Content, Enterprise, MSP

Will ServiceNow Ever Come Down Market to Small Business MSPs?

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At first glance, ServiceNow continues to gain traction as an IT service management (ITSM) and ticketing platform for large MSPs. It makes you wonder: Will ServiceNow ever step down from the enterprise to engage MSPs that support small business customers?

Slow down, folks. Take a closer look, and there are some nuances and key financial metrics  to note. Chief among them:

  • Fully 1,463 customers now spend more than $1 million annually with ServiceNow.
  • Moreover, over 100 customers now spend over $10 million annually with ServiceNow up more than 50% year-over-year, the company said on its July 27, 2022 earnings call.
  • During that same earnings call, ServiceNow mentioned the "enterprise" market roughly a dozen times, and never once mentioned SMB or small business customers.

Translation: When you look at the financial math and listen to the executive talk, ServiceNow is plenty business -- and apparently priced for enterprise customers.

Enterprise Service Providers and ServiceNow: Big Crowd

Still, I was amazed to see hundreds -- perhaps thousands -- of service provider partners at the ServiceNow Knowledge 2019 conference (ahead of the pandemic).

Most of my conversations at that conference were enterprise in nature. But there were plenty of midmarket MSPs on hand as well. One example involves Fully Managed, which is now owned by Telus. We've also heard about Thrive building out its ServiceNow practice. And we hear about mid-market MSPs partnering with corporate IT departments to offer co-managed ServiceNow capabilities.

Amid all those trends, we don't hear much about ServiceNow in the SMB sector -- perhaps because of pricing, deployment complexities and other nuances.

Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri is co-founder & editorial director of MSSP Alert and ChannelE2E, the two leading news & analysis sites for managed service providers in the cybersecurity market.