What is Service Watch?

What is Service Watch?

"ServiceNow ServiceWatch has an innovative, “top-down” approach to discovering and mapping the relationships between IT components that comprise specific business services, even in dynamic, virtualized environments. "

ServiceNow Information site for ServiceWatch

How is this different than ServiceNow Discovery?

ServiceNow Discovery uses a "bottom-up" approach to discovery.  With ServiceNow Discovery, you setup credentials and IP Range sets to discover CIs and some relationships based on those IP Ranges upward.

ServiceNow ServiceWatch uses a "top-down" approach.  You setup an Business Service "entry point" such as an url and it traverses down from that entry point to discover the CIs and relationships for that business service.

How does Service Watch help you?

Typically Business Service to CI relationships are maintained manually as they are not discovered.  The issue with these manual relationships is that as you soon as you are finished creating them, they quickly become out-of-date.

ServiceNow ServiceWatch uses a top down approach to discovery.  By using this approach, you can specify a Business Service entry point and find all the CI and relationships underneath. 

What are the obstacles to setting up ServiceNow Service Watch?

1. Separate Product. Service Watch is a separate product from ServiceNow.  You have to script xml files on the collectors to send data to ServiceNow from Service Watch.  
2. Event Management not integrated yet. Service Watch has some Event Management, however it is not integrated to ServiceNow for Incident creation.  You would have to build that with the REST API.  This may change with Geneva.  If you don't use event management, this doesn't apply.
3. Collector install.  In order to discover CI and relationship information with Service Watch, you must install a collector service where all your ServiceNow Discovery Mid Servers are installed.
4. Additional Credentials Needed.  If you already use ServiceNow Discovery, you can use those accounts you use for ServiceNow Discovery credentials with Service Watch.  However there will likely need to be additional access needed to use certain Service Watch entry points.
5. Entry Point Setup. With traditional ServiceNow Discovery, you setup IP Ranges and credentials. and it if they are configured correctly, it will discover your CIs.  With Service Watch, you need to know what entry point type to use and what entry point parameters to use for each business service to discover.  You have to also setup IP ranges on the collector. It is more detail-oriented than ServiceNow Discovery in my opinion.
6. Collector Setup.  Collectors have xml files that say what IP ranges to use and what data to send to Service Watch and ServiceNow.  Unlike ServiceNow discovery, where you configure these details within ServiceNow,  you need to login to a server and configure these xml files.  If you have multiple collectors, this isn't as easy as the ServiceNow Discovery interface.

All about the Business Services

Usage of Service Watch all depends on your usage of business services.  If your business services are used in ServiceNow or wanted to be used, this can have a lot of benefit.  Manually setting up the relationship between CIs and Business Services is a really maintenance intensive and error prone process.   Being able to automate those relationships can save a lot of time and increase accuracy.