ServiceNow has mastered the art of implementing subtle license changes and price adjustments with each major release of its software, resulting in regular price increases for its customers. This has occurred with the London, Madrid, and, most recently, New York releases.

San Francisco-based IT startup Forethought announced new product Agatha Predictions on September 5 to help categorize and organize incoming tickets.

Spiceworks – which operates a community of IT professionals, marketplace, and free apps – has agreed to be acquired by Ziff Davis B2B, but says it will continue to prioritize and develop its products.

Quest Software has announced its newest updates, KACE SDA 7.0 and KACE SMA 9.1, which enhance their features, apply Linux scripted installs, and automate systems management.

SolarWinds has announced its three big priorities for second half of 2019. These include MSP, service desk, and cloud-based application management.

Malwarebytes’ endpoint security solutions’ cloud integration with ServiceNow simplifies the security deployment process by streamlining and documenting the entire incident response process in ServiceNow’s Security Incident Response console.

Zoho Corporation announced new updates in its IT management division, ManageEngine. Zia, Zoho’s AI assistant, is now generally available to use. Moreover, predictive analysis is a new feature added to Analytics Plus.

ServiceNow and Microsoft are furthering their partnership by hosting the Now platform in the Azure-trusted cloud. These features and integrations are powerful, but comes at the price of vendor lock-in.

Cherwell is overhauling its global channel program. These changes will continue to drive stellar customer service, but don’t use it as an excuse to outsource Cherwell learning and development.

IBM has an attractive ITSM and ITAM roadmap for Control Desk. The BigFix divestiture, however, raises some pressing questions.

SolarWinds’ acquisition of Samanage presents a bright future for this product – assuming it isn’t starved of development budget.

Contract negotiation with major vendors is always painful. Take a strategic approach to negotiating with Oracle on database and application licensing.

At the RSA Conference earlier this month, Spirion announced it had won the Gold Cybersecurity Excellence Product Award in the Data Classification category.

Zendesk has been a keystone vendor for external customer service management for over a decade. It is now making a strong effort to expand into adjacent functional areas, with a heavy emphasis on IT and HR ticketing.

ServiceNow has been a mainstay vendor for internal IT service management for over a decade. It is now making a concerted effort to expand into adjacent functional areas, with a heavy emphasis on providing external customer service management.

Microsoft is releasing free online courses for artificial intelligence. This is its attempt at remaining relevant in the AI space, so you might as well take advantage.

Stop thinking about backup and start thinking about data protection. Newer technologies are making it redundant.

Adobe and ServiceNow are partnering to improve customer service and experience management. This reflects ServiceNow’s strategy to expand beyond ITSM, but this space will be harder to break into.

ServiceNow’s growth and product diversification clearly indicates the areas in which it needs its customers to engage, grow, and expand. To obtain the best possible renewal pricing and terms, ServiceNow customers must understand what is important to ServiceNow first.

While the Agile Manifesto might value individuals and interactions over processes and tools, modern product delivery SDLCs are automated. Unfortunately, there are a lot of tools and vendors creating confusion as they compete for a share of your wallet.

ServiceNow announced financial results for its fiscal year ending December 31, 2018. While new customers account for some of the results, subscription revenue increases are the key factor behind its 36% year-over-year growth.