October 17, 2017 at 12:17How ServiceNow Started: A Brief History of the Company
According to Gartner, ServiceNow is the best ITSM solution in 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
ServiceNow appeared as a result of a scandal: in 2002, Peregrine Systems declared itself bankrupt - it was caught in a securities fraud. Fred Luddy worked as its 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 with boxed software and realized that it was time to make software easier.
In December 2003, Fred Luddy launches Glide, a cloud-based business process automation system. Glide - the firstplatform as a service (PaaS), although there is an alternative view. The idea of Glidesoft is emerging, which will later be renamed to Service-now, and then to ServiceNow.
There are a lot of rumors associated with the first name of the company. They say that once Fred wrote the code on the plane. Before approaching, he heard the pilot announce that the aircraft would “plan” (English glide) to its destination. And he just liked that word. Developers are familiar with this name by GlideRecord or gr. API
To access the company’s website today, we turn to servicenow.com. But the original URL contained service-now with a hyphen in the middle.
The company’s brand managers decided to remove the hyphen, but it turned out that someone already owns the domain without a hyphen. The owner accidentally turned out to be one of the ServiceNow customers. After the negotiations, ServiceNow acquired the address known to us without a hyphen.
Together with friends, Fred creates applications to support the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and 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 team of Fred Luddy receives a start-up capital of $ 9.3 million from investor Paul Barber. Fred chose the cloud as the platform for the new product. He wanted to make programs accessible and simple so that they could be easily configured and implemented. For this, the team decided to use a service-oriented architecture (SOA). The scenario for its implementation was ideal: in the new company, all business processes were developed from scratch, which means that they do not need to be changed.
As a result, the developers defined the standards and created the architecture to get the product in Java that Fred dreamed of: easy to use, configuration, and implementation.
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 in the cafe Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, which later became the 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 their IT service provider.
Fred quickly realized that there would be demand for SaaS in both the IT sector and small organizations outside of IT. Service-now.com were the first to sell SaaS to corporate IT customers 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 off investments and brings first incomes. And in April, the company holds the first global Knowledge07 user conference, which brings together 100 Service-now.com customers. 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, seriously thought about what they were doing and turned to Service-now.com. We were not affected by the economic crisis, we were able to make money 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 is held - the UK Executive Briefing and User Group Conference. The conference was held for customers from Europe, whose number was 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 geographic 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 alphabetically. But this approach was first used only in 2012 - the first release was Aspen. Prior to this, the names of the new versions consisted of a season and a release year: Winter 2009, Spring 2010 and so on.
Of the events of this year, we note:
As of April 2010, four hundred customers and one hundred thousand IT professionals use Service-now.com to provide IT services to five million end users worldwide.
Spring 2010 introduces 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 a conference, Luddy said : "I wake up every morning, and all I want to do is write code."
Luddy was initially unsure whether he should work as a CEO. He preferred a more familiar position as a software developer. He always felt in which direction the market would develop, so the development of new products fascinated him more than managing the company.
Once, his partner from Sequoia Capital and a member of the Board of Directors of ServiceNow, Douglas Leone, took Luddy on a tour of several Silicon Valley companies that developed the software. On the tour, Fred met with the directors of the companies and talked with them about the specifics of the work. This helped him to understand that he did not have the skills of a CEO and did not want to acquire them.
In 2011, ServiceNow announced Frank Slootman, the former CEO of Data Domain, as head of the company. Fred took over as technical director. The change of leadership was a serious test for the company, and for Fred - a busy period of his life. The arguments of Frank and Fred will be remembered for a long timecompany employees. Service Bar Member of the Board of Directors Paul Barber claims that Luddy called him almost every day and said: “I can no longer. I want to leave the company. "
Fred was offered to sell the company many times : buyers were ready to shell out hundreds of millions of dollars for ServiceNow. Fred was ready to agree to every proposal, but Paul Barber tried to dissuade him every time with the words: "it will be a mistake worth 10 billion." The board of directors unanimously refused to sell the company, no matter how profitable the proposal. ServiceNow was too good an investment to sell.
In the end, Luddy agreed to relinquish the post to the Slutman. ServiceNow was at a growing stage, and Frank Slutman was able to build work in large organizations. Over the 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 developers in ITSM with the highest growth rates in two years.
During these five years, the company conducted a very successful IPO, significantly expanded both geographically and in terms of staff. Strengthened in the ranking of the fastest growing technology companies. ServiceNow's revenue growth for five years from 2009 to 2014 exceeded 2000%. In 2015, annual profits finally exceeded $ 1 billion.
In 2016, ServiceNow was already responsible for servicing more than 30% of the Global 2000 companies. At that time, the anniversary Knowledge16 conference was held.
In February 2017, ServiceNow announced the appointment of John Donahoe, former president of eBay, as head of the company. After that, ServiceNow shares temporarily fell 4.2%.
Now management is aiming to achieve an annual turnover of $ 4 billion by 2020. The company's goal is to help customers benefit from their products throughout their entire life cycle. John Donahoe placed customer needs above everything else in the company’s corporate culture. Therefore, the client and the benefits that he receives from the business with the help of ServiceNow are most concerned about the management.
Providing ITSM solutions to customers is still the main goal of ServiceNow, and machine learning and other tools automate routine tasks. This allows you to devote more time to business development. Because the work does not have to be complicated .
PS A few more materials on the topic from the blog "IT Guilds":
2003: Create a platform
ServiceNow appeared as a result of a scandal: in 2002, Peregrine Systems declared itself bankrupt - it was caught in a securities fraud. Fred Luddy worked as its 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 with boxed software and realized that it was time to make software easier.
In December 2003, Fred Luddy launches Glide, a cloud-based business process automation system. Glide - the firstplatform as a service (PaaS), although there is an alternative view. The idea of Glidesoft is emerging, which will later be renamed to Service-now, and then to ServiceNow.
There are a lot of rumors associated with the first name of the company. They say that once Fred wrote the code on the plane. Before approaching, he heard the pilot announce that the aircraft would “plan” (English glide) to its destination. And he just liked that word. Developers are familiar with this name by GlideRecord or gr. API
To access the company’s website today, we turn to servicenow.com. But the original URL contained service-now with a hyphen in the middle.
The company’s brand managers decided to remove the hyphen, but it turned out that someone already owns the domain without a hyphen. The owner accidentally turned out to be one of the ServiceNow customers. After the negotiations, ServiceNow acquired the address known to us without a hyphen.
2004: Software should just work
Together with friends, Fred creates applications to support the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and 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 team of Fred Luddy receives a start-up capital of $ 9.3 million from investor Paul Barber. Fred chose the cloud as the platform for the new product. He wanted to make programs accessible and simple so that they could be easily configured and implemented. For this, the team decided to use a service-oriented architecture (SOA). The scenario for its implementation was ideal: in the new company, all business processes were developed from scratch, which means that they do not need to be changed.
As a result, the developers defined the standards and created the architecture to get the product in Java that Fred dreamed of: easy to use, configuration, and implementation.
2005: Market Entry
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 in the cafe Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, which later became the 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 their IT service provider.
Fred quickly realized that there would be demand for SaaS in both the IT sector and small organizations outside of IT. Service-now.com were the first to sell SaaS to corporate IT customers 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 off investments and brings first incomes. And in April, the company holds the first global Knowledge07 user conference, which brings together 100 Service-now.com customers. In October, the size of the team increased to 50 people.
2008: Economic Crisis as a Success
At the beginning of the year, Fred said in an interview: “Many organizations, especially financial ones, seriously thought about what they were doing and turned to Service-now.com. We were not affected by the economic crisis, we were able to make money 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 is held - the UK Executive Briefing and User Group Conference. The conference was held for customers from Europe, whose number was 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 geographic expansion, ServiceNow works with partners in local markets, such as the IT Guild in Russia.
2009: New Releases and Functionality
ServiceNow releases approximately two new versions of the platform per year. Later releases will be named after the cities of the world alphabetically. But this approach was first used only in 2012 - the first release was Aspen. Prior to this, the names of the new versions consisted of a season and a release year: Winter 2009, Spring 2010 and so on.
Of the events of this year, we note:
- The release of 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 customers
As of April 2010, four hundred customers and one hundred thousand IT professionals use Service-now.com to provide IT services to five million end users worldwide.
Spring 2010 introduces 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 Management: Frank Slutman
Once at a conference, Luddy said : "I wake up every morning, and all I want to do is write code."
Luddy was initially unsure whether he should work as a CEO. He preferred a more familiar position as a software developer. He always felt in which direction the market would develop, so the development of new products fascinated him more than managing the company.
Once, his partner from Sequoia Capital and a member of the Board of Directors of ServiceNow, Douglas Leone, took Luddy on a tour of several Silicon Valley companies that developed the software. On the tour, Fred met with the directors of the companies and talked with them about the specifics of the work. This helped him to understand that he did not have the skills of a CEO and did not want to acquire them.
In 2011, ServiceNow announced Frank Slootman, the former CEO of Data Domain, as head of the company. Fred took over as technical director. The change of leadership was a serious test for the company, and for Fred - a busy period of his life. The arguments of Frank and Fred will be remembered for a long timecompany employees. Service Bar Member of the Board of Directors Paul Barber claims that Luddy called him almost every day and said: “I can no longer. I want to leave the company. "
Fred was offered to sell the company many times : buyers were ready to shell out hundreds of millions of dollars for ServiceNow. Fred was ready to agree to every proposal, but Paul Barber tried to dissuade him every time with the words: "it will be a mistake worth 10 billion." The board of directors unanimously refused to sell the company, no matter how profitable the proposal. ServiceNow was too good an investment to sell.
In the end, Luddy agreed to relinquish the post to the Slutman. ServiceNow was at a growing stage, and Frank Slutman was able to build work in large organizations. Over the 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 developers in ITSM with the highest growth rates in two years.
2012-2017: Billionth Corporation
During these five years, the company conducted a very successful IPO, significantly expanded both geographically and in terms of staff. Strengthened in the ranking of the fastest growing technology companies. ServiceNow's revenue growth for five years from 2009 to 2014 exceeded 2000%. In 2015, annual profits finally exceeded $ 1 billion.
In 2016, ServiceNow was already responsible for servicing more than 30% of the Global 2000 companies. At that time, the anniversary Knowledge16 conference was held.
In February 2017, ServiceNow announced the appointment of John Donahoe, former president of eBay, as head of the company. After that, ServiceNow shares temporarily fell 4.2%.
Now management is aiming to achieve an annual turnover of $ 4 billion by 2020. The company's goal is to help customers benefit from their products throughout their entire life cycle. John Donahoe placed customer needs above everything else in the company’s corporate culture. Therefore, the client and the benefits that he receives from the business with the help of ServiceNow are most concerned about the management.
Providing ITSM solutions to customers is still the main goal of ServiceNow, and machine learning and other tools automate routine tasks. This allows you to devote more time to business development. Because the work does not have to be complicated .
PS A few more materials on the topic from the blog "IT Guilds":