for ServiceNow Discovery overall is seven out of ten.

My company is both a partner and a user of ServiceNow Discovery.

The solution is for all of our infra components.

The solution is straightforward to set up.

It is stable. 

We can scale the solution.

The solution is user-friendly. 

Between SolarWinds and ServiceNow, there is some communication gap. SolarWinds is able to give infra-related things, however, from a ServiceNow perspective, it'll discover all the things from an IT management perspective in real-time.

If you're integrating both tools, it's not going to integrate. If I'm using SolarWinds Discovery and if I'm integrating it with ServiceNow, in ServiceNow, I cannot get a direct fit. I need to manually play with it. While they function together, we still need to do manual interventions.

ServiceNow is very costly.

You need to recruit some developer support if you want to do some coding, and that is the one improvement area they need to look at.

They should add in infra monitoring.

I've been working with the solution for ten years. 

I've never had issues with stability. The solution is reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. Even if it is on-premises, there are no issues. 

The solution is scalable. 

We have escalated questions to support. However, they are more commercial than technical. 

Neutral

I've also worked with SolarWinds for ten years. 

The solution is very simple to set up and implement. It's not overly complex. 

If you are just implementing ServiceNow, it doesn't take too much time. If I'm using their SaaS-based services, it might take two weeks. 

It is an expensive solution. Per licensed user, it may be around $160 to $180. There may be additional models a company needs to buy for ITSM functionality.ITSM will not work independently, and therefore we need other models. 

I'm an end-user and integrator.

We are dealing with the latest version of the solution. 

We're using both cloud and on-premises deployments. 

I'd recommend the solution to other users. 

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.