The Value of Certified Applications from the ServiceNow Store

[David_Gatley]

I'm about to embark on an epic global voyage to visit some of my favorite partners and customers at the international NOWForums: NOWForum Enterprise Service Management | ServiceNow and one of the most common questions I anticipate getting is:

"What the heck is the Store and why should I consider it?!"

Both partners and customers alike ask me this and I'm surprised at the lack of awareness and knowledge around such a simple solution.

First off, here's the store: https://store.servicenow.com go ahead and take a look at it right now, if you still need convincing of the value of those solutions, come back here, grab a nice glass of single malt scotch, find a comfy chair, and enjoy as I regale you with all the wonderment that can be had over at store.servicenow.com ...

When considering the store, either to list and sell an application (or integration) or to purchase and deploy a solution, there are 4 things to consider:

1. The certification process of all solutions listed on the store
2. The Technology Partner journey to get a solution listed on the store
3. How to develop a successful application on the store
4. What we're learning as we certify applications

I'll dive a little deeper into each of those aspects in a moment, before that however, I want to show the recent successes the store is seeing:

mbarclay and the marketing team whipped up this little nugget of info-graphicy goodness:

Reading this infographic should convey at least one of two things to you:

1. Those customers that have downloaded an application from the store, are returning to purchase/download additional applications. They are finding real value in these solutions and it's helping them accelerate their internal deployment timelines, compliment their own custom development, and/or solve complex business problems in a matter of a few button clicks.
2. The number of solutions is growing at a rapidly increasing rate, if you're wondering if now is a good time to get onboard, the answer is yes.

The certification process of all solutions listed on the store:

If you're still with me, you me be saying to yourself right about now:

Self: "Great! There's a store for ServiceNow applications, but what's on it, and can I trust deploying this into my instance?"

I'm glad you asked!

Everything on the store is certified. Every application, every integration, every single thing is certified. So what's certification, and why is this important to you? Well, here's why:

To put that plainly.: we actually install, configure, and test every record in every application on the store. We work with our Technology Partners to demo and test the end-to-end functionality of their solutions. The certification team reviews the application/integration architecture, performance, and security components and measures those against an ever growing set of best practices requirements we have for each major release of ServiceNow. What that means to you, the customer, is that when combined with your own code promotion policies and procedures our certification process ensures that you have introduced the minimal amount of possible performance or security impact to your instance. If you are curious about what we look for, specifically, take a look at this document: Guide to getting your App Certified & Certification Requirements   . In addition to getting an application package you can trust, you also get the support and subject matter expertise of the Technology Partner that authored the solution. But wait! There's more. Our partners are updating their applications ALL-THE-TIME pushing new, better content to our customers every day. You leverage their blood, sweat, and tears and run happily down your own path, free of the hassles of developing and maintaining your own custom code bases. So... how does a partner go from random ISV or app author to a Technology Partner with a solution listed on the store?

 

The Technology Partner journey to get a solution listed on the store

For you visual learners, here's the basic gist of it:

Join:

Interested partners can join here: PartnerNow | Sales, Services, Technology Partners | ServiceNow

Once on-boarded, new Technology Partners will be provisioned 2 vendor instances to start creating their uniquely scoped vendor applications suitable for listing on the store. The will also be introduced to our Technology Partner Portal - https://tpp.servicenow.com/ the one-stop-shop to all things Store publishing.

Learn:

Once setup in the program, we've designed several self-service resourced for our partners to ramp up on the ServiceNow platform. A "zero-to-hero" self-paced training course specific to the things that are paramount to certified application design can be found here: Technology Partner Technical Learning Plan

Here's a sneak peak:

Additionally, our Technology Partner Enablement team is available to provide additional product introductions and architectural guidance to steer our partners solutions into the specific space they need to exist within. For our rockstar partners who want to stay ahead of the curve and be waiting for our customers with the newest features ready to rock, we also provide Early Access to future product releases so you can leverage the newest ServiceNow features or simply ensure your application is ready to go on the newest release.

Create:

Once our partners have learned all they need about our platform and newest features, they are ready to create their scoped applications to list on the store. We've tailored several technical support channels for our Technology Partners, whether it be low-level coding specific questions or best practices guidance, our team is available to help ensure your development journey is fast and easy.

Certify:

The Certification Process is hands-on. From the moment you submit your application to the moment it is listed on the store, you will be in constant contact with our certification and technical enablement teams. We've focused this process to be as streamlined and transparent as possible. Here's a guide to help you orient: Guide to getting your App Certified & Certification Requirements

And here's a breakdown of the various paths within certification:

The primary certification process takes, on average, about 3-5 weeks. I've seen this done in as little as several business days and as long as several months. The speed and efficiency with which you navigate this process is primarily in your hands and your ability to turn around the revisions that the certification team may request.

Sell:

Alright...it's time to sell your application...let's pause for a minute to hear a word from our sponsors at "Gatley's House of Successful Store Apps":

Hi there folks! So you want to sell an app on the store huh? Well, you rock. But before you begin, how about you take a look at my free advice on how to structure your application development to ensure you are angled for success:

Fancy, huh?! Well, how about you also consider some of these do's and don'ts:

Alright, back to our regularly scheduled programming. To summarize that excellent advice:

• Start simple with our process. Learn our Certification process with a smaller, more manageable application. Learn our licensing model and how leveraging various ServiceNow Plugins can help you drive commission quota relief with our ServiceNow Sales teams.
• Grow your application strategically after you learn and master the above concepts
• Use our team at every turn. 

Not sold yet...jeeesh, tough crowd...here's even more reason to use the store:

The quality issues should be well covered by this point in the article. However, the distribution benefits of the store may be lesser know.

Version Control - You can push updates to your customers with the click of a button and your customers can pick and choose which versions that they want to consume. Seriously. Gone are the days of saving .xml files in some repo somewhere and trying to figure out what you did, when and where you did it. Say hello to release notes and insights into which version of your application your customer is currently using. When it's time for them to upgrade, they simply click "update" next to your app, and presto-changeo, they have the new code. Nothing do to on your part but upload your new version to the store (after recertifying it, of course).

Deployment - For those of you who have developed and deployed update sets, I salute you. You've waged a never ending battle of tangled fishing line and holiday lights. Backing out a update set that's a year old...probably time for some more scotch. Store applications don't have the challenges that come with update set maintenance.

IP Protection - IP PROTECTION, IP PROTECTION....INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PROTECTION. It sounds good doesn't it. Did you know you can actually protect your IP within applications that have been distributed on the store? It's true. simply enable the protection policy on your scripts within your custom application and only you will ever see that sweet logic ever again. I know, it's bitter sweet...how else will anyone ever appreciate your legendary algorithms?! But on the flip side, the ability to 'borrow' your hard work is gone.

So... that's it as far as the value of consuming and supplying solutions on the store goes...but...hey...you've made it this far...how about some sweet data science to go with that second glass of scotch you're undoubtedly on by now...

What we're learning as we certify applications

We have certified over 200 applications on the store in the past 1.5 years, throughout that time we've seen some significant trends. We've discovered over 46,000 issues that would have otherwise been missed and/or potentially deployed to production instances. In that same time space, we've had over 5000 downloads of our certified solutions and only a handful of incidents have been attributed to custom applications. The certification process is catching a lot, in a way that saves our customers a tremendous amount of time and risk.

*Note these numbers were compiled in mid-2018.

That's about it. 

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out.

Thanks for reading!

-David