Over the past several months, the world has changed as we know it. The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the way many companies do business, with more virtual events, video calls, and curbside pickups than ever before. Although challenging at times—we miss attending live events and other social activities—this pandemic has forced many companies to think outside of the box. The traditional ways of doing business were no longer feasible or even legal in some cases.

When I listen to our telecommunications customers describe their biggest frustrations, a consistent theme is the need to seamlessly connect across silos, systems, and processes. Work should be intuitive.

It is general knowledge that most businesses are used to managing their IT assets through only a spreadsheet and a list of invoices. The critical problem with this system is that it is far too simple a mechanism to be able to maintain the asset inventory for hundreds or thousands of hardware devices and software licenses, let alone handle the different aspects of the IT asset life cycle like.

Organizations have doubled down on remote working, digital transformation, and cloud adoption to cope with the sudden onset of a global pandemic. An S&P Global survey in March 2020 found that 41% of enterprises were already “experiencing increased strain on internal IT resources” due to the coronavirus outbreak.

The first five weeks of Knowledge 2020 covered a succession of core themes—Accelerate, Build, Succeed, Connect, and Dream. The theme of the sixth and final week of this epic virtual experience is an appropriate one: Act. As in, put all this Knowledge know-how to work with our employees, our customers, and in our jobs. Week 6 covered this ground in style.

ServiceNow Safe Workplace apps make returning to the workplace work for everyone As we continue to navigate the complexities of COVID-19, top of mind for enterprise leaders is how to safely re-open and return employees to the workplace. Getting here has been no small feat, and returning to our workplaces will not be, either.

Are you a remote worker, office worker, or both right now? What does your back-to-the-office look like? Will you still be a remote worker in July or September or January of 2021? If you have lost track of time, January 2021 is only six months away. There are many unknowns and in-betweens right now. Lots of questions, not many answers. How should your business prepare? The best way out is through as the saying goes—so, let's go through it.

Nathan Foreman, our solutions superstar here at Cookdown, shares his knowledge on how to successfully blend data sources to create a beautifully populated CMDB, as well as tips on how to customise and maintain data quality. Nathan talked us through the process of using ServiceNow’s out of the box Identification and Reconciliation Engine (IRE) to ensure a smooth integration of a multi-source CMDB.

We can’t stress enough on the importance of event correlation in network monitoring. Our customers love correlation! For the love of event correlation we’ve published a blog on why modern organizations rely on event correlation. This is the second blog from the correlation series. You might want to read our previous blog before reading this one.