A leading U.S.-based infrastructure firm specializing in enterprise IT solutions faced critical operational challenges from fragmented systems, limited visibility, and manual processes that compromised service delivery. Partnering with Diacto, the organization implemented ServiceNow IT Operations Management (ITOM) to establish centralized visibility, automate processes, and align IT with business objectives.
The transformation encompassed ServiceNow Discovery, CMDB enhancement, Event Management, and CyberArk integration. Results included discovery of over 1,500 Configuration Items across Windows, Linux, VMware, and network infrastructure; real-time CMDB accuracy; and a 25-30% reduction in Mean Time to Resolution. The firm gained proactive incident management capabilities, enhanced governance, and a foundation for future automation.
The client is an established U.S. IT services provider specializing in enterprise infrastructure and managed services across multiple industries. Their technology landscape included extensive Windows and Linux servers, VMware virtualization, and SNMP-enabled network devices requiring continuous monitoring and management.
Prior to ITOM implementation, operations relied on disparate tools and manual processes. Multiple teams operated independently with limited coordination, maintaining separate documentation and monitoring approaches. This fragmented structure created information silos and hindered comprehensive visibility across the infrastructure estate.
For an organization built on delivering IT services to enterprise clients, infrastructure reliability directly impacts competitive positioning and revenue. The firm recognized that modernizing IT operations management was essential for maintaining market leadership and enabling digital transformation for their clients.
Fragmented Operations: IT operations suffered from significant fragmentation across teams, tools, and processes. Server, network, application, and security teams operated independently with separate monitoring tools and documentation standards.
Absence of Centralized Visibility: No single system provided comprehensive insight into infrastructure configuration, health, or relationships. The existing CMDB offered only partial, outdated views.
Manual Monitoring and Incident Management: Infrastructure monitoring relied heavily on manual processes and reactive approaches. Teams spent significant time performing routine checks, manually correlating events.
IT-Business Alignment Gaps: Fragmented operations made aligning IT with business objectives extremely difficult. Without visibility into service dependencies, IT leaders struggled to demonstrate value. SLAs were challenging to monitor, creating a disconnect between IT capabilities and business expectations.
Compliance Challenges: Scattered systems and inconsistent documentation created significant compliance and reporting issues. Audit requirements required substantial manual effort to gather accurate information about configurations, change histories.
Centralized Visibility: Establish comprehensive visibility across the entire infrastructure landscape, creating a single source of truth for all configuration items, attributes, and relationships with real-time updates.
Process Automation: Replace manual monitoring and incident management with automated workflows for faster detection, intelligent event correlation, and automated remediation where appropriate.
Service Reliability: Reduce unplanned downtime and improve availability through proactive monitoring, automated incident detection, and faster resolution. Target included 25% MTTR reduction and decreased service-impacting incidents.
IT-Business Alignment: Bridge the gap between IT operations and business objectives by providing visibility into how infrastructure supports business services, enabling IT leaders to demonstrate operational value.
Governance Foundation: Create reliable, auditable configuration records with automated change tracking and comprehensive reporting for demonstrating proper controls to auditors and regulators.
ServiceNow ITOM provides comprehensive visibility and control across modern IT environments, integrating automated discovery, service mapping, event management, and orchestration into a unified platform.
Discovery and Service Mapping: ServiceNow Discovery formed the solution cornerstone, automatically identifying infrastructure components across Windows servers, Linux systems, VMware environments, and SNMP-enabled network devices. Custom discovery patterns were developed for the firm’s specific components. Service Mapping visualized relationships between infrastructure and business services, enabling impact assessment.
Event Management: Consolidated events and alerts from multiple monitoring sources into a unified console with intelligent event processing that filters noise, identifies patterns, and automatically generates incidents. Diacto conducted comprehensive workshops on Event Management capabilities.
Orchestration and Automation: Orchestration framework was configured to support future automation expansion, enabling gradual automation of routine tasks progressing to complex scenarios.
Enhanced CMDB: The Configuration Management Database served as the central repository with custom class additions and sophisticated asset-class mapping logic tailored to the firm’s infrastructure, ensuring accurate representation while maintaining data quality.
CyberArk Integration: Integration ensured discovery and management activities adhered to privileged access management requirements, enabling automated credential retrieval while maintaining security controls.
Assessment Phase: Comprehensive assessment included stakeholder interviews, current state analysis documenting existing tools and processes, infrastructure component identification, and CMDB quality evaluation. Workshops with leadership established clear success criteria and organizational support.
Solution Design: Diacto designed tailored ITOM architecture specifying discovery patterns, CMDB structures, and integration approaches. The design incorporated modularity and scalability principles, ensuring expansion capability while integrating security requirements throughout.
System Integration: Seamless integration connected monitoring tools to Event Management, established CyberArk credential management integration, and configured data synchronization with existing asset management systems. ServiceNow served as the central visibility and orchestration layer.
Phased Deployment: Phase One established Discovery capabilities and enhanced CMDB. Phase Two expanded to Event Management and monitoring tool integration. Phase Three focused on ACC and EM workshops plus CyberArk integration completion. Each phase included defined milestones and success criteria.
Change Management: Comprehensive program included role-based training, communication campaigns, and team champions promoting adoption. Hands-on workshops provided practical experience, while regular feedback sessions addressed adoption challenges. Leadership engagement reinforced transformation importance.
Centralized Visibility: Successfully discovered and cataloged over 1,500 Configuration Items including Windows servers, Linux systems, VMware infrastructure, and network devices. The enhanced CMDB provided accurate, real-time information accessible through intuitive dashboards. Service mapping enabled visual representation of service dependencies.
Reduced MTTR: Achieved 25-30% reduction in Mean Time to Resolution through faster incident identification, accurate impact assessment, and streamlined resolution processes enabled by comprehensive visibility.
Operational Efficiency: Automated discovery eliminated manual inventory maintenance. Consolidated event management reduced alert noise and improved prioritization. Teams collaborated more effectively using shared platforms and standardized processes.
Proactive Management: Shifted from reactive firefighting to proactive operations. Teams identified potential issues before service impact, implemented preventive measures, and maintained higher availability levels.
Enhanced Governance: Accurate, auditable CMDB provided reliable foundation for compliance activities. Automated change tracking and comprehensive reporting demonstrated proper controls to auditors, reducing compliance risk and streamlining audit processes.
Improved Decision-Making: Real-time, accurate data enabled informed decisions about capacity planning, change management, and risk mitigation. Leadership gained confidence in operational metrics and infrastructure insights.
Change Resistance: Some team members resisted new processes and tools, preferring familiar manual approaches. Mitigation included engaging team champions, demonstrating quick wins, and providing extensive hands-on training showing how ITOM simplified their work.
CMDB Data Quality: Initial discovery revealed significant data quality issues with outdated records, duplicate entries, and missing relationships. Resolution required data cleansing efforts, establishing data governance policies.
Legacy System Integration: Integrating older monitoring tools and systems lacking modern APIs presented technical challenges. Solutions included developing custom integration scripts, leveraging middleware where necessary.
Scope Management: Stakeholders requested additional features and coverage areas during implementation. Mitigation maintained focus on core objectives while documenting enhancement requests for post-implementation phases, ensuring foundational capabilities were solidly established.
Lessons Learned: Extensive stakeholder engagement early prevents resistance. Invest time in discovery pattern tuning for accuracy. Prioritize data quality from the beginning. Plan for integration complexity with legacy systems. Maintain realistic scope boundaries while capturing future enhancement requests.
Expanded Event Management: Implement advanced event correlation rules and AI-powered anomaly detection to further reduce alert noise and identify complex patterns indicating emerging issues before they impact services.
Orchestration Expansion: Develop automated remediation workflows for common incidents, eliminating manual intervention for routine issues. Expand orchestration to include automated provisioning, patching, and compliance remediation activities.
Predictive Analytics: Leverage ServiceNow’s AI and machine learning capabilities for predictive maintenance, identifying potential failures before they occur based on historical patterns and real-time telemetry data.
Service-Centric Operations: Enhance service mapping to include application dependencies and business transaction flows, enabling true service-centric operations where all activities are understood in business service context.
Broader Integration: Integrate ITOM with IT Service Management (ITSM), IT Asset Management (ITAM), and Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) modules for comprehensive ServiceNow ecosystem supporting all IT operations aspects.
Self-Service Capabilities: Develop self-service portals enabling end users to check service status, understand impact of ongoing incidents, and access automated resolution guidance for common issues.
The ServiceNow ITOM implementation transformed the firm’s operations from fragmented, manual processes to centralized, automated operations management. The journey from limited visibility and operational silos to comprehensive infrastructure insight and collaborative workflows delivered measurable business value including 25-30% MTTR reduction and discovery of over 1,500 Configuration Items.
Strategic benefits extended beyond metrics to include enhanced governance, improved decision-making capabilities, and a scalable foundation for future innovations. The implementation demonstrated that comprehensive visibility and automation are achievable even in complex, heterogeneous environments when approached systematically with proper planning and change management.
Invest time in thorough assessment and baseline understanding before implementation. Accurate current state analysis ensures the solution addresses real needs and provides metrics for measuring success.
Prioritize data quality from the beginning. CMDB accuracy underpins all ITOM value, making data governance and validation critical from day one.
Take a phased approach balancing quick wins with comprehensive coverage. Demonstrating value incrementally builds organizational support while managing implementation risk.
Change management is as important as technical implementation. User adoption determines whether the technology investment delivers lasting value or becomes shelfware.
Plan for integration complexity, especially with legacy systems. Integration challenges are inevitable but manageable with proper planning and realistic expectations.
The transformation achieved through Diacto’s ServiceNow ITOM implementation exemplifies how strategic technology deployment combined with organizational change management can fundamentally improve IT operations effectiveness, positioning organizations for continued innovation and operational excellence in an increasingly complex technology landscape.
