Revolutionizing change management with ServiceNow and Virima
Table of Contents
- A deeper dive into ServiceNow change management
- How Virima bolsters ServiceNow’s performance
- Manage changes better with ServiceNow and Virima
In the rapidly evolving digital age, effective IT change management is integral to maintaining an organization’s smooth operation and competitive edge. The ServiceNow Change Management module stands as a testament to the efficiency and agility required in modern IT environments.
By automating and streamlining change processes, ServiceNow facilitates a faster, more controlled way to implement IT changes, minimizing risks and disruptions. However, the real game-changer in refining this efficiency is the symbiotic alliance with Virima — a powerhouse in enhancing ServiceNow’s capabilities with its discovery and service mapping prowess.
Let’s embark on a journey to unravel how this partnership simplifies change management in ServiceNow and propels IT operations to new heights.
A deeper dive into ServiceNow change management
ServiceNow goes beyond mere process automation and brings integrated change management solutions that accelerate IT changes. Also, the ServiceNow Change Management module segregates low-risk changes from the more complex, providing faster and more efficient deployments. This idea of a streamlined approach has transformed the traditional change management landscape, revolutionizing IT services.
Integrated change management solutions
ServiceNow expands the scope of change management by integrating solutions that expedite IT changes, setting apart low-risk changes from complex ones. This feature accelerates deployments and makes the change management process lean and efficient.
Orchestration of change tasks
By eliminating manual processes, ServiceNow ensures smooth transitions between change tasks, reducing bottlenecks and improving predictability and control.
Automated workflows
These workflows help in planning, executing, and monitoring changes, controlling every phase of the lifecycle, and ensuring a congestion-free progression.
Impact analyses and risk ranking
ServiceNow conducts thorough impact analysis, assesses risks, and implements a closed-loop change process, minimizing the need for back-outs and anticipating service collisions.
Closed-loop process for implementation
Utilizing a closed-loop system, the ServiceNow change management module effectively reduces failed changes and helps in creating a clear schedule for the change implementation.
Unified backlog management
All change requests are managed in a single backlog, allowing for more organized implementation and efficient goal achievement.
Dynamic dashboards and reports
With comprehensive dashboards and reporting tools, ServiceNow provides visibility into the change management process, enabling informed decisions and increased process velocity.
Real-time data and configuration plan
The whole system’s efficiency is contingent upon real-time data accuracy and a well-maintained configuration plan, a gap filled by the integration with Virima.
However, the efficiency of all these services heavily depends on the accuracy of real-time data and the configuration plan. This is where Virima steps in, extending ServiceNow’s capabilities.
How Virima bolsters ServiceNow’s performance
Virima caters to the diverse IT needs of organizations. Focus on the powerful discovery and service mapping capabilities Virima provides and how it integrates with ServiceNow to deliver ITSM benefits.
Discover and prosper with Virima
A noteworthy feature of Virima is its potent discovery capability. Virima Discovery helps to automatically keep configuration data up-to-date and provides an accurate single source of truth. This feature is essential because outdated or incomplete data can lead to errors, misunderstandings, and mismanagement.
The Virima Discovery module offers extensive features targeted at enhancing IT asset and configuration management to a whole new level. This platform essentially assists organizations by providing an accurate and dynamically updated overview of their IT environments.
IT asset discovery
Virima excels in asset discovery, featuring agentless IP-based scanning alongside an optional agent for Windows. With 100+ probes and integration with major cloud providers like AWS and Azure, Virima automatically detects physical and virtual assets while analyzing various hardware configurations and installed software across many operating systems like Windows, Linux, Unix, and Mac.
How Virima IT discovery works
Virima Discovery works on an agentless as well as agent-based model, where the agentless model identifies all network-connected devices and conducts deep analysis of hardware and software configurations. Moreover, Virima also offers an agent for assets running desktop and server versions of Windows that don’t usually connect to the network or require persistent configuration monitoring.
Improved CMDB population
Virima Discovery automatically detects and identifies hardware, software, configurations, and interdependencies, which leads to a richer and more accurate ServiceNow CMDB. This provides a better foundation for decision-making and change management processes.
Greater inventory visibility
With Virima Discovery, ServiceNow can gain improved visibility into the organization’s IT assets. This includes comprehensive information about hardware, software, and network devices, enabling more efficient change management and targeted troubleshooting efforts.
Enhanced change management
By integrating Virima Discovery with ServiceNow Change Management module, organizations can better assess the potential risks and impacts associated with proposed changes. This helps reduce downtime and minimize the risk of failed changes.
Automatic updates
Virima Discovery keeps the CMDB up-to-date by regularly scanning the IT environment and updating the CMDB with any changes. This ensures ServiceNow users can rely on an accurate and current picture of their IT infrastructure for change management decisions.
Dependency mapping
Virima Discovery’s ability to identify and map dependencies between IT components improves ServiceNow’s capacity to manage complex change processes. Dependencies can be visualized, leading to more thorough planning and mitigation against unforeseen issues during change implementation.
Virima service mapping
Next in line is Virima’s service mapping. It delivers automatic mapping for an array of elements, such as compute network storage relationships, host-to-host communications, application dependency mapping, and service topology. This comprehensive view helps IT teams to instantly identify and rectify causes of service disruptions.
Changes in the environment can be planned and executed more effectively as the application dependency mapping tool can identify what is impacted during change windows or if something went wrong due to a change.
Automated visual mapping
Utilizing machine learning techniques, Virima Discovery identifies relationships and dependencies within the IT infrastructure, automatically generating visual maps that are further enriched with organizational insight.
Establishing dependencies
Virima Service Mapping identifies relationships and dependencies between IT business services. As you carry out change impact assessments in ServiceNow Change Management, Virima Service Mapping enables a better understanding of the potential impacts that IT infrastructure changes could have.
Service versatility
Capable of mapping various types of services, including on-premises, cloud-based, and hybrid, while managing major applications and abstract business services.
Informing root cause analysis
Virima Service Mapping assists in quickly determining the root causes of service interruptions. It also identifies what changed in the first place when a service interruption occurs.
Change management assistance
Use Virima to understand impacts during changes, coordinate with stakeholders, and assess recent changes for any service disruptions.
ViVID overlays
Virima Visual Impact Display (ViVID) offers overlay views of ITSM records, vulnerabilities, and service dependencies. It enables understanding the potential risk of making a change and helps identify the necessary stakeholders, thus avoiding change collisions or expediting changes to take advantage of planned downtime.
Refining CMDB (Configuration Management Database) quality
It enhances the usefulness of the CMDB, transforming it from just a data repository to a crucial resource for stakeholders by providing a precise map of service relationships. Virima Service Mapping facilitates the visualization of complex CMDB relationships. This includes infrastructure and network map views, DevOps-style service topology views, and communication views that show the flow and port numbers of host-to-host interactions.
Tight Integration with monitoring and ITSM tools
Virima Service Mapping combines information from system monitoring tools with ITSM integration. This synthesis provides early warnings about potential service availability impacts. Alongside, it displays which assets have open incidents or recently completed changes to quickly identify root causes of service disruptions.
Seamless IT integrations
Virima integrates with system monitoring and ITSM platforms to provide real-time alerts and incident visibility for proactive service management.
Together, these features help manage changes more effectively, reducing both the risk and impact of disruptions, providing a more stable environment, and boosting productivity.
An exciting collaboration: Virima and ServiceNow
Virima’s strength is its capacity to generate accurate data about the IT environment, adding value to the ServiceNow Change Management process. The integration of both platforms enables Discovery, Service Mapping and ViVID to effectively manage changes.
Upon integration, the discovery and service mapping data from Virima will be transferred to the ServiceNow CMDB. The updated, consistent, and reliable CMDB records enhance the proficiency of the ServiceNow Change Management module. It helps to better anticipate the impact, reduce potential business risks, and ease collaboration before deploying changes throughout the system.
More accurate data supports efficient management of changes, leading to a decrease in Mean Time To Repair (MTTR), potential risk identification — change impact analysis — and ultimately delivers a more resilient IT environment.
Manage changes better with ServiceNow and Virima
In a nutshell, when ServiceNow Change Management and Virima come together, they provide a winning combination. Virima adds pace to the change process, making it more manageable, efficient, and reliable. The takeaway is simple: add ServiceNow and Virima into your IT journey; simplify the route to effective change management, and achieve tremendous business outcomes.
And thus, your ITSM journey transforms from a precarious balancing act to a smooth, streamlined process. Whether you’re looking to enhance your change management, knowledge management, or problem management, ServiceNow and Virima promise undisputed improvements.
Transition from the manual and error-prone change management processes of yesteryears to quick, efficient, and data-backed decisions of tomorrow. Embrace the change, and drive efficiency!
