ServiceNow Tokyo and ITAM

The ServiceNow Software Asset Management (or SAM Pro for short) module systematically tracks, assesses, and manages software licenses, compliance, and optimization. It has received significant attention and investment from ServiceNow over the past few years and has been enhanced and updated in the Tokyo release.

In this article we bring highlights of the ITAM module for the launch in Tokyo

Elevate the user experience using the renewal workflow to renew your software contracts, the asset management executive dashboard to gain visibility into IT asset management key performance indicators (KPIs), and the success portal to track progress toward your software asset management goals.
Simplify the integration of your SaaS applications through the SaaS Playbook and optimize your SaaS spend by managing licenses for Workday applications.
Track and optimize your perpetual software licenses using unlimited licensing support and publisher-based enhancements for IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft.
Assess the costs of migrating your on-premises resources to public cloud platforms with the Cloud Insights and Cloud Migration Assessment apps.

Important: Software Asset Management SaaS License Management is available in the ServiceNow Store. For details, see the “Activation Information” section of these release notes.

Important information for upgrading Asset Management Software to Tokyo

For information about updating the Software Asset Management Foundation (com.snc.sams) plug-in, see Revert Software Asset Management customizations .

New in Tokyo launch

Simulate the cost of migrating on-premises resources to the cloud

Get an estimate before migrating to Microsoft Azure or AWS by simulating the cost of migrating your on-premises resources to the cloud. You also get recommendations on hardware and software end-of-life, as well as resource utilization. The recommendation also differentiates the cost of various cloud providers with or without Bring Your Own License cost. Once you have decided on a cloud provider, you can create a change request to perform the migration.

Track software asset management performance through the success portal

Create success goals and activities to assess the performance of the Software Asset Management application in your environment. You can use the Success Portal dashboard to view your open and completed goals and activities, as well as your projected and actual savings.

Perform health check scans on software configurations with the Software Asset Management module

Run health check scans on your ServiceNow instance to determine the health of your software asset management configurations. If configuration errors are detected, you will receive suggestions for correcting them. You can use the health check dashboard to view the health check results and better understand your configurations.

Gain visibility into critical IT asset management KPIs using the Asset Management Executive dashboard

Enable your organization's executives to gain actionable insights into IT asset management KPIs. Your executives can use the Asset Management Executive dashboard to view KPIs such as total spend, potential savings, and contract expiration. You can access the Asset Management Executive dashboard if the Software Asset Management application or the Hardware Asset Management application is installed on your ServiceNow instance.

Create entitlements with unlimited allocations and unlimited rights

Create entitlements for Per User, Per Device, and User Subscription metrics that support unlimited allocations and unlimited rights to license any number of software installations without incurring an upgrade cost.

Enable advanced reporting by associating software installations with software templates

Automatically update normalized discovery templates with a corresponding software template reference. Associating software installations, discovery templates, and software templates enables you to use advanced reporting for both licensable and non-licensable products.

Use host affinity rules in Microsoft Windows Server licensing on an on-premises cluster

Use host affinity rules configured for Windows Server Standard when calculating license consumption. You can optimize and significantly reduce the number of licenses required, resulting in cost savings for your organization.

Integrate Salesforce CRM App via Playbook

Use the SaaS Playbook to guide you through the entire Salesforce CRM application integration process. The Playbook helps you verify each action and provides context throughout each step of the integration process. You can also navigate to full documentation through the Playbook.

Integrate with out-of-the-box Workday applications

Use the ServiceNow SaaS License Management application to integrate with Workday applications such as Workday Human Capital Management and Workday Financial Management introduced in Software Asset Management – SaaS License Management version 10.0.2.

Renew software contracts through the contract renewal workflow

Use the Contract Renewal workflow to notify contract owners when a contract is about to expire or has already expired and allow them to renew or expire the contract record. This workflow maintains contract history while updating software licenses, terms, and conditions for a new contract.

Manage IBM user-based licenses

Use the Software Asset Management for IBM publisher package to manage the following user-based licenses for your IBM products:

Authorized user
Authorized User Value Unit (AUVU)
External User Value Unit (XUVU)
Employee User Value Unit (EUVU)

Create software entitlements and models so you can measure compliance with these licenses and better optimize your IBM licensing costs.

Optimize licensing on Microsoft SQL Server clusters based on total cost

Optimize licensing across your Microsoft SQL Server clusters by assigning licenses to the physical hosts and virtual machines (VMs) within each cluster based on total cost. With cost-based licensing, you can license a combination of physical hosts and VMs within each Microsoft SQL Server cluster, allowing you to automatically implement the most cost-effective licensing solution for each cluster. Cost-based licensing also takes into account any Microsoft Software Assurance (SA) benefits available for your Microsoft SQL Server software.

Review infrastructure details for physical hosts and virtual machines (VMs) running Microsoft Windows Server or Microsoft SQL Server in hybrid environments

Use the Windows and SQL Server Infrastructure report to view and analyze infrastructure details for physical hosts and VMs running Microsoft Windows Server or Microsoft SQL Server in on-premises and public cloud environments. With this report, you can view consolidated infrastructure details for these hosts and VMs without having to locate and select each resource individually in the License Usage view (Software Asset Workspace) or License Workbench (classic Software Asset Management application).

Discover and report on Oracle Fusion Middleware products using Oracle-verified Discovery and Software Asset Management applications

Save time discovering and reporting data for your Oracle Fusion Middleware products using Oracle-verified Discovery and Software Asset Management applications. With ServiceNow’s verification and enrollment in the Oracle Third-Party Tool Vendor (3PTV) program, both applications are verified to collect and report installation and usage data for your Oracle products without the need for any Oracle measurement tools.

What's changed in this version

SaaS License Management Store Application Name

In the ServiceNow Store, the name of the ServiceNow® SaaS License Management application has been changed from Software Asset Management – SaaS License Management Integrations to Software Asset Management – SaaS License Management.

Option to create direct integration and SSO profiles in SaaS License Management

If you are using Software Asset Workspace, the option to create direct integration and SSO profiles in the main UI is disabled. You can create integration profiles from the License Operations view in Software Asset Workspace.

Activation information

Software Asset Management is available by activating the Software Asset Management Professional (com.snc.samp) plugin. For details, see Request Software Asset Management .

Software Asset Workspace is available by activating the Software Asset Workspace plugin (com.sn_sam_workspace). Once this plugin is activated, you cannot revert to the classic Software Asset Management application. For details, see Request Software Asset Management .

To enable Next Experience , make sure the glide.ui.polaris.experience system property on your instance is set to true.

Install Software Asset Management SaaS License Management by ordering it from the ServiceNow Store. Visit the ServiceNow website ServiceNow Store to see all available apps and for information on how to submit requests to the Store. For cumulative release notes information for all released apps, see the version history release notes ServiceNow Store .

Install Data Collection for Oracle Global Licensing and Advisory Services by ordering it from the ServiceNow Store. Visit the website of ServiceNow Store to see all available apps and for information on how to submit requests to the Store. For cumulative release notes information for all released apps, see the version history release notes ServiceNow Store .

Related ServiceNow applications and resources

Hardware Asset Management

The ServiceNow® Hardware Asset Management product is a licensable application that provides advanced workflow, automation, and mobile capabilities to track and manage your asset environment.

Enterprise Asset Management

The ServiceNow® Enterprise Asset Management product is a licensable application that manages the entire lifecycle of your connected and non-connected enterprise assets. This product provides a comprehensive, end-to-end solution for maintaining enterprise assets, minimizing costly downtime and maximizing the usability of enterprise assets.

Cloud Insights

The ServiceNow® Cloud Insights product is a licensable application that enables you to analyze all the costs associated with your cloud assets. You can use this information to optimize operations and reduce your cloud spend.

Contract management

The ServiceNow® Contract Management application allows you to track and manage your contracts.

The best new features in the ServiceNow Tokyo release

App Engine Studio

Model Sharing and Management Center

Tokyo brings several improvements to the App Engine Studio . This helps companies make it much easier for citizen developers to build their own apps, while also giving them more insight into the app development pipeline.

Main benefits

The new feature of Model sharing Allows administrators to define which user groups can use specific templates. This way, users only have access to the templates that are relevant to them.

Servicenow Tokyo release: App Engine Management Center — App Engine Management Center

Previously, companies lacked insight into the applications they were building and the status of their development. App Engine Management Center solves this by presenting the necessary information about application development in an intuitive dashboard. This helps reduce potential application risk and identify bottlenecks, while also enabling the configuration of multiple deployment process pipelines.

Customer Service Management (CSM)

Task intelligence

AI takes another leap forward in CSM with the introduction of Task Intelligence. Due to the combination and enhancement of previous capabilities with new abilities, Task Intelligence is a force to be reckoned with.

Main benefits

The enhanced Task Intelligence AI toolset significantly accelerates information gathering, categorization, prioritization, routing, and case resolution. It helps agents prioritize cases by identifying the customer sentiment behind a case.

Servicenow Tokyo Release CSM Document Intelligence — CSM – Document Intelligence

Document Intelligence reduces manually filled fields by analyzing the text and attachment content. Combined with automatic language detection, Document Intelligence significantly improves and accelerates automatic case routing.

HR Service Delivery (HRSD)

Ad Hoc Approvals and Manager Hub

HRSD is receiving two time-saving updates that add more flexibility to the module. Ad hoc approvals allow HR agents to add approvals to cases that are part of an HR service, while the new Manager Hub provides leaders with a tool to easily manage and monitor their teams.

Main benefits

Ad hoc approvals provide HR agents with the necessary flexibility in resolving HR cases and allow them to handle exceptional cases.

Manager Hub fills a gap in the HRSD module; previously, it was only available for employees, agents, and HR admins. Now, managers get a multi-faceted tool that provides a complete overview of their team’s journeys, events, and learnings. Plus, they have all the resources they need to manage their employees at their fingertips, allowing them to focus on the work that matters most.

Application Portfolio Management (APM)

Technology Reference Model (TRM)

APM's new Technology Reference Model (TRM) enables enterprise architects to define and manage software production standards and manage unapproved organizational software.

Main benefits

TRM enables users to define and track software standards for business applications. It helps you understand which applications have technical debt and are not compliant with standards, reducing software-related security risks.

Rastreamento dos padrões de software com TRM — TRM – Technology reference Model Management

Solution owners can now request software – via new standard record producers – to be part of TRM, while enterprise architects can review and approve business application status and technical debt.

Overall, the big benefit of TRM is that it provides an improved means of communication between solution owners and enterprise architects.

IT Operations Management (ITOM)

ITOM Governance

The new ITOM Governance application provides workflows that assess your organization’s cloud readiness and enforce cloud governance guidelines.

Main benefits

ITOM Governance enables you to plan, organize, and control the migration of IT resources and workloads to the cloud. This is especially valuable for tag governance, as it is now much easier to remediate missing and incorrect cloud resource tags.

Planejamento com ITOM Governance — ITOM Governance

At the governance level, configuration policy violations are now visible and correctable, while custom workflows can be used to interact with your organization's cloud resources.

Integrated Risk Management (IRM)

DevOps and Policy and Compliance Integration

Tokyo brings with it a new automatic integration of the DevOps module with the Policy and Compliance application. Since DevOps activities often need to adhere to internal and external compliance requirements, this revolutionary feature gives policy and compliance teams the oversight they need.

Visão da Gestão Integrada de Riscos — Integrated Risk Management (IRM)

Main benefits

All DevOps processes within ServiceNow are now automatically monitored. If a development activity or code is executed in a non-compliant manner as defined in internal or external policies, the system automatically creates an issue and links it to the appropriate policy.

This automatic monitoring will save both teams a lot of time and effort. Compliance teams constantly monitor development activities and can take immediate action when something goes wrong. Compliance teams, in turn, receive an immediate warning that they are working in a non-compliant manner, allowing for quick course correction.

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Translated by 4Matt Technology, from the original ServiceNow: Software Asset Management release notes and Plat4mation: The best new features from the ServiceNow Tokyo release.