ServiceNow on March 20 rolled out its first major update to its platform of 2024, dubbed the "Washington, D.C., release." The update aims to speed up enterprise digital transformation through more intelligent, streamlined experiences across sales, service, IT, security, and operations.
The ServiceNow Now Platform is the company's core offering and had its last major update in September 2023 with the Vancouver release. In addition to its major platform milestone release, ServiceNow also has incremental releases during the year and in recent months has focused strongly on growing its generative AI capabilities.
Key highlights of the new Washington D.C. release include:
- Workflow Studio: New services to build workflow automations.
- Operational Technology (OT) Knowledge Management: New insight management for OT.
- Security Posture Control (SPC): A tool for improving visibility into security controls
- Enhanced AIOps: AIOps is now coming to Service Operations Workspace for IT operations management.
Improving IT Operations with Automated Workflows
Workflow is a foundational concept in IT operations, but it has often involved a lot of manual effort, something ServiceNow is looking to improve with its new update.
"Behind every great workflow is a great process," Amy Lokey, senior vice president of p Experience at ServiceNow, explained in a press briefing. "But creating these processes can be time-consuming and highly technical."
Workflow Studio unites automation capabilities in one intuitive interface, allowing non-technical users to easily build workflows, she explained. Workflow Studio provides organizations with a single place to both review work being done on the platform and build new automations.
"Workflow Studio unites existing capabilities in this intuitive visualization, allowing people to review and modify process flows and automations, drill deeper into those individual flows and integrations, and quickly create decision trees based on business logic," Lokey said.
Among the new advanced capabilities in Workflow Studio is generative AI-powered automation.
"Building new automations has never been easier thanks to analysis and generative AI," Lokey said. "All you have to do is simply describe the process that needs to be automated, and Workflow Studio will visualize and create that workflow."
Security Posture Control Boosts Security for ITOM
Among the new tools that are part of the Now Platform updates is Security Posture Control.
SPC makes it easier for companies to identify and fix security gaps, according to Lokey. The SPC technology uses both an organization's existing IT Operations Management (ITOM) visibility and ServiceNow graph connector capabilities.
"Customers get more visibility into critical security tool gaps, such as missing endpoint agents, and SPC will recommend how to remediate those gaps," she said.
Now Assist for ITOM AIOps
The ServiceNow Washington D.C. update also integrates generative AI into its ITOM capabilities, improving AIOps capabilities.
During the press briefing Jon Sigler, senior vice president of the Now Platform at ServiceNow, described Now Assist for ITOM AIOps as the company's AI-powered IT operations monitoring product that leverages generative AI. It takes the logs and alerts generated by IT systems, which can often be cryptic, and uses natural language processing to categorize, classify, and group the information, Sigler said.
"That really helps when it comes to outages or an understanding of outages or the potential for an outage," he said.
About the author
Sean Michael Kerner is an IT consultant, technology enthusiast and tinkerer. He consults to industry and media organizations on technology issues.
