Enterprise Cloud FEATURED ARTICLE

ServiceNow (News - Alert), a worldwide service desk management software leader, announced plans to acquire ITapp in an all-cash deal that’s set to close this month.

ITapp offers a solution for cloud platform management. It works in Amazon Web Services, Citrix XenServer, Microsoft (News - Alert) Aruze, OpenStack, and VMware environments.

This marriage makes sense, ServiceNow says, because both it and ITapp are moving forward automation, governance, and self-service in the enterprise cloud. The plan is for ITapp features to be integrated into the ServiceNow platform by next year.

"To address the proliferation of cloud-based services, IT departments require a solution that provides visibility and control over how those services are being utilized across the enterprise,” said Sri Chandrashekar, vice president and general manager of IT operations management at ServiceNow. “ITapp will augment our existing cloud management solution, allowing customers to optimize their cloud ecosystem while ensuring compliance and security.”

Dave Stephens (News - Alert), vice president and general manager of service management at ServiceNow, recently told me that IT faces three main challenges. That includes delivering a great experience, offering more transparency so the businesses for which they work can better understand the value of various IT functions, and speed.

In November of 2014 ServiceNow unveiled ServiceNow Express, a cloud-based IT service management solution that offers incident, problem, and change automation to speed the assignment and resolution of tickets, fix recurring issues, and help IT teams stop managing services with email; asset tracking to replace spreadsheets with a single system of record to see what assets the IT team manages, where assets reside, how they are performing, and what issues are tagged to them; Visual Task Boards to give IT managers an easy way to assign the team work through a drag-and-drop interface, including changing assignee, adding tasks, resetting priorities, and collaborating with the team; and one-click reporting on any metric to track performance and demonstrate the value of IT to business leaders.

Consulting firm Integrhythm is among the companies that have expertise in ServiceNow technology. Integrhythm connects businesses with IT to drive productivity, deliver new capacity, and enable organizations to realize a higher quality of service.