We always look forward to Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for IT Service Management Tools. It’s a wealth of information on where the market is at, and what emerging trends are being picked up by analysts and customer survey respondents. Some things change, other things remain mystifyingly consistent between iterations.
It’s impossible to talk Gartner ITSM Magic Quadrant without discussing ServiceNow. We have a deep history with ServiceNow since before we became a product company, so we hold them in high regard and at the same time we know their limitations intimately.
The Analyts Say….
We thought we’d share a few relevant quotes from Gartner, which we hear time and time again in the market.
ServiceNow lacks the license model flexibility of many of its closest competitors…Functionality to track improvement initiatives that drive maturity requires an ITSM Professional license, which comes at a significantly higher cost than the entry-level Standard edition.
– Gartner Magic Quadrant for Service Management Tools 2021
Some Gartner clients are concerned that ServiceNow’s market position is hurting their ability to negotiate their contract or reduce their footprint without heavy impacts to their current discount. This is significant for organizations looking to reduce or optimize spend through downsizing their ITSM footprint in response to adverse financial impacts resulting from compulsoryCOVID-19 response measures.
– Gartner Magic Quadrant for Service Management Tools 2020
ServiceNow has restricted support to the current and previous versions of the product, which requires customers to perform an upgrade at least once every year. This can strain customers with limited resources to support their ITSM implementations… Gartner clients report that frequent changes in licensing policies and bundling make product renewals challenging.
– Gartner Magic Quadrant for Service Management Tools 2019
While new, optional features (e.g., incident categorization based upon machine learning) offer the potential for operational cost savings, the shift to usage-based pricing has the potential to increase budgeting risk due to unplanned increases in total annual spend, as feature utilization increases.
– Gartner Magic Quadrant for Service Management Tools 2018
Stricter approver licensing, named-user-only subscriptions and the bundling of noncore product features make it confusing for ServiceNow’s customers to achieve favorable deals.
– Gartner Magic Quadrant for Service Management Tools 2017
Interactions with Gartner clients indicate that some organizations with low I&O maturity struggle to demonstrate sufficient value from their ServiceNow.
– Gartner Magic Quadrant for Service Management Tools, Pretty Much Every Year
Please note that this is not the sum total nor the overall conclusion of Gartner’s coverage of ServiceNow, about whom they also say a lot of nice things. But still…
Choices
How can ServiceNow command such astronomical pricing?
It’s because there has been a lack of viable alternatives for a true workflow platform, with complete flexibility and built-in AI.
With the arrival of Servicely that has now changed…
Sign up below for industry trends, analysis, blogs and product updates. Or jump straight to a demo.