Cloud computing is very crucial since data has become the key asset for every individual or a gigantic nation. The business tycoons are also dependent on big cloud companies these days for IT services. Because, no matter in which field or what size of a business is, IT service is required by all of them. ServiceNow is a famous company based in Santa Clara, California that provides IT services around the world. It provides a cloud computing platform that enables better efficiency of a company by managing its digital workflow. Four founders, namely, Fred Luddy, David Loo, Don Goodliffe, and Bow Ruggeri officially founded the company in 2003. Since then the company has acquired many businesses, expanded geographically, and hired over 11,000 employees.
About the founders
Fred Luddy
Fred Luddy worked as a software developer at Amdahl Corporation for four years. In 1990, he joined Peregrine Systems as the CTO of the company and worked there for thirteen years followed by founding ServiceNow. Currently, Fred is the Chairman of the Board of Directors at Service Now.
David Loo
David Loo is famous for being the CEO of Perspectium in 2013. But, before that, he was the founding developer of ServiceNow and resigned from the company in 2012.
Don Goodliffe
Don Goodliffe is one of the founding members of ServiceNow who was hired by Fred during 2005. He is currently the VP of the J&D Goodliffe Association.
Bow Ruggeri
Bow Ruggeri started his career as a junior software developer at controlroom.com followed by a developer at CTSNet. He was the Principal Architect at ServiceNow for seven years before he founded another start-up, Dreamtsoft.
History of ServiceNow
With a lucrative career experience, Fred founded ServiceNow in 2003, and eventually, the other three joined in. So, we can say that Fred is originally the father of the company who started it from scratch and wanted to enforce similar services as Peregrine Systems. After a couple of years, he decided to perform the first round of hiring and ended up with five more people in the team. Till then he was the only employee of ServiceNow. When the company was founded it was known as Glidesoft Inc.
In 2005, the company raised $2.5 million from its first funding round from JMI Equity. Next year, the company changed its name to ServiceNow followed by opening its first office in 2007. The company’s profit was remarkable and in 2006 its annual revenue summed up to $13 million. Eventually, the number of offices started increasing, and by 2011 they had offices in San Diego, Atlanta, Chicago, New York, London, and Frankfurt with more than 250 employees.
Eventually, the company came into partnership with a few companies one of them being Accenture. The company decided to file an IPO and in 2012 became a publicly-traded company. This year, ServiceNow shifted its headquarters from San Diego to Santa Clara.
Expansion and Business model
In the industry, ServiceNow is one of the earliest companies that started providing IT management services. So, the success of the company skyrocketed over no time and even the founders were swept off their feet. Bow Ruggeri, in one of his interviews, said that he never expected the company’s growth to increase so rapidly. Maybe this is the reason he stepped out and embarked on a whole new venture with Jerrod Bennett to experience it all over again and do it better.
ServiceNow started acquiring many companies starting with Mirror42 in 2013 followed by Entries in 2015 and Brightpoint Security in 2016. With AI and ML growing and dominating the modern world, ServiceNow acquired a machine learning startup, DxContinuum in 2017. Later in 2017, the company acquired Telepathy, a human-centered design firm that doubled the size of ServiceNow’s internal design agency. The latest acquisition of the company was in June 2020 when it acquired Sweagle.
ServiceNow’s business model is based on Platform as a Service (PaaS) provider that allows a customer to use the platform for running and managing applications without worrying about the infrastructure. Fred said that to excel with this kind of business model it should provide real values to customers. So, sticking to the old code is not a good idea and one must keep redesigning to match with the pace of the clients.
ServiceNow and Zoom
With the pandemic taking a big toll on the world, Zoom’s popularity was increased by many folds. This month, Zoom introduced new hardware as a service offering in partnership with ServiceNow. The deal is a symbiotic relationship as both parties will be benefited. While this new service of Zoom will run on one of the platforms of ServiceNow, ServiceNow will use Zoom for all its internal communication purpose. With recent end-to-end encryption recently launched by Zoom for paid customers, ServiceNow will be hugely benefited.
Annasha Dey is an NIT student, who apart from studying engineering is also a content writer. She has a great interest in photography, writing, reading novels, and travelling as well. She is a foodie who loves socializing and hanging out with her friends. She is also a trained Kathak dancer and a big fashion enthusiast. Dey also loves watching TV series, which includes F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and Big Bang Theory. To be a better writer she prefers to read more