ServiceNow Utah: what's new? (part 1)

The ServiceNow Utah release, which was rolled out in Q1, again brings in a lot of new features when it comes to IT Asset Management (ITAM).

New features for SAM Pro

In the ServiceNow Utah release there are around 13 new features or enhancements added to SAM Pro. We will start this article with the – in our opinion – most important new features.

1. Manage Microsoft SQL Server licensing in container deployments

SQL Server licensing is now supporting both on-premise and cloud environments using docker containers.

Microsoft SQL Server products that are deployed through containers supports the following license models: Per core and Server/CAL

There is a new report (Licensable Software Products Deployed on Containers) available in ServiceNow SAM Workspace, to understand the software products that are deployed across both on-premise and cloud environments using Docker containers.

SAM in combination with Discovery works to get information like:

• Docker containers through which your Microsoft SQL Server products are deployed
• OS of the underlying physical server
• number of virtual processor cores that are assigned to each container
• Microsoft SQL Server version
• edition that is deployed through each container on both on-premise and cloud environments.

The SAM application uses above data to create corresponding software installation records for each of discovered containers. Then reconciliation can be run on container-based software installations to track and optimize the license compliance.

2. Manage licenses for Oracle Weblogic Server

You can use the ServiceNow SAM publisher pack for Oracle to track and optimize licensing for Oracle WebLogic servers. This pack adds Oracle specific licensing options for software entitlements. You can track license usage, create entitlements and software models, determine your license compliance position, and uncover potential cost savings. With this new feature, SAM supports licenses metrics “Minimum NUPs for WebLogic on-premise deployments” and “Minimum NUPs for WebLogic cloud deployments”.

3. Manage your software contract renewals through Renewals calendar

In ServiceNow SAM you can use the Renewals calendar to manage your software contract renewals for the entitlements that are nearing their expiry dates and for contracts either nearing their expiry dates or have expired:

• Contracts with contract model types such as Subscription, Software License, and Maintenance are supported.
• Entitlements with license types such as Perpetual and Subscription are supported.
• On the Renewals calendar you can view Calendar and list view of contracts and entitlements and Details of contracts and entitlements.
• The calendar view can also be narrowed down and can be filtered.

This feature was already introduced for HAM, but has now also been added to SAM. 

4. Reconciliation of licenses across global entities

You can share entitlements across different entities within your organization by creating consumption rules for entitlements to restrict all entities from using that entitlement. Without consumption rules, if reconciliation process runs, any entity (user/device) can use that entitlement regardless of who owns that entitlement. Whereas, with a consumption rule, license consumption will be limited to users and devices belonging to that Department, Region, Country, Cost Center or Company.

In short:

• A single consumption rule can be used across multiple entitlements.
• You can also limit consumption of entitlements to a specific set of entities during the reconciliation process.
• Anyone in your organization can use the entitlement if there is no active consumption rule.
• Consumption rules can be created for the following reconciliation groups: Company, Department, Region, Cost center, Country.

Consumption rules aren’t supported for the following license metrics: IBM RVUs, IBM UVUs, and Workday. 

5. Custom metric capability to put in hard-coded consumption number

To define specific software calculations you can create custom license metrics. This way, reconciliation can calculate rights per user or device for certain software products and bundles of lesser-known software publishers.

With the Utah release you can now make the distinction between a install-based custom metric or a Resource Value. The install-based method allows you to calculate a consumption value per install and is already part of ServiceNow SAM for a while. Resource Value is new and allows you to calculate a consumption figure regardless of the number of installations found (inventory).

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