ServiceNow Ecosystem Stability Transformation

ServiceNow ecosystem stability transformation

How HCLTech helped a global digital payments platform stabilize their ServiceNow ecosystem and deliver multimodal operational gains through automation, data cleanup and predictive monitoring

5 min Lesen

Overview

A leading global digital payments platform operating across hundreds of markets depends on ServiceNow as a critical backbone for IT operations, service management and business continuity. As the organization scaled rapidly, their ServiceNow ecosystem also expanded in size and complexity. Over time, this growth introduced operational challenges which began impacting efficiency, system responsiveness and governance.

To address these challenges and unlock full potential, the organization partnered with HCLTech to transform their ServiceNow environment into a stable, automated and scalable ecosystem.

The Challenge

Managing scale, complexity and operational inefficiencies

As the ServiceNow ecosystem grew, several interconnected challenges began affecting performance, operational efficiency and governance:

The CMDB had expanded beyond 20TB, creating storage pressure, slowing performance, and increasing infrastructure costs.
Persistent performance disruptions—including semaphore saturation, SQL anomalies and node restarts—resulted in frequent incidents and reactive troubleshooting.
Large volumes of stale, duplicate and orphaned configuration items (CIs), combined with discovery gaps across corporate, site and credit environments, reduced asset visibility and data reliability.
A high number of Slack-initiated service requests and repetitive tickets increased workload for support teams.
Governance challenges across releases, integrations and huge API transactions introduced operational risks and affected stability.
The environment required scalable operational processes capable of supporting a distributed landscape and maintaining audit readiness.

Together, these factors highlighted the need for a more automated, structured, and scalable operating model to restore stability and efficiency.

The Objective

Improving resilience, automation and operational efficiency

The organization defined a clear roadmap to enhance their ServiceNow ecosystem and ensure long-term sustainability. Key objectives included:

Leveraging ServiceNow Instance Observer to proactively identify and remediate performance issues, improving system reliability and user experience.
Cleaning and optimizing the CMDB to reclaim storage capacity and improve configuration accuracy.
Automating repetitive service requests and minimizing manual intervention.
Identify and fix repetitive incidents.
Improving governance across release and upgrade processes to deliver more reliable and seamless releases and upgrades.
Modernizing the mid-server infrastructure and optimizing discovery architecture to improve system stability and scalability.
Strengthening API security by implementing access policies for table APIs and upgrading API service accounts from Basic authentication to OAuth 2.0.
Improving system performance through architectural optimization via UI/Work node separation and enabling API governance to reduce high-volume API transactions.

These priorities were designed to create a robust, automated and high-performance ServiceNow environment capable of supporting business growth.

The Solution

Driving platform stability through automation, modernization and governance

Introducing Observability and Proactive Remediation

HCLTech implemented observability capabilities to continuously analyze server response patterns, SQL activity and CPU utilization. This enabled early detection of anomalies and performance risks. Automated alerts and predefined remediation workflows helped teams resolve issues proactively, reducing noise and minimizing reactive troubleshooting.

Modernizing mid-server infrastructure and optimizing discovery

A mid-server infrastructure was migrated, replacing more than 15 virtual machines and installing 89 mid server services across discovery and integration. This modernization improved platform stability, reduced infrastructure overhead, and enhanced discovery performance. In addition, the introduction of more than 40 new discovery schedules, combined with mid-server tuning, helped eliminate discovery gaps and improve the accuracy of configuration data.

Enhancing CMDB health through automated data cleanup

A structured CMDB cleanup initiative was launched to improve data accuracy and reclaim storage capacity. Automated workflows were introduced to identify and remove stale records, eliminate duplicate configuration items, and resolve orphaned entries. These efforts significantly improved CMDB integrity, enabling more accurate asset visibility and operational decision-making.

Strengthening release governance and operational controls

HCLTech established standardized operating procedures for release, incident, and upgrade management while improving release pipelines and implementing a structured upgrade approach, including a streamlined three-week Zurich upgrade plan. These initiatives enhanced system reliability, minimized operational risk, and strengthened governance across integrations, APIs, and platform upgrades.

Improved analysis and operational metrics

Performed deep dive on ticket patterns, identified root causes for long standing and recurring incidents, and resolved them. Leveraged the interaction module and implemented automation via chatbot to capture incoming user queries. Introduced automated fulfillment pathways for most requested services and drove down service request volume by 64%.

The Impact

Delivering measurable improvements in performance, efficiency and capacity

Improved platform performance and reduced service request volume

Resolved more than 16 major performance issues, including SQL anomalies, semaphore saturation, scheduler delays and node restarts.
Configured more than 23 alerts from instance observer, enabling faster alert review & resolution and minimizing operational disruption.
Achieved 40% reduction in API transactions through API optimizations, significantly lowering API load and improving platform performance.
Achieved a 64% reduction in service request volume through data cleanup process optimization and automation.
Analyzed system error logs and reduced the code level error generation by 70%.

Significant reduction in upgrade timelines

Achieved a 67% reduction in upgrade timelines compared with previous upgrades.
Achieved 66% reduction in change freeze timelines during version upgrades, enabling continuous development and deployment while reducing release disruptions.

Improved CMDB health and reclaimed storage capacity

Removed more than 9 million stale records, eliminated 6,959 duplicate entries and resolved more than 2,281 orphaned records, significantly improving data accuracy.
Reduced disk usage from approximately 20.17TB to 14.73TB, with optimized stabilization at 15.2TB, demonstrating improved storage efficiency and reclaimed capacity.

Strengthened platform stability and discovery accuracy

Removed more than 9 million stale records, eliminated 6,959 duplicate entries and resolved more than 2,281 orphaned
Enhanced discovery coverage with more than 40 additional discovery schedules, improving configuration visibility and asset accuracy.

Delivering the outcome together

This transformation was driven by close collaboration between our client and HCLTech, combining deep platform expertise with proven automation and managed services capabilities. By aligning with clear performance and operational KPIs, the partnership delivered meaningful and measurable improvements while ensuring uninterrupted service continuity.

Conclusion

With a more stable, automated and optimized ServiceNow platform in place, the organization is well positioned to scale their operations and support future growth. Ongoing initiatives focus on expanding automation coverage, strengthening predictive monitoring capabilities and further improving CMDB governance and discovery accuracy.

These enhancements will enable the organization to maintain a high-performance, cost-efficient ServiceNow ecosystem that continues to deliver reliability, efficiency and operational excellence at scale.