Nutanix partners with ServiceNow to simplify IT operations during crisis

Nutanix has announced it has expanded its integration partnership with ServiceNow, in a bid to simplify IT operations during the COVID-19 crisis.

On top of the expansion, the company also announced new capabilities in Nutanix Calm, its application automation and management solution for DevOps.

"As customers look to streamline their IT operations and costs during this global crisis, these new features will help customers to simplify and automate infrastructure, application, and cloud management," Nutanix says.

"As IT teams focus on delivering remote work solutions, they sometimes struggle to support the business more broadly because they are strapped for time and resources," explains Rajiv Mirani, chief technology officer at Nutanix.

"This strengthened integration with ServiceNow, along with the broader suite of Nutanix automation solutions, will allow IT teams to reduce the amount of time they spend on day-to-day management of their cloud infrastructure, as well as applications, so they can focus on supporting business priorities," he says.

Mirani says manual processes are still the norm in IT despite the cost savings and increased speed from automating repetitive operations. It is expected that by 2024 organisations will lower operational costs by 30% by combining hyperautomation technologies with redesigned operational processes, a transition that might accelerate in response to the current global situation.

According to a PwC survey, 62% of organisations are looking at containing costs, and 54% are concerned about the potential or significant impact to business operations as a result of the global pandemic.

"Nutanix aims to simplify automation and make it more accessible to IT professionals at all levels," says Mirani.

"With Nutanix, IT generalists will be able to simply set up triggers and automated actions to simplify day-to-day operations. Integration with leading automation solutions like ServiceNow allows Nutanix customers to further simplify cloud and application management by integrating with their existing IT ticketing system to simplify workflows," he explains.

"With these latest product enhancements, Nutanix aims to significantly expand on the suite of automation and cost governance benefits for its customers."

To further enable IT teams, Nutanix announced strengthened integrations and product capabilities to simplify operations. Specifically:

• Simplified DevOps: Nutanix Calm 3.0 will deliver expanded capabilities as well as strengthened ServiceNow integration. Customers can now automate their app lifecycles, including upgrades, patches, expansions, and more, while taking advantage of the approval flow and audit capabilities of ServiceNow. They can also increase their security posture by maintaining passwords in a central CyberArk vault, particularly important for government and enterprise customers. In addition to the strengthened integration, Calm 3.0 enables DevOps teams to easily automate workloads across an organisation's hybrid cloud infrastructure, as well as provision Infrastructure as Code (IaC) with Python-based domain-specific language (DSL) for writing Calm blueprints. The Calm DSL offers all the richness of the Calm UI, but with the additional benefit of being human-readable, version-controlled code that can handle even the most complex application scenarios.
   
• Simplified Infrastructure Management: Building on the previously released integration with ServiceNow, Nutanix Prism Pro customers can now respond to alerts and incidents directly in their ServiceNow portal. For example, customers can not only track infrastructure shortages or issues thru automatically created tickets in ServiceNow but also resolve them right in their ticketing system. Adding third-party applications to trigger automation helps customers create an end-to-end IT service management process.
   
• Simplified Cloud Governance and Cost Optimisation: The increased integration with ServiceNow will allow customers to simplify cost optimisation and security practices, just as they're increasing their reliance on public cloud. For example, they'll be able to limit unintended public cloud consumption, which often leads to significant budget overages. With this solution, customers will be able to automatically pull Nutanix Xi Beam's cost and security optimisation recommendations into existing ServiceNow workflows by automatically creating tickets based on cost savings recommendations and security vulnerability alerts and assign them to an appropriate owner. 
   

Expanded ServiceNow integrations are currently available to customers. Calm 3.0 is currently under development.