ServiceNow Discovery Reviews

My role right now in present projects is to deploy ServiceNow Discovery both on AWS cloud an on-premises. ServiceNow Discovery is populated directly into ServiceNow CMDB, so its use cases include managing CMDB identification and reconciliation, as well as creating dashboard reports and other types of reports.

In the past, I found troubleshooting difficult in ServiceNow Discovery because I didn't have much exposure to the platform during that time, but then I explored some troubleshooting features, and I found that it wasn't that tough, so this is one of the qualities I like about ServiceNow Discovery.

I also like that log reading in ServiceNow Discovery is much better than other tools.

Another valuable feature of the tool is that you don't need to install many tools to deploy ITSM. You only need to subscribe to the modules to deploy the proper ITSM in your organization.

What needs improvement in ServiceNow Discovery is the reporting UI because I didn't find it as friendly compared to other tools. Other tools have better reporting UI than what's currently in ServiceNow Discovery.

What I'd like to see in the next release of ServiceNow Discovery is more user-friendly out-of-the-box reporting that would be helpful for non-technical users. Some users such as managers would want to just do a few clicks to access the reports and shouldn't be required to do search queries, but right now, reporting in the tool isn't very user-friendly.

I've been learning ServiceNow Discovery since 2015, and I started working on it for the last two years only. I'm still using it, particularly the San Diego version for one project and the Rome version for another project.

ServiceNow Discovery is a stable tool.

ServiceNow Discovery is a scalable tool, especially because the industry has now properly recognized it, so many of the network companies, for example, Cisco, release product versions that have compatibility with ServiceNow Discovery. Companies that manufacture network devices and storage devices also create plugins that have more compatibility with ServiceNow Discovery, which makes the tool scalable.

I haven't had the chance to contact technical support for ServiceNow Discovery yet. My team once raised a ticket to get help, but it was for cleaning a different solution, CMDB.

For any troubleshooting questions and solutions, I check the community forum and documentation. My team and I still have some pending issues with some features of ServiceNow Discovery and we didn't find very specific resolutions or proper answers in the documentation and the community forum.

I found the initial setup of ServiceNow Discovery easy. The process is the same with other discovery tools where some prerequisites need to be deployed within your client's environment, both open and privileged requirements and service accounts to access the environment.

Setting up ServiceNow Discovery is easy because you're provided with a guided setup to install the features, so I found it easy.

The total time it takes to deploy the tool is between one to two days if you have all the required information. Once you have a subscription, you just need to enable some plugins and deploy one integration within your client's organization because ServiceNow Discovery is a cloud-based tool which means you need to deploy one application into the organization which doesn't take more than half an hour. That would also depend on how many MID servers are deployed, so in general, to make the environment ready to start discovery, it would take two days. What could take time would be the credential setups and other requirements provided by the clients, but in total, deployment would take just one to two days for ServiceNow Discovery.

You need a subscription to ServiceNow Discovery, so you can use its features. You can also use specific plugins with the tool, and some of the plugins are free. I don't have information on how much my company pays for the subscription to ServiceNow Discovery.

Nowadays, I've been working on BMC Discovery, ServiceNow Discovery, and CMDB projects.

My company is a partner/implementer for ServiceNow Discovery, but many consultants within the company, apart from myself, also use the tool.

My advice, if you're looking into using ServiceNow Discovery for the first time, is to compare it with other tools and also consider your requirements because not all discovery tools provide all the features you need. For example, one discovery tool could be strong in this area, while the other tool could be strong in another area or feature. You should go for ServiceNow Discovery if it meets your requirements. Otherwise, use another discovery tool. ServiceNow Discovery is a platform that provides full IT infrastructure services, and it's very good for any organization, but that still depends on company requirements, so you need to evaluate those requirements first. For example, check existing devices and infrastructure already deployed in your company and what you'd like to discover through ServiceNow Discovery, whether it's just servers or network devices, etc.

I'm rating ServiceNow Discovery eight out of ten. Though it's a very important tool for users, I'm unable to give it a ten because it still needs to be more user-friendly in terms of reporting. The documentation for the tool also needs improvement, particularly because some features aren't explained well. The tool has very powerful features with no proper documentation available, so some users still have to search for answers in the community forum.

This is a part of ITOM. We use the product to identify servers and network equipment in our data centers.

To some extent, it has improved the way our organization functions. 

Discovering of network related equipment was an area where we had lot of success with.  This was after we helped identify issues with loopback interfaces and such. 

It is stable. 

Support is okay. 

It does create quite a few duplicate CIs, you need to monitor and clean them up.  

The initial setup is complex. 

We do not need any extra features. 

Printer discovery is limited, Server or Workstation categorization depends on OS, which can lead to wrong labeling. 

I've used the solution for the last two years. 

The solution is stable and reliable. The performance is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

This product is not exactly scalable, or, at least, we haven't really had a chance to test its scalability potential. 

We have about six users on the product in our organization. 

We are only using 40% to 60% of capacity. We are not planning to increase usage. 

Technical support is hit or miss. They can be helpful or not, depending on who you get. 

Neutral

We had a different solution. However, the previous product was not customizable, which is why we switched. 

The solution is complex to set up. It took us nine months to implement the product. 

We need four to six people in order to deploy the solution. 

We did have someone help us with the implementation. 

We have seen ROI to some extent. 

We tend to deal with three-year licenses. I'm not aware of the exact pricing of the product. You do not have to pay for acquiring extra features. 

We're a customer. This solution goes hand in hand with ITOM. 

I'd rate the solution at a six out of ten.

I can't discuss the use cases related to the product since I don't have many projects to deal with in my company that need the use of ServiceNow Discovery.

The out-of-the-box probes and patterns in ServiceNow Discovery are great features.

ServiceNow Discovery is a great tool. ServiceNow Discovery should be updated to provide its users with more out-of-the-box information and attributes to support the routers and switches from Cisco. It would be great if the tool could handle more out-of-the-box functionalities to retrieve the information for routers, especially those from Cisco, including the updated devices.

I have experience with ServiceNow Discovery. My company has a partnership with ServiceNow.

Stability-wise, I feel it is a good product.

I do have experience with other tools similar to ServiceNow Discovery, but I don't remember the names of the tools I used in the past. Compared to the tools I have used previously, ServiceNow Discovery can be considered a useful product if someone wants to use an agentless solution, meaning you don't have to install any agent in your system.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

The solution's deployment phase takes around a month to be completed.

I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.

Primarily for discovering and managing organizational assets and tools. We maintain the hierarchy of all the assets, and if there are any issues, we can remotely configure them without any problems. So, it's useful for that purpose and a high-level overview.

There were various types of organizations, and we had three types of laptops. We could manage the different model numbers in a hierarchy, and the discovery helped us with IP ranges and network changes.

The most valuable feature is its integration with CMDB, as it collects all the data.

Another best feature for me is the ability to set up MID Serve remotely, which is a really nice addition. With MID Serve, we can do the configuration remotely, which saves us a lot of time and effort.

In my opinion, it's quite slow compared to other tools, like Device42. Also, there are predefined fields in Device42 that are not available in ServiceNow. These are the basic things I think can be improved here.

I have been using this solution for three to four months. 

It is stable and works reliably.

I'd rate the stability at around eight out of ten. It works here. But, there are some hiccups that can be encountered, similar to any other solution.  Overall, it's quite stable.

I would rate the scalability around eight out of ten. It's pretty good, especially considering that ServiceNow Discovery is using MariaDB, which enhances its scalability.

There are more than 15 users using this solution in our organization.

The support is good. The documentation was quite good, and the guided setup makes it extremely easy to use, provided you know the right steps, like creating a directory user, for example.

Positive

I would rate my experience with the initial setup a seven out of ten, with one being difficult and ten being easy to set up. 

We had a team of five to six people working on the deployment. Each person had specific skills required for different tasks, such as service mapping, network setup, and the actual discovery process. Having a diverse skill set in the team proved to be beneficial for completing the work quickly and efficiently.

At the basic level, it took me around a week. However, at the organization level, there were a lot of configurations to be edited, and extensive mapping was required. So, in total, the initial setup took around a month.

To start the deployment, we used a target set that can be installed in the MID Server. From the MID Server, we initiated the discovery process using IP ranges provided by the organization or obtained through their routers. This allowed us to discover all the Configuration Items (CIs). However, we encountered an issue with service mapping, which took some time to resolve.

I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, where one being cheap and ten being expensive. 

My advice would be to familiarize themselves with ServiceNow CMDBs and understand how the discovery process works. ServiceNow CMDB is a crucial table management tool for discovery needs. Also, considering the importance of CMDB health management, incorporating it into the usage would be beneficial.

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We use ServiceNow Discovery to look at assets, processes, and some process mining. On the other hand, we use ServiceNow ITSM to capture tickets and move away from Remedy. We also use ServiceNow ITSM APIs for contract management, focusing on change, configuration, release, incidents, and problems.

One of the most valuable features of ServiceNow Discovery is the automated discovery that helps identify dependencies, and then my company gets a report on that. My company has many applications, whether developed internally or bought off the shelf, and my company needs to know which application has a dependency on what. Sometimes, developer teams make changes to applications, which then causes other ecosystems to crash, which is where ServiceNow Discovery comes in.

Another valuable feature of the solution is security management related. The security landscape in this post-pandemic world is very different, so you don't want to have insecure access to any of the applications, especially ones focused explicitly on service management and service delivery for clients. Hence, my company also uses ServiceNow Discovery for more secure access and communication using certificates between different parties involved, which is beneficial.

ServiceNow Discovery has matured since the last time I got on the bandwagon, but its integration with legacy apps is one area for improvement. Right now, the ServiceNow Discovery APIs cater more to newer apps, whether the apps run on AWS or Azure, and it's much easier on more recent apps versus on-premises apps that don't necessarily have the proper API interfaces, such as REST or JSON. You need to do a lot of manual work to properly integrate ServiceNow Discovery with legacy apps compared to integrating it with newer apps.

ServiceNow Discovery isn't a plug-and-play solution, which is another area for improvement, as that causes a delay in the overall process. Making it a plug-and-play product is helpful.

ServiceNow Discovery offers out-of-the-box reports, and though that's okay, allowing easier report customization would improve the solution. Currently, customizing reports isn't as straightforward as some of the other tools in the market. It's challenging to build custom reports in ServiceNow Discovery. You can use the basic reports offered in the solution, but if you need analytics and more advanced reporting, there's a lot of work to be done.

The product also lacks training resources, which is another area for improvement. It would be very helpful if ServiceNow included some advanced training with the sale. Most team members have to either go online and search on Google for more advanced training. There's no issue with the basics as they're straightforward, but the white papers don't necessarily come with very good use cases of how someone has implemented an intelligent workflow. If ServiceNow could provide more ServiceNow Discovery videos, certification, or cheat sheets to make the overall implementation and configuration of the solution faster, it would be quite useful.

An additional feature I want to be added to ServiceNow Discovery is an integration studio that helps you map into legacy apps. It should be drag-and-drop and very visual.

I also want the ServiceNow Discovery pricing model to be more of a pay-as-you-use. The challenge right now is whether it's a subscription or whether it's perpetual. The licensing model costs a whole lot more than other solutions, so even though my company uses a public cloud to run ServiceNow Discovery, that doesn't mean you can enjoy the same benefits, and whether you use it more or use it less, you incur the same costs, which is not necessarily a more accurate positioning of how the overall business works for a particular year.

Cost-wise, ServiceNow Discovery seems to be from an era where it is more on-premise than sitting on the cloud, even though it is a cloud solution. ServiceNow should have a pay-per-use licensing model so that if my usage increases, I can pay more, rather than needing to pay the same amount whether my usage increases or decreases.

I've been using ServiceNow Discovery for two and a half years now. I've used ServiceNow ITSM longer, in particular, seven to eight years now.

ServiceNow Discovery stability is an eight out of ten because it never crashed. Still, sometimes, it has pending critical workloads because it needs connectors and visibility based on company protocols.

The stability of the solution isn't an issue, but its predictability is, though that has improved. There used to be dependency mapping issues where some critical workloads were excluded, so support worked on it, fixed it, and gave my company a patch.

ServiceNow Discovery is scalable but comparable to a Lego block set. You can do what you want with it, and you can do anything with it, but the question is "how easily can you scale it?"

If you were to look at commoditized functions as automated discovery and getting visibility into your workloads on the cloud, it's not rocket science, and it's pretty quickly done. However, when you're in an enterprise scenario where you have legacy apps, then the scaling, although it's possible, scaling ServiceNow Discovery becomes more complex.

Scalability-wise, it's a seven out of ten, and it's not merely about how many ServiceNow Discovery instances you're using or how many projects, but whether setting up reports, finishing service maps, etc., is easy.

The level one and level two technical support for ServiceNow Discovery were satisfactory, but the more senior support wasn't because only a few senior support was available. We had to wait at least three to four days to get more senior resources to help us with critical issues, and sometimes, they were not very strong, but basic support, for example, people who create tickets and get details from us, have been okay.

I'd rate the ServiceNow Discovery technical support as seven out of ten.

Neutral

The initial setup for ServiceNow Discovery was very straightforward, and you don't need to do much to set it up. After you set it up, that's when you'll have to take more steps. For example, when you configure intelligent workflows and integrate third-party apps, and if you want to put in graph connectors, that takes time.

I'd rate the ServiceNow Discovery initial setup as four out of ten because it takes time to configure and set up the workflows. My company expected to complete the setup in three months, but it took seven months to get it done.

ServiceNow Discovery has very broad pricing, so it becomes costly. It would be better if it had a pay-as-you-use licensing model because the total cost of ownership is quite high.

The ServiceNow Discovery unit price is comparable to other products, but if you look at the packaging, the TCO is much higher than others.

Overall, I'd rate the ServiceNow Discovery licensing costs as five out of ten.

My company works with various products. It partners with different platforms to build websites that run governance projects, provide RPA solutions, etc. For example, my company works with ServiceNow, Blue Prism, and Automation Anywhere.

ServiceNow is one of the platforms my company uses for internal IT request management, as well as an engine to help with the governance tool my company developed for clients and usage internally that helps with contract management.

I'm currently using both ServiceNow Discovery and ServiceNow ITSM.

Within my company, twenty to thirty people use ServiceNow Discovery, and each user has a different purpose. Some users use it internally, while some use it for client projects.

My rating for ServiceNow Discovery overall is seven out of ten.

My company is both a partner and a user of ServiceNow Discovery.

The solution is for all of our infra components.

The solution is straightforward to set up.

It is stable. 

We can scale the solution.

The solution is user-friendly. 

Between SolarWinds and ServiceNow, there is some communication gap. SolarWinds is able to give infra-related things, however, from a ServiceNow perspective, it'll discover all the things from an IT management perspective in real-time.

If you're integrating both tools, it's not going to integrate. If I'm using SolarWinds Discovery and if I'm integrating it with ServiceNow, in ServiceNow, I cannot get a direct fit. I need to manually play with it. While they function together, we still need to do manual interventions.

ServiceNow is very costly.

You need to recruit some developer support if you want to do some coding, and that is the one improvement area they need to look at.

They should add in infra monitoring.

I've been working with the solution for ten years. 

I've never had issues with stability. The solution is reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. Even if it is on-premises, there are no issues. 

The solution is scalable. 

We have escalated questions to support. However, they are more commercial than technical. 

Neutral

I've also worked with SolarWinds for ten years. 

The solution is very simple to set up and implement. It's not overly complex. 

If you are just implementing ServiceNow, it doesn't take too much time. If I'm using their SaaS-based services, it might take two weeks. 

It is an expensive solution. Per licensed user, it may be around $160 to $180. There may be additional models a company needs to buy for ITSM functionality.ITSM will not work independently, and therefore we need other models. 

I'm an end-user and integrator.

We are dealing with the latest version of the solution. 

We're using both cloud and on-premises deployments. 

I'd recommend the solution to other users. 

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We use ServiceNow Discovery to update our CMDB and to discover the used software assets. In one flow, we can run all the scripts necessary for ITOM for the CMDB and software asset management.

The CMDB is an important database for the whole organization, not just operationally but increasingly for security. For example, in ServiceNow Discovery, we can find servers or services we were unaware of and stumble on vulnerabilities from those devices. Increasingly, our CMDB is the golden source when that wasn't the case four years ago.

ServiceNow is agentless. This has advantages if you're not utilizing the CPU space of the machines you are discovering. However, the downside is that you always have to discuss logging into servers. It also requires credentials and figuring out where to store them, so an agent solution is likely easier because you only have the credential issue when installing it. After that, you are always in direct contact with your devices. This is also true for cloud because it tends to be immutable once deployed, and an agent makes it much easier to get on those devices. I believe ServiceNow is planning to add an agent, but it does not have that feature today.

Regarding additional features, I believe ServiceNow is planning an introduction in more countries and adding service mapping, which goes beyond the discovery. The addition will try logging into a machine and discovering what connections one node has to another node or a database. Based on that, it will update the connections in the CMDB. So rather than observing the infrastructure and CIs, it observes the services. That will be another part of a separate contract.

We have been using this solution since 2018, using the platform release of San Diego. It is deployed both on-premises and cloud. We install net servers in any data center we want to discover, and there is also a net server running on AWS.

The stability is good and doesn't increase the load of the to-be-discovered machines. I think it's about 1% and it's not a burden for the owners of the machines. The solution works, and we discover our full network every day.

The solution can be scaled differently, and a new net server can be installed. The net server is the distributed solution for ServiceNow Discovery, so it doesn't discover from the SaaS solution and needs a server that runs in the data center that it needs to operate. So if we need more, we install more net servers and do the work in parallel or depending on the need. We can also install it on half of your Windows machines.

ServiceNow Discovery is used only by the operators of the discovery function, which is limited to a team of five to ten people. However, the result can go into the CMDB, which thousands of people use.

We use three to four people for deployment and maintenance. We currently use this solution to full capacity. The on-premises data centers in the Netherlands are fully discovered, similar to cloud. I believe a couple of data centers are yet to be discovered in Japan or Spain. We have 15 different operating countries, and most of them have their own servers in the data center locally, requiring net servers to be installed in those locations. Some of those countries already have it, and a couple of countries don't, but we can probably expand by another ten to 20 percent.

There are a lot of discussions with ServiceNow because improvements are required with the scripts used to collect the information from servers. We usually discuss the level of detail it brings, ensuring that it discovers all the nodes in a certain IP range when it finds a node and what data it collects.

There is a hotline where you can post your tickets, and ServiceNow responds in an adequate amount of time. I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

Positive

We were using TOPdesk for service management, and no discovery feature was included, so we didn't proceed with it. ServiceNow Discovery is not the cheapest solution, and the pricing model is based on discovered nodes, so if you discover a lot, it becomes expensive. For public cloud, if you set everything to get to discovery, the public cloud makes the pricing model expensive.

We eventually decided that mixing solutions did not help fulfil our strategy, so we stuck with ServiceNow Discovery. We explored other brands like Device42 and Tanium, but in the end, we didn't use them.

The difficulty in installing ServiceNow Discovery is not different from ServiceNow. The networks tend to be separated from freelance, and they all have firewalls you need to go through. So implementing a solution like ServiceNow Discovery, which is quite intrusive on a data center, you always need to work with security on how to implement it safely and practically. For a lot of products, practicality vs security is always a challenge. Deployment is completed in-house with our engineers.

We have not seen an ROI. It is hard to calculate because the data in the CMDB is not quantifiable. For example, we can't quantify the price for a security incident not being resolved or the price for something that is not in the CMDB. The CMDB must become the center and motor of IT operations which is what we are establishing and trying to do. This all subscribes to running IT as a business.

We have a contracted price, but I am unsure of the exact price. We have a three-year contract, and then we agree on a certain amount of nodes to be discovered. ServiceNow will provide a quote which will then be part of the contract. While the contract is in effect, it is possible to overspend, and then we will have new discussions with ServiceNow.

There are no extra costs, ServiceNow does an evaluation every couple of months, and then they monitor whether we are overconsuming. If we are notified, we will discuss the possible expansion of the contract.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten. Regarding advice, I would say don't consider a discovery feature as technology in isolation. Discovery contributes to the configuration goal, which is part of IT service management. It needs to be considered as a whole IT service management, where there is a service management tool, monitoring solutions, and configuration. So if there is an incident, we want to know where the incident occurs and the configuration items. If we monitor and then find something, we want to know what the configuration item is to be able to raise an incident.

I would also advise others not to consider Device42 in isolation if you still need to decide on all the different capabilities. For example, if you have service management already in place and are looking to expand towards discovery, then Device42 is okay. In addition, I wouldn't recommend using ServiceNow for service management and Device42 for the discovery part because there is a benefit in having just one platform with one language.

My company uses ServiceNow Discovery to discover multiple CIs, servers, network devices, computers, etc.

In our company, importing and scanning IP addresses with ServiceNow Discovery is a straightforward and easy process.

Whenever you try to discover something with the solution, you get errors that are not descriptive enough. The aforementioned area can be considered for improvement in the solution.

The licensing cost of the solution is an area where ServiceNow can improve.

I have been using ServiceNow Discovery for more than three years.

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution.

My company deals with multiple clients who prefer ServiceNow Discovery. I was involved with the implementation phase of the product for my company's clients.

The initial setup of the product is straightforward.

It doesn't take more than a week to implement the product.

As a part of the deployment process, you first need to understand the infrastructure of ServiceNow Discovery. Once you understand ServiceNow Discovery, you will be in a better position to use your data with the existing data in ServiceNow.

My company has a six-member team to take care of the product's implementation process.

There is a need to make payments every quarter of a year towards the licensing costs of the solution. ServiceNow Discovery is an expensive tool.

I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.