Microsoft and ServiceNow: A Strategic Partnership Driving Innovation
Microsoft’s collaboration with ServiceNow is designed to enhance integration across their respective platforms and cloud capabilities. This strategic move has established a new era of customer-centric solutions, with a recent example: the migration of Microsoft’s internal ServiceNow instances to Microsoft Azure. This migration created a blueprint for other enterprises to replicate, improving operational efficacy, productivity, and cloud cost management.
“Our decision to move the ServiceNow platform to Azure has proven to be a game-changer. This collaborative journey seamlessly blends the robust capabilities of ServiceNow with the cutting-edge infrastructure of Azure, ushering in a new era of agility, innovation, and customer-centric solutions.”
—Katharine Kennedy, global head and general manager, ServiceNow Business Unit, Microsoft
Paul Fipps, president of Global Industries and Strategic Growth at ServiceNow, adds how the partnership has been mutually beneficial:
“As we continue our transformative journey together, ServiceNow and Microsoft have deepened our partnership to create a new era of innovation and collaboration across industries. Together, we’re empowering organizations to bring intelligence to every corner of the enterprise and drive business transformation at scale.”
Accelerating Innovation Through Azure
Microsoft Digital—the company’s IT organization—prioritized agility, innovation, and customer focus when considering this migration. Combining Azure’s data and AI capabilities with ServiceNow’s expertise in digital workflows was critical. Microsoft anticipated deeper interoperability and accelerated innovation when hosting instances in Azure.
Strategic Planning and Implementation
To facilitate the migration, Microsoft worked closely with ServiceNow. They jointly created a detailed migration plan aligned with business objectives, policies, practices, and legal agreements.
Collaborative Team Approach
A virtual team (v-team) including stakeholders from both organizations supervised the project, defining roles, responsibilities, and key performance indicators (KPIs). The team set an ambitious goal to move all ServiceNow instances to Azure within a month, starting with the nonproduction instances. This pace required proactive participation, frequent meetings, and dedicated communication channels, like a Microsoft Teams channel, to address issues in real-time.
Minimizing Business Impact
The v-team prioritized minimal business disruption. ServiceNow conducted load simulation tests, while the ServiceNow Architecture Team performed detailed architectural reviews. A hyper-care team and monitoring dashboards further contributed to a smooth transition.
“It feels good for Microsoft Digital to be Customer Zero and document learnings along the way and help other enterprise customers understand how they can achieve a similar outcome.”
—Anahit Hovhannisyan, principal group product manager, Microsoft Digital
‘Customer Zero’ Approach
Microsoft Digital, as “Customer Zero,” adopted and implemented its products, helping to refine them and establish a replicable migration process for other customers.
Migration Methodology
The move to Azure combined automated and manual methods customized for each ServiceNow instance. Strategic timing decisions were made in advance to ensure business continuity, giving stakeholders time to perform thorough testing. Rollback strategies and a digital operations center were also instrumental in the migration’s organization.
Lessons Learned and Best Practices
Important lessons were learned throughout the migration:
- Prioritize the user: Keep the user experience central to the planning.
- Document everything: Ensure all stakeholders could validate business objectives with a well-documented scope.
- Establish clear communication: Use a consistent communication cadence.
- Plan for testing and rollbacks: Include a test run in a sandbox environment and a rollback plan.
- Migrate in phases: Start with smaller instances to minimize risk.
- Anticipate downtime and failures: Have a hyper-care team on standby.
Benefits for Employees and Customers
This partnership started in 2019 with the goal of joint innovation for US commercial clients and regulated markets in the US, Singapore, and Australia. Partnering customers can leverage Azure’s data protection, security, and privacy for their businesses. ServiceNow on Azure was introduced to US commercial customers in 2023 and is accessible through the Azure Marketplace.
“ServiceNow is incredible and gives us full control over our data and cloud infrastructure. I can access everything from a single interface. Since moving ServiceNow to Azure, there have been no major impacts or changes to internal work processes. We keep leveraging all the incredible capabilities inherent to the ServiceNow platform with zero disruption.”
—Miguel Meza, partner technology strategist, Microsoft
The migration took less than 45 days. It delivered a seamless transition with minimal disruption. The move ensures that Microsoft employees benefit from tighter integrations between the ServiceNow platform and Azure services.
Looking forward, Microsoft and ServiceNow continue to integrate more Azure capabilities into the platform. With over 100 native integrations, the partnership will focus on new, integrated experiences. The aim is to introduce cognitive services and intelligence to ServiceNow products with Microsoft 365 and Azure.
