How ServiceNow began: a brief history of the company
According to Gartner, ServiceNow is the best ITSM solution for 2017. In this article we would like to look into the past of the company, see how the service developed, and who stood at its origins.
/ Flickr / mark walker / CC
The company ServiceNow appeared as a result of a scandal: in 2002 the Peregrine Systems company declared itself bankrupt - they caught her in securities fraud. Fred Laddy (Fred Luddy) worked as a technical director. He spent 13 years developing Peregrine’s asset management software. In October 2003, Fred officially left the company with a fee that was zero. Instead of money, Fred gained experience working with boxed software and realized that it was time to make the software easier.
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In December 2003, Fred Laddy launches Glide, a cloud-based business process automation system. Glide is the first platform as a service (PaaS), although there is an alternative view. The idea of ​​Glidesoft is born, which will later be renamed into Service-now, and then into ServiceNow.
There are a lot of rumors associated with the first company name. They say that once Fred wrote a code on a plane. Before landing, he heard the pilot announce that the plane would “plan” (eng. Glide) to its destination. And he just liked that word. Developers are familiar with this name by GlideRecord or gr. API.
To enter the company's website today, we turn to servicenow.com. But the original URL contained a service-now with a hyphen in the middle.
Brand managers of the company decided to remove the hyphen , but it turned out that someone already owns the domain without a hyphen. The owner was accidentally one of the customers of ServiceNow. After negotiations, ServiceNow acquired the address known to us without a hyphen.
Together with his friends, Fred creates applications to support the IT infrastructure library (ITIL) and the Service Desk. The motto of the team was Fred 's phrase: “The IT industry deserves a tool that just works. And we will give it to her. "
In early 2004, the Fred Laddy team receives a starting capital of $ 9.3 million from investor Paul Barber (Paul Barber). Fred chose the cloud as a platform for a new product. He wanted to make programs accessible and simple, so that they can be easily configured and implemented. For this, the team decided to use a service-oriented architecture (SOA). The scenario for its implementation was perfect: in a new company, all business processes were developed from scratch, which means they do not need to be changed.
In the end, the developers defined the standards and created the architecture to get the Java product that Fred dreamed of: easy to use, configure, and implement.
After entering the market, the team gave the first ten customers the opportunity to use Glide for free in exchange for feedback. The developers themselves met at the Red Robin Gourmet Burgers cafe, which subsequently became a client of ServiceNow.
In September, WagerWorks becomes the first ServiceNow customer to pay for services.
Glidesoft changes its name to ServiceNow. Corporate IT organizations — Qualcomm, TIAA-CREF, Cricket Communications, MetLife, and Burlington Coat Factory — choose Service-now.com as the provider of IT services.
Fred quickly realized that the demand for SaaS would be in the IT sector, and in small organizations outside of IT. Service-now.com were the first to sell SaaS to corporate IT clients and entrepreneurs. Among the projects for small businesses were: a service for ordering a burrito, a service for managing the brewing process, and a service for organizing weddings.
In March, Service-now.com pays back investments and brings first incomes. And in April, the company holds the first Knowledge07 global user conference, which gathers 100 Service-now.com clients. In October, the size of the team increased to 50 people.
At the beginning of the year, Fred said in an interview: “Many organizations, especially financial ones, have seriously thought about what they are doing and turned to Service-now.com. We have not suffered from the economic crisis, we were able to earn on it. " In June, Service-now.com doubles annual revenue for the third year in a row.
And in July in London , the first annual Service-now.com conference, the UK Executive Briefing and User Group Conference, takes place . The conference was held for customers from Europe, whose number is constantly growing. In November, Red Robin Gourmet Burgers becomes the 200th customer of Service-now.com.
As of 2008, 25 thousand people in 29 countries used the platform. As part of its geographical expansion, ServiceNow works with partners in local markets, such as the IT Guild in Russia.
ServiceNow releases approximately two new versions of the platform per year. Later releases will be named after the cities of the world in alphabetical order. But this approach was first used only in 2012 - the first was the release of Aspen. Prior to this, the names of the new versions consisted of the season and year of release: Winter 2009, Spring 2010, and so on.
From the events of this year, we note:
According to data for April 2010, four hundred customers and one hundred thousand IT professionals use Service-now.com to provide IT services to five million end users around the world.
The release of Spring 2010 presents new applications for automating business processes, managing a portfolio of services and IT costs, and two new SaaS applications for personnel management.
In an interview, Fred says: “We believe that you can manage business and IT operations in one portfolio of services on a cloud platform.”
Once at the conference, Luddy said : "I wake up every morning, and all I want is to write code."
Laddy was initially not sure whether he should work as a CEO. He preferred the more familiar position - software developer. He always felt in which direction the market would develop, so the development of new products fascinated him more than the management of the company.
One day, his partner from Sequoia Capital and a member of the board of directors of ServiceNow, Douglas Leone (Douglas Leone), took Laddy on a tour of several Silicon Valley companies that developed software. On the tour, Fred met with company directors and talked with them about the specifics of the work. This helped him to understand that he did not have the skills of a general director and did not want to acquire them.
In 2011, ServiceNow announced that it was Frank Slootman, former CEO of Data Domain, the head of the company. Fred has taken the position of technical director. The change of leadership has become a serious challenge for the company, and for Fred - a tense period of life. Frank and Fred’s controversy was long remembered by the company’s staff. A member of the Board of Directors of ServiceNow, Paul Barber, claims that Laddy called him almost every day and said: “I can’t take it anymore. I want to leave the company. ”
Fred was offered to sell the company many times: buyers were ready to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for ServiceNow. Fred was ready to agree to each proposal, but Paul Barber each time dissuaded him with the words: "it will be an error worth 10 billion." The board of directors unanimously refused to sell the company, however profitable the offer might be. ServiceNow was too good an investment to sell.
In the end, Luddy agreed to give up the post to Slutman. ServiceNow was at the growth stage, and Frank Slutman was able to build work in large organizations. Over 5 years of managing the company, Slutman managed to increase annual revenue from $ 93 million to $ 1 billion.
In 2011, consulting company Ovum Research recognized ServiceNow as one of the most innovative ITSM developers with the highest growth rates in two years.
During these five years, the company conducted a very successful IPO, greatly expanded both geographically and in terms of staff. Strengthened in the ranking of the fastest growing technology companies. Revenue growth ServiceNow for five years from 2009 to 2014 exceeded 2000%. In 2015, the annual profit finally exceeded $ 1 billion.
In 2016, ServiceNow was already responsible for servicing more than 30% of the companies from the Global 2000 list. At the same time, the anniversary conference of Knowledge16 took place.
In February 2017, ServiceNow announced the appointment of John Donahoe, former eBay president, to head the company. After that, the shares of ServiceNow temporarily fell by 4.2%.
Now the leadership is aimed at achieving an annual turnover of $ 4 billion by 2020. The company's goal is to help customers benefit from their products throughout their life cycle. John Donahoe put customer needs above all else in the company's corporate culture. Therefore, the client and the benefits that he receives from the business through ServiceNow, most of all care about the leadership.
Providing ITSM solutions to customers is still the main task of ServiceNow, while machine learning and other tools allow you to automate routine tasks. This allows you to devote more time to business development. Because the work does not have to be difficult .
PS A few more materials on the topic from the blog "IT Guild":
/ Flickr / mark walker / CC
2003: Create a platform
The company ServiceNow appeared as a result of a scandal: in 2002 the Peregrine Systems company declared itself bankrupt - they caught her in securities fraud. Fred Laddy (Fred Luddy) worked as a technical director. He spent 13 years developing Peregrine’s asset management software. In October 2003, Fred officially left the company with a fee that was zero. Instead of money, Fred gained experience working with boxed software and realized that it was time to make the software easier.
')
In December 2003, Fred Laddy launches Glide, a cloud-based business process automation system. Glide is the first platform as a service (PaaS), although there is an alternative view. The idea of ​​Glidesoft is born, which will later be renamed into Service-now, and then into ServiceNow.
There are a lot of rumors associated with the first company name. They say that once Fred wrote a code on a plane. Before landing, he heard the pilot announce that the plane would “plan” (eng. Glide) to its destination. And he just liked that word. Developers are familiar with this name by GlideRecord or gr. API.
To enter the company's website today, we turn to servicenow.com. But the original URL contained a service-now with a hyphen in the middle.
Brand managers of the company decided to remove the hyphen , but it turned out that someone already owns the domain without a hyphen. The owner was accidentally one of the customers of ServiceNow. After negotiations, ServiceNow acquired the address known to us without a hyphen.
2004: Software should just work.
Together with his friends, Fred creates applications to support the IT infrastructure library (ITIL) and the Service Desk. The motto of the team was Fred 's phrase: “The IT industry deserves a tool that just works. And we will give it to her. "
In early 2004, the Fred Laddy team receives a starting capital of $ 9.3 million from investor Paul Barber (Paul Barber). Fred chose the cloud as a platform for a new product. He wanted to make programs accessible and simple, so that they can be easily configured and implemented. For this, the team decided to use a service-oriented architecture (SOA). The scenario for its implementation was perfect: in a new company, all business processes were developed from scratch, which means they do not need to be changed.
In the end, the developers defined the standards and created the architecture to get the Java product that Fred dreamed of: easy to use, configure, and implement.
2005: Entry into the market
After entering the market, the team gave the first ten customers the opportunity to use Glide for free in exchange for feedback. The developers themselves met at the Red Robin Gourmet Burgers cafe, which subsequently became a client of ServiceNow.
In September, WagerWorks becomes the first ServiceNow customer to pay for services.
2006: SAAS for Entrepreneurship
Glidesoft changes its name to ServiceNow. Corporate IT organizations — Qualcomm, TIAA-CREF, Cricket Communications, MetLife, and Burlington Coat Factory — choose Service-now.com as the provider of IT services.
Fred quickly realized that the demand for SaaS would be in the IT sector, and in small organizations outside of IT. Service-now.com were the first to sell SaaS to corporate IT clients and entrepreneurs. Among the projects for small businesses were: a service for ordering a burrito, a service for managing the brewing process, and a service for organizing weddings.
2007: 100 customers
In March, Service-now.com pays back investments and brings first incomes. And in April, the company holds the first Knowledge07 global user conference, which gathers 100 Service-now.com clients. In October, the size of the team increased to 50 people.
2008: The economic crisis as a success
At the beginning of the year, Fred said in an interview: “Many organizations, especially financial ones, have seriously thought about what they are doing and turned to Service-now.com. We have not suffered from the economic crisis, we were able to earn on it. " In June, Service-now.com doubles annual revenue for the third year in a row.
And in July in London , the first annual Service-now.com conference, the UK Executive Briefing and User Group Conference, takes place . The conference was held for customers from Europe, whose number is constantly growing. In November, Red Robin Gourmet Burgers becomes the 200th customer of Service-now.com.
As of 2008, 25 thousand people in 29 countries used the platform. As part of its geographical expansion, ServiceNow works with partners in local markets, such as the IT Guild in Russia.
2009: New releases and features
ServiceNow releases approximately two new versions of the platform per year. Later releases will be named after the cities of the world in alphabetical order. But this approach was first used only in 2012 - the first was the release of Aspen. Prior to this, the names of the new versions consisted of the season and year of release: Winter 2009, Spring 2010, and so on.
From the events of this year, we note:
- Release Winter 2009 implements the functionality of sites for corporate users.
- Spring 2009 simplifies self-service IT services.
- At the end of the year, the company’s staff increases to 150 employees.
2010: 200 employees and 400 clients
According to data for April 2010, four hundred customers and one hundred thousand IT professionals use Service-now.com to provide IT services to five million end users around the world.
The release of Spring 2010 presents new applications for automating business processes, managing a portfolio of services and IT costs, and two new SaaS applications for personnel management.
In an interview, Fred says: “We believe that you can manage business and IT operations in one portfolio of services on a cloud platform.”
2011: Change of leadership: Frank Slutman
Once at the conference, Luddy said : "I wake up every morning, and all I want is to write code."
Laddy was initially not sure whether he should work as a CEO. He preferred the more familiar position - software developer. He always felt in which direction the market would develop, so the development of new products fascinated him more than the management of the company.
One day, his partner from Sequoia Capital and a member of the board of directors of ServiceNow, Douglas Leone (Douglas Leone), took Laddy on a tour of several Silicon Valley companies that developed software. On the tour, Fred met with company directors and talked with them about the specifics of the work. This helped him to understand that he did not have the skills of a general director and did not want to acquire them.
In 2011, ServiceNow announced that it was Frank Slootman, former CEO of Data Domain, the head of the company. Fred has taken the position of technical director. The change of leadership has become a serious challenge for the company, and for Fred - a tense period of life. Frank and Fred’s controversy was long remembered by the company’s staff. A member of the Board of Directors of ServiceNow, Paul Barber, claims that Laddy called him almost every day and said: “I can’t take it anymore. I want to leave the company. ”
Fred was offered to sell the company many times: buyers were ready to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for ServiceNow. Fred was ready to agree to each proposal, but Paul Barber each time dissuaded him with the words: "it will be an error worth 10 billion." The board of directors unanimously refused to sell the company, however profitable the offer might be. ServiceNow was too good an investment to sell.
In the end, Luddy agreed to give up the post to Slutman. ServiceNow was at the growth stage, and Frank Slutman was able to build work in large organizations. Over 5 years of managing the company, Slutman managed to increase annual revenue from $ 93 million to $ 1 billion.
In 2011, consulting company Ovum Research recognized ServiceNow as one of the most innovative ITSM developers with the highest growth rates in two years.
2012-2017: Billionth corporation
During these five years, the company conducted a very successful IPO, greatly expanded both geographically and in terms of staff. Strengthened in the ranking of the fastest growing technology companies. Revenue growth ServiceNow for five years from 2009 to 2014 exceeded 2000%. In 2015, the annual profit finally exceeded $ 1 billion.
In 2016, ServiceNow was already responsible for servicing more than 30% of the companies from the Global 2000 list. At the same time, the anniversary conference of Knowledge16 took place.
In February 2017, ServiceNow announced the appointment of John Donahoe, former eBay president, to head the company. After that, the shares of ServiceNow temporarily fell by 4.2%.
Now the leadership is aimed at achieving an annual turnover of $ 4 billion by 2020. The company's goal is to help customers benefit from their products throughout their life cycle. John Donahoe put customer needs above all else in the company's corporate culture. Therefore, the client and the benefits that he receives from the business through ServiceNow, most of all care about the leadership.
Providing ITSM solutions to customers is still the main task of ServiceNow, while machine learning and other tools allow you to automate routine tasks. This allows you to devote more time to business development. Because the work does not have to be difficult .
PS A few more materials on the topic from the blog "IT Guild":
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/337832/
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