While ServiceNow has grown to become a leading platform for digital transformation, it began as a workflow management platform with IT Service Management as its initial application. This encouraged customers to extend and build custom applications, deviating from out of the box functionality and ITIL best practices.
For some ServiceNow customers though, these customizations have become too complex to manage. While custom development can address important business needs, it can also result in significant amounts of technical debt to manage. And with ServiceNow releasing new versions of their platform twice a year, customers are finding it difficult to keep pace with the upgrades.
Reimplementing ServiceNow (sometimes referred to as replatforming or going “back to box”), means deploying ServiceNow in a new instance with minimal customizations, and is a way for customers to simplify their existing ServiceNow instance, ease the burden of upgrading, and take advantage of more out of the box functionality.
Below, we explain some of the reasons to reimplement or replatform ServiceNow, and how to make sure your data stays protected throughout the process.
Why customers choose to reimplement ServiceNow
Minimize technical debt
While technical debt is unavoidable in application development, you want to try and minimize it as much as possible. Since technical debt can quickly accumulate when customization is used to tackle problems that ServiceNow’s base functionality could solve, reimplementing can help minimize technical debt significantly.
Reduce development costs
Instead of developing new functionality, customers who move to a new instance get the same functionality delivered by ServiceNow via regular upgrades, thus saving on development and maintenance costs.
Take advantage of new features
Customers who have heavily customized instances or who haven’t managed their upgrades effectively may be unable to take advantage of the new features that ServiceNow makes available through their releases, making it difficult to unlock the full value of their investment in ServiceNow.
What to consider when reimplementing ServiceNow
Given all of the benefits referenced above, you might be ready to start fresh with a new ServiceNow instance as soon as possible. But before you do, there are some questions to consider. Do you reimplement ServiceNow all at once? Or should you make changes incrementally? While there is no right answer, you need to define the goals of the project, make a business case, and communicate the plan to stakeholders.
However you decide to proceed, it’s important to remember that your legacy instance holds important data that you need to retain for audit, compliance, and general operational efficiency purposes. While you do have the option to pay to hold this legacy data in a non-Production instance with ServiceNow, it likely will not meet your company’s compliance and business requirements.
Why back up your ServiceNow data before deploying a new instance
No matter how careful you are, mistakes are bound to happen when moving thousands of tables and millions of records. This is why it’s critical to have back up your data before a major project, like deploying a new ServiceNow instance.
When considering a data backup and recovery solution, look for a solution that can provide the ability to easily access, search, compare and restore data into your Production or non-Production instances should you ever need to. It’s also important that the solution meets your company’s security and compliance requirements and provides access to your data independent of ServiceNow.
Finally, don’t wait until your “go-live” date to implement your backup and recovery solution. Having a solution in place pre-deployment will allow you to back up any ServiceNow instance as various developers and system integrators (SIs) prepare for your deployment.
Own Recover for ServiceNow
Migrating years worth of ServiceNow data to a new instance is no easy task. Own can help provide a safety net throughout the transition by providing a best-in-class backup and recovery strategy for all of your ServiceNow instances.
To learn more about Recover for ServiceNow, check out our website or download our ebook, "The Complete Guide to Backup and Recovery for ServiceNow".
