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.
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In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I explore ServiceNow’s impressive growth in the context of its recent quarterly earnings.
Highlights
00:23 — About a month ago, ServiceNow became the number one fastest-growing major cloud vendor in the world, as measured on our Cloud Wars Top 10 Growth Chart. Within Q3, it had subscription revenue growth of 27%, which eclipsed the 25% growth that Oracle posted for a similar quarter.
01:03 — This last quarter marked the fifth straight quarter of subscription revenue acceleration for ServiceNow. Right at a time when most Cloud Wars Top 10 companies were reporting declining growth rates, ServiceNow was going up.
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02:16 — Bill McDermott said generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is a tailwind of growth for ServiceNow. It now has more than 300 customers in the pipeline from every industry, every buying center, and every stage of testing. It is rapidly building out its industry-specific story. Its partner ecosystem is booming. McDermott talked about the impact of the extended partnership it has with Microsoft.
03:17 — McDermott has hinted now about the continued broadening of the company’s portfolio. Last year, it moved into the enterprise resource planning (ERP) space, and that was with supply chain and financials. McDermott has hinted about new areas it’ll move into this year.
04:00 — This is a company that has been clicking. For ServiceNow to win, McDermott, says, it doesn’t require that other big software vendors lose. He said it’s trying to build collaborative relationships with SAP, Salesforce, and Oracle.
04:28 — I think its prospects for 2024 look very strong. We’ll find out on January 24 exactly how Q4 turned out for ServiceNow.