Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Depending on the business, there’s a myriad of IT assets to keep track of and doing it manually can be taxing. An IT asset management system allows IT pros to monitor all the hardware and software introduced into the business and when those assets exit. When a service desk has details on each IT asset, where it resides, and its owner, IT pros can provide continuity of service and better manage service costs. IT assets can be physical, digital, software, and in the cloud.

Welcome back once again! This is the third and final part of this series on using the Elastic Stack with ServiceNow for incident management. In the first blog, we introduced the project and set up ServiceNow so changes to an incident are automatically pushed back to Elasticsearch. In the second blog, we implemented the logic to glue ServiceNow and Elasticsearch together through alerts and transforms as well as some general Elasticsearch configuration.

Managing IT projects often gets difficult and complex. Adhering to timeline and quality is a challenge while executing any large project. IT teams run projects of various types and sizes, including periodic audits, complex app development, and change rollouts. The projects involve varying degrees of complexity and require flexibility in the process so they can be delivered on time.

It’s no secret that IT organizations are facing increasingly complex challenges. Device proliferation, demands to access data from anywhere, ensuring security both on and off campus—and this year, a major shift to remote work—have IT departments struggling to stay above water.

Vulnerability remediation is still an ongoing struggle for organizations. A simple mistake could cause no issues, or it could set off a wide-scale, devastating, corporate breach. Why is this? There are many reasons. Security and Ops talk past one another. No one wants to be the one that broke something. Speed is hindered by ineffective testing.

Across the technology and IT infrastructure domain, log files are recognized as often time-stamped files that can virtually record all critical information about events occurring within the purview of your IT network, OS, or other software applications. Some log files are humanly interpretable, while others are largely meant for machines to consume.

Recently, I’ve had many discussions with supply chain operations managers about the status of their barcode printers. I observed that there is a big gap between how most people want their printer management to be and how it actually is—it all comes down to perception vs. reality. I heard about challenges such as entire printer systems breaking down during peak times, operations workforces ordering duplicate or unnecessary supplies, and admins not knowing what’s in their inventory.

At ServiceNow, we define analytics as using data to make better, faster decisions to run the company. We use analytics to not only spotlight every corner of our operations, but we also to spark growth, by giving our employees data-driven decision-making capabilities. That means they can take action every single day by using data and digital workflows. In order to drive data-driven decisions, we created a user-centric analytics program based on five major elements, which are listed below. 1.

Automation has evolved from being a management consultant’s go-to-advice to being a central part of every organization’s strategic plan. The biggest misconception about automation is that it is exercised in areas where the company wants to reduce human capital. Contradictorily, automation standardizes mundane processes and frees employees to focus on more value-producing activities that require their unique skills and knowledge.