Service Mapping finds IT infrastructure in the context of a business service. It creates a complete and accurate map of all applications, servers, databases, virtual machines, network connections, platform‑as‑a‑service (PaaS) services, and other IT components that support the service.

The map also shows the service‑level relationships that connect components into an end‑to‑end topology, providing crucial data that’s not available from infrastructure discovery tools. This patented approach automates and accelerates mapping by focusing on what’s important: the business service.

Service Mapping eliminates confusing, irrelevant infrastructure data to deliver clear, concise, and complete topology information. A simple user interface, and underlying processes for mapping multiple services in parallel, guides users through automated mapping, so IT can gain visibility faster.

Once Service Mapping maps a service, it intelligently searches IT infrastructure, applications, and PaaS services for changes that affect the way services are delivered. When Service Mapping detects a change, it updates the related service maps in real time.

Maps may also be enriched with mashups of other data sources. As a result, IT staff have immediate access to up‑to‑date service topology data—even in dynamic IT environments that are in a constant state of flux.

Service Mapping also maintains a complete history of service topology that allows users to see changes made to a service between any two points in time. IT can rapidly correlate changes with issues—isolating problems more quickly, reducing mean time to recovery (MTTR), and improving service quality.

Service Mapping uses traffic‑based discovery to automatically generate initial maps, then uses machine‑learning to refine results.

It has hundreds of component‑specific patterns out of the box, which provide a deep understanding of a wide range of applications, infrastructure components, and PaaS services. It also contains an easy‑to‑use editor to modify or create new patterns for IT components with no existing pattern.

Service Mapping can also discover and map the most intricate infrastructure topologies. It understands concepts such as clusters and enterprise buses, and can trace services across these redundant and shared IT components.

Instead of handling CI issues map by map and refining each by itself, the new approach is to save time with bulk discovery, mapping, and error resolution handling that resolves CI issues systemically for quicker time to value.

Service Mapping is tightly integrated with ServiceNow Discovery to form a unified collection architecture on the Now Platform for discovering enterprise hybrid infrastructure and services.

ServiceNow Discovery provides a comprehensive inventory of physical and logical assets within the IT infrastructure. These CIs and relationships are populated into the ServiceNow Configuration Management Database (CMDB).  

Service Mapping then uncovers the hybrid infrastructure underlying the business services and connects these CIs to form individual service maps.

IT staff can drill down seamlessly from service maps into detailed asset information, which provides a powerful, integrated environment for resolving service issues and managing service changes.

Service Mapping is tightly integrated with the ServiceNow CMDB, populating service maps into the CMDB to create a service‑aware, single system of record. This in turn enables other ServiceNow applications with information that makes them service‑aware.