Welcome to the Cloud Wars Minute — your daily cloud news and commentary show. Each episode provides insights and perspectives around the “reimagination machine” that is the cloud.
In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I examine three signs that ServiceNow is positioning itself to become a cybersecurity powerhouse.
Highlights
00:02 — We’ve recently seen ServiceNow position itself as a security powerhouse, and I wonder if that is ultimately the grand plan, the grand vision of CEO Bill McDermott. We’ve heard and seen ServiceNow sort of evolve its overall position. It’s tinkered around with the Control Tower platform and so on. We’ve seen it now centered on this AI Control Tower for business reinvention.
00:50 — So, on July 22, it had its Q2 earnings call, and McDermott’s opening remarks were heavily, heavily focused on their fast-growing security business. He said it’s the fastest-growing major security vendor in the world. He said it’s now the eighth largest. He talked about how quickly that part of ServiceNow’s business is growing, and he used some very colorful examples of why this is so important.
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01:34 — A couple weeks after that, on August 3, ServiceNow named a new chief marketing officer. That chief marketing officer held the same position, CMO, at Armis, a cybersecurity company that ServiceNow has just acquired. So, of all the people, you know, who might be more involved in platform reinvention, McDermott chose as the company’s new CMO somebody who was specializing, at the time of the acquisition, in cybersecurity.
03:41 — This AI Control Tower for business reinvention is very nice, and I think it sounds good. I think it’s temporary. I think the cybersecurity place is where they’re going to go to. And again, I just track that right back to the July 22 Q2 earnings call. Of all the things in the world Bill McDermott could have chosen to talk about, he could have gone into great detail about the AI Control Tower.
04:39 — I would expect that ServiceNow is going to try to straddle those two areas, AI Control Tower and cybersecurity, saying they’re really two sides of the same coin. But I think for customers, it’s going to provide a lot of clarity about where the company is headed, where they’re going, and how they’ll be able to build out unique capabilities across industries.
