Amp It Up

15Open the Aperture—the ServiceNow Expansion Story

My Introduction to ServiceNow

Coming off the Data Domain experience, I kept reflecting on the strategic challenges we had faced and what we could have or should have done differently. The sale to EMC was a great outcome by any economic standard, but a CEO can't help thinking he or she aborted the mission when a company gets sold. (I had never sold a company before, or since.)

All of this influenced my perspective on ServiceNow as I began the interview process to become their CEO in early 2011. Since 2004, ServiceNow had racked up quite a growth record under its founder and first CEO, Fred Luddy. The company had only consumed a nominal amount of capital, was cashflow positive, and was close to doubling on an annual basis.

The founder and many of the early employees had hailed from another high‐flying San Diego company, Peregrine Systems, which had also made a business out of IT service management software. Peregrine Systems went bankrupt in 2003, a rarity in the world of software, and ServiceNow was like a Phoenix rising from its ashes. It offered a huge improvement on the legacy installed base of existing service management software products.

At first, I didn't know much about service management software, more popularly referred to as “helpdesk management software” or “ticketing systems.” Any time a user logged a request or an incident, the system issued a tracking ID as a virtual ticket. I wasn't super excited about this category, ...