You depend on the ServiceNow platform to run your business. ServiceNow automates some of your most important business processes, helping you to increase efficiency, lower costs, and deliver great user experiences. That’s why it’s so critical to keep your ServiceNow instances healthy. By keeping the platform running at peak performance, you deliver better services, improve user experiences, and lower cost of ownership.

ServiceNow Impact gives you three key capabilities to keep your platform healthy. We call these the three pillars of Impact platform health. In this three-blog series, we examine these three pillars and explain how they work together to help you prevent, identify, and correct platform health and performance issues.

What are the three pillars?

The first is Instance Observer. This is a purpose-build observability and monitoring tool that’s included with ServiceNow Impact. It gives you a single pane of glass with real-time information about the performance and health of all of your ServiceNow instances, and it also gives you historical insights that let you proactively identify trends and anomalies.

The second is the Health Assessment Accelerator. This is a fixed-scope service offering that’s included with your ServiceNow Impact subscription. ServiceNow experts carry out a technical analysis of one of your ServiceNow instances to identify any key health issues, including manageability, performance, security, upgradability problems, and user experience. You get a comprehensive list of health and performance findings, along with prescriptive recommendations on how to correct these issues.

The third is Experts on Demand. ServiceNow experts are there to help you maintain and improve the health of your platform throughout its entire lifecycle. Your Impact Squad is the anchor for this, but it also includes Impact Accelerators, support, and on-demand training.

How do the three pillars work together to deliver platform health?

The best way to explain this is with an analogy—your car. How do you keep your car running reliably? Just like the three pillars, there are three parts to this:

• Your dashboard. Your dashboard has lots of indicators that light up there’s a problem. Some of these are real-time—like your “engine temperature” light—and tell you that there’s a problem you need to take care of right away. Others indicates a potential problem that you need to get checked out. For instance, if the “check engine” warning light comes on, it’s probably okay to keep driving for a while, but you need to get your car in for service soon. Just like your dashboard, Instance Observer gives you real-time problem indicators as well as warnings that show you it’s time to get a checkup.
• Diagnostic tools. When your dashboard shows you there’s a problem, you take it into your dealer. They’ll plug automated diagnostic tools into your car to figure out what’s wrong, running a series of tests to pinpoint what’s actually causing the issue. And, because your dealer knows your make and model of car, they understand what the diagnostic tool results mean and how to fix the issue. That’s just like the Health Assessment accelerator. It plugs into your ServiceNow instance using automated scanning tools, and ServiceNow experts then analyze these results to figure out what’s broken and how to fix it.
• Your mechanic. Of course, your dealer does more than just fix your car when a warning light comes on. They’ve got expert mechanics who can do regular maintenance, give your car a tune-up, change the transmission fluid, and so on. This is an incredibly important part of keeping your car running smoothly and avoiding problems. In fact, when you bought your car, you got a manual with the manufacturer’s recommended service schedule. Just like your mechanic, ServiceNow Experts on Demand help you maintain your ServiceNow instances, keeping them operating at peak performance and avoiding problems down the road.

In the second blog in this series, we explain how you can use these pillars to prevent health issues.