Liberty University Selects Service-now.com SaaS for Modern IT Service Management

LOUISVILLE, Ky., Sept. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- itSMF Fusion –  Service-now.com, the creators of modern software as a service (SaaS) for IT service management, today announced Liberty University has selected Service-now.com to automate the IT requirements of a rapidly growing University.

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Founded in 1971 and located in Lynchburg, Virginia, on a 6,500-acre campus, Liberty University has grown during the past five years from a Christian college with a total of 19,000 students, on campus and online, to a formidable Christian University that today educates a combined total of 64,000 residential and distance education students. Today Liberty is ranked as one of the world's largest online educators and offers more than 50 degree programs.

Liberty decided to get out of the business of building, hosting and managing their own IT tools and recognized an opportunity to get more value more quickly by moving to a new model and modern technology offered by Service-now.com. Liberty plans to use the Service-now.com platform to replace 59 tools, including a homegrown ITSM application supported by a combined SharePoint and RightNow knowledge base.

According to Nick VanWingerden, Liberty University's director of IT logistics, "For us it really came down to the value and vision of Service-now.com. They are unique in their fanatical pursuit of simplicity, from the technology to the user experience. A flexible and intuitive IT platform will be critical in helping us scale our IT services to support our school's remarkable growth."

Liberty plans to use Service-now.com for the following capabilities:

• Incident, problem, change, release, configuration, knowledge, demand, availability and resource management;
• IT service portfolio planning, service catalog and IT cost management;
• Application dependency mapping, discovery and CMDB;
• Unified task and project management; and
• Management of physical assets and strategic processes.

Liberty expects the following benefits from its use of Service-now.com:

• Improved resource utilization;
• Reduced tool maintenance and operational costs;
• Increased operational efficiencies;
• More consistent and timely response to academic demands and service requests;
• Increased IT service efficiency using CMDB configuration item (CI) service relationships and root cause analysis;
• Integrated knowledge to unify the organization, eliminate silos and increase collaboration;
• Improved service availability through better change and release management; and
• A Web interface to IT services that mirrors the next-generation user experience of popular consumer and social Web properties.

"We are pleased to add Liberty University to our rapidly growing list of Service-now.com higher ed customers," said Gene Sharp, Service-now.com sales director. "Liberty is under pressure to stay ahead of the IT service requirements of a fast-growing university while keeping IT costs under control. After evaluating 13 ITSM tools, including offerings from all of the major vendors, Liberty concluded Service-now.com was the only ITSM platform capable to meet their extensive needs."

Service-now.com is a platinum sponsor of itSMF Fusion this week in Louisville, Ky. Visit booth 1802 to see highlights of the third major Service-now.com release this year. After itSMF Fusion, join Service-now.com on Tuesday, Sept. 28th for the "Back to School" virtual conference to hear ITSM pros from leading IT organizations discuss the latest trends in the industry.

A live instance of the Service-now.com application is always accessible at http://demo.service-now.com (no registration required).

About Service-now.com

The Service-now.com enterprise IT service management platform combines ITIL v3 process support and SaaS delivery to provide flexible, intuitive and self-managing applications. Founded in 2004, Service-now.com uses a new business model and modern technologies to disrupt the status quo. According to the 2010 Inc. 500 list, Service-now.com is the fastest-growing IT management software company. For more information, please visit http://www.service-now.com/ or http://blog.service-now.com.

SOURCE Service-now.com