Service mapping is an important aspect of ServiceNow IT operational management (ITOM) process. Service mapping enables IT teams to optimize process workflows and operational costs. The service mapping process creates a top-down view of all application services in an organization using pattern-based discovery or traffic-based discovery. ServiceNow ITOM ensures transparency for the overall IT infrastructure. 

Service Mapping discovers all application services in your organization and builds a comprehensive map of all devices, applications, and configuration profiles used in these application services."

- ServiceNow

The Use of Service Mapping

Service mapping organizes applications and related IT systems within an organization. It improves services by identifying the source of issues and  changes in the IT infrastructure. Service Mappings use the traffic-based actions to build a Service Map and also enable a more unified infrastructure. It also creates an index of services like URL, queue or Citrix VDI cloud mapping tools.

Check the below video to learn how to create business services using ServiceNow's service mapping process.

Key Features of ServiceNow Service Mapping

Service mapping makes the IT service process more reliable and it has following features:

• Visibility: Service Mapping lets users easily evaluate the underlying impact of infrastructure services.
• Efficiency: Automation of mapping services reduces the time users are handling errors.
• Accuracy: Whenever a change occurs, the Service Map is updated in real time.

Service Mapping Top-Down Approach

In ServiceNow ITOM,  Service Mapping creates dependencies between devices and services. This dependency helps to identify the impact a failed device has on the rest of the infrastructure services. Normally, organizations keep inventory of their devices in a  Configuration Management Database (CMDB). Service Mapping helps the organization keep track of services and their dependency with other Configuration Items (CI) within the organization. 

Figure: Top-down Service mapping by ServiceNow

Benefits of Service Mapping With ServiceNow:

• Ensures quality incident, change, and management processes.
• Helps to point out where outages occur and the impact of those outages.
• Improves resolution time of infrastructure issues.
• Requires less than 10% effort compared to ADDM tool for manual Service Mapping.
• Maps services with less input from service owners.
• Relates the top-down mapping of services in dynamically changing cloud environments.

How Does Service Mapping With ServiceNow Work?

The  Configuration Management Database (CMDB) is the best source of inventory information for any organization. However, this database cannot, on its own, find the root cause of incidents affected in an application or service in the organization. The underlying device which is connected with this application or service would have caused the issue. Service Mapping creates top-down views of applications or services of all organization devices using a method known as top-down discovery. The following methods are used for top-down discovery:

1. Pattern Based Discovery

ServiceNow discovers and maintains the relationship between devices and services using a method known as patterns. A pattern is a series of operations, which is used to create attributes of each of the devices and the relationship between them.

2. Traffic Based Discovery

Service mapping uses traffic information in the network to build a comprehensive database about application services and related devices. Traffic-based discovery will identify devices which failed to be discovered in the pattern-based discovery.

Applications Supported by Service Mapping

Using discovery, ServiceNow can identify a wide range of devices, operating systems, and network devices. This process is known as horizontal discovery. Service mapping discovers and maps the connection between the applications and devices. This is known as top-down discovery. Using patterns, ServiceNow discovers additional devices and applications. ServiceNow supports a wide range of applications: .Net Framework, Adobe, SAP, and so on.

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