BVQ° ITSM Connect - ServiceNow

1 PDF Versions
2 Management Summary
- 2.1 BVQ°
- 2.2 ServiceNow Now Platform®
3 Major Benefits of the integration
4 Process Integration and example Use Case
5 Prerequisites
6 Technical Approach
- 6.1 Data integration
- 6.2 Process integration
- 6.3 Setup

PDF Versions

Management Summary

BVQ°

Initially developed for our system engineers' own use, BVQ° today sets standards in IT monitoring, analytics and reporting. As a proactive monitoring tool, BVQ° finds vulnerabilities before they become a problem. Thanks to its user-friendliness and individually configurable interfaces, BVQ° is a flexible monitoring tool for a wide range of users - from business owners to technical experts.

The connection to the ServiceNow Platform^® is described in this article.

^{ServiceNow Now Platform®}

ServiceNow is a comprehensive cloud-based platform that revolutionizes the way organizations manage their business processes, increase productivity and improve customer satisfaction.

Key features and benefits of the ServiceNow platform include:

Unified Service Management: A single, integrated platform for IT Service Management (ITSM), Customer Service Management (CSM), Human Resources Service Management (HRSM), and more
Automation and workflows: Automate routine tasks and create custom workflows
Self-Service Portals: Self-service portals for end users to request services, access knowledge bases and report issues
Performance Analytics: Analytics and reporting capabilities to help organizations make data-driven decisions
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML): ServiceNow incorporates AI and ML technologies to improve decision-making and predictive analytics, and to automate tasks such as incident categorization and routing.

Major Benefits of the integration

Connecting of BVQ° to ServiceNow can provide several benefits, including:

Out-of-the-box IT infrastructure discovery service: Using BVQ° as a single source for multi layer infrastructure discovery reduces complexity and cost. BVQ° provides up-to-date CMDB management including the relationship management to visualize infrastructure dependencies. This can be the foundation for a solid asset management.
Improved incident management: By integrating BVQ° with ServiceNow, you can automatically create incidents or tickets in ServiceNow with relevant data, such as affected infrastructure components, whenever a problem or anomaly is detected in the IT infrastructure. This streamlines the incident management process, ensuring that incidents are logged in a timely manner, assigned to the right teams and resolved efficiently. This accelerates the incident resolution process by providing support teams with actionable information up front, reducing the time spent on manual data gathering and troubleshooting.
Proactive problem resolution: BVQ° can provide near real-time visibility into the health and performance of the IT infrastructure. It can generate alerts and notifications when specific thresholds or conditions are met. By integrating this information with ServiceNow, you can proactively identify potential problems before they impact users or the business, allowing you to take preventive action or initiate early remediation.
Increase efficiency and automation: By integrating BVQ° with ServiceNow, you can automate various IT processes and align infrastructure monitoring for a more integrated and streamlined approach to IT operations. For example, you can automate the creation of change requests based on specific monitoring events. This reduces manual effort, minimizes human error and improves overall operational efficiency.

Overall, integrating an IT infrastructure analytics and monitoring tool with ServiceNow brings together real-time monitoring capabilities and IT service management processes, resulting in improved incident management, proactive problem resolution, increased automation, improved visibility and better service delivery.

Process Integration and example Use Case

The integration between the two tools consists of topology data (objects and their relationships) as well as Alert rules and their respective Alert results.

Prerequisites

BVQ° with ENTERPRISE license, version 2023.H2.5 or higher
ServiceNow TOKYO release or newer
BVQ° ServiceNow Connect plugin (the BVQ° team will guide you through the installation process)
Network access from BVQ° to ServiceNow instance on port 443

Technical Approach

For ITSM connect, BVQ° acts as a centralized IT infrastructure discovery service. By deploying BVQ°, organizations can gain greater control over their IT assets by knowing which servers or services are working with which components. This can improve security and optimize resource utilization, enabling organizations to make informed decisions and effectively leverage their technology investments.

Data integration

For all data transfers, ServiceNow's Scripted REST APIs capabilities are used to create custom RESTful web services. This allowed custom endpoints to be defined in the ServiceNow instance, and the behavior of those endpoints could be defined using scripts.

We have implemented endpoints for sending topology data, alert rules and alert results.

Topology data is pushed from BVQ° to ServiceNow after it has been persisted. Therefore, we used a system of serialized identifiers to describe and match the various objects. The received BVQ° objects are stored as Configuration Items (CIs) in ServiceNow's Configuration Management Database (CMDB). The underlying CI classes are derived and extended from existing classes wherever possible. For example, the inheritance for VMware Filesystem is as follows.

> Configuration Item > Storage Volume > File System > VMware Filesystem
                                             ^                ^
                                             |                |
                                  ... system standards        |
                                                       BVQ° introduced

We have built a lot of references and relationships between the different CIs so that, among other things, service agents can use the dependency map to identify potential points of failure in the system landscape. If one element fails or is delayed, the map can show which other elements are likely to be affected.

Process integration

BVQ° also sends Alert rule definitions to ServiceNow. And after each Alert calculation, the results are also sent. These Alert results are processed by a ServiceNow Flow to manage potential Incidents and link them to the underlying Configuration Item. This flow is designed to be optimized by each customer to best fit their needs and existing processes.
By default, it handles the creation of new Incidents and the updating of existing Incidents. It also allows existing incidents to be automatically resolved when the underlying alert results return to an OK state. In addition, you'll find backlinks to the alert result in the BVQ° Web UI, so you can easily start your root cause analysis.

Setup

The BVQ° ITSM Connector for ServiceNow is delivered via git (SN Studio).
A guided setup aids the initial configuration.
The BVQ° part is easily configured by using the ServiceNow integration page.