NASA win just latest victory for fast-growing ServiceNow

NASA just rolled out one of its first large-scale cloud projects by tapping ServiceNow to help support its NASA Shared Services Center.

Through the deal, ServiceNow delivered services to 40,000 civil servants and contractors as well as NASA's research and educational communities.

For some, the name ServiceNow might ring a bell—KPMG acquired the ServiceNow professional services practice from Triad Technology Partners earlier this year; however, as Steve Alfieris, vice president of U.S. Federal Government at ServiceNow said, Triad’s professional services practice was actually just based around the ServiceNow technology platform and therefore used the name.

That is not the only time a ServiceNow-related offering was picked up by companies who saw the value in the platform, Alfieris said, and in fact, there have been two acquisitions since then: Computer Sciences Corp.’s August acquisition of Fruition Partners and Accenture’s September acquisition of Cloud Sherpas.

As for the NASA Shared Services Center, NASA needed a company that could come in and help consolidate its systems as well as automate the services it provides.

“They adopted ServiceNow in order to develop a single source for their user community to access a portal for all the different services they provide across the NASA national shared service center employee and contractor base,” Alfieris said.

The services are manifold: IT, human resources, finance, grants, procurements and business support services. ServiceNow was able to automate 50 services within those areas, Alfieris said.

IT-wise, the company created a branded self-service portal to enable the employees to get IT support. On the human resources side, ServiceNow introduced an HR case management application that helps streamline its services as well as benefits and claims interactions.

Having been founded in 2004, this is not ServiceNow’s first rodeo.

One of the company’s earlier projects was supporting Oak Ridge National Laboratory. ServiceNow began working with Oak Ridge shortly after the laboratory suffered from a security breach.

“They realized they didn’t have visibility and insight into all the different components of their IT infrastructure, and that did not give them the posture that they needed to ensure they can secure the perimeter of their environment,” Alfieris said.

ServiceNow came in and did a “discovery” of the laboratory’s IT assets as well as non-IT assets connected to an IP address, and from there, did asset management. From there, Oak Ridge was able to actively manage changes within their deployed environment.

Another example is the Army Program Executive Office Aviation, which manages three separate helicopter fleets. “They just didn’t have the ability to create a lifecycle management process from a maintenance perspective for all of the helicopters fleets that they have,” Alfieris said.

ServiceNow went in and set up an asset management system to identify the assets associated with lifecycle management and maintenance of a helicopter frame, Alfieris said.

No matter what agency or organization the company works with, he added, ServiceNow tries to connect with them and figure out what needs to be done based on the pain points they might be having.

The company is seeing great adoption: “We pick up a new federal government customer on average every nine business days,” Alfieris said. “The really great thing about ServiceNow is the way we’re able to take our employees and apply them to a multitude of different business challenges and support services to bring the government up to date with 21st century technology.”

The company doesn't break out its revenue from government customers. According to its latest financial filings, the company's overall revenue will be near $1 billion in 2015, a 47 percent increase from the year before.

Going forward, ServiceNow is particularly looking at how to help customers address dynamics associated with shrinking budgets and how they manage their resources. In addition to that, Alfieris said, the company will continue to work on innovating capabilities within the ServiceNow platform.