By Boomi
As a ServiceNow Certified Bronze Technology Partner and the only company with a ServiceNow-certified master data hub, Boomi offers a proven, trusted way to extend ServiceNow’s capabilities and help companies do more with this powerful platform for streamling workplace processes.
And that’s exactly why Virtustream turned to Boomi when it needed to create “ticketing integration as a service’ for its customers.
Cloud Benefits for the Risk Averse
Attracted by low initial costs, little ongoing maintenance, and elastic scalability, many small businesses took the cloud plunge early on. Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure gained thousands of customers from this initial cloud “land rush.”
But, when established businesses — especially large enterprises — first started moving workloads to the cloud, they didn’t move mission-critical systems. They moved workloads that could fail without causing significant harm to operations.
That justified reluctance was an opportunity for a new kind of cloud hosting company, one that could offer virtually fail-safe cloud hosting for companies and their essential digital systems. About ten years ago, Virtustream formed to provide this mission-critical cloud service to the world’s leading organizations.
Read our Virtustream partner success profile to learn more about how Virtustream used Boomi to create ticketing integration as a service.
In addition to supporting applications in the cloud, Virtustream hosts databases and operating systems for more than 200 hundred Fortune 1000 companies. It also hosts workloads for federal agencies and the vendors they work with, including defense contractors.
“We host our customers’ financial systems, like SAP. Healthcare companies run their software in our cloud. And we don’t just host the applications and systems, we support them as well. If something goes wrong, it’s on us to fix it,” notes Kyle Woodcock, monitoring and service management lead for Virtustream.
Meeting the ITSM Challenge
Virtustream’s customers use a variety of ticketing systems for IT service management (ITSM). Some use ServiceNow, as does Virtustream. But others employ BMC Remedy (now Helix) or other tools, including home-grown systems. Customers opened tickets on their systems and then called or emailed Virtustream support to open a ticket with them.
But some customers wanted a faster response and tighter connection with Virtustream support. To do that, the company created a custom integration between Virtustream’s ServiceNow instance and the customer’s ticketing system.
The custom solution worked but was hard to maintain. A change on either side of the integration required more coding and testing. As more customers asked for this tighter connection, it became difficult and expensive to maintain.
Necessity — The Mother of Invention
Although the author of the famous proverb is unknown, its truth is demonstrated somewhere virtually every day. And, Virtustream’s use of Boomi to create ticketing integration as a service is a good example.
Virtustream needed a way to integrate ticketing systems without custom coding each one. It implemented Boomi as the “glue” between Virtustream’s ServiceNow instance and any customer’s ticketing system. Voila! Ticketing integration as a service.
“When a customer opens an issue on their side that automatically opens a ticket in our side in ServiceNow,” continues Woodcock. “We can update and close out those issues, which closes the issues on their side and keeps them up to date.”
It’s business as usual for Virtustream and its customer, while behind the scenes Boomi handles all the communication between ticketing systems.
For Virtustream, ticketing integration as service with Boomi is fast and reliable. Once Virtustream understands a customer’s requirements, implementation is cut-and-paste with minor tweaking. Moreover, Boomi provides error handling and monitoring out of the box, which means Virtustream always knows what’s going on with its customers’ critical systems. No nasty surprises.
Find out how Boomi can help you integrate ServiceNow with everything. Read the solution brief.