ServiceNow Collaborates With AT&T for Telecom Network Management

The workflow platform provider is working with AT&T to further develop Telecom Network Inventory, an offering that helps helping providers and partners manage their increasingly unruly 5G and fiber network footprints, ServiceNow tells CRN.

Rohit Batra, vice president and head of telecommunications, media, and technology products at ServiceNow

ServiceNow has teamed up with its longtime partner AT&T to further a new telecom offering aimed at helping providers and partners manage their often complex global 5G and fiber network footprints, the two companies announced on Monday.

Telecom Network Inventory, which is built on the ServiceNow Platform, consolidates a company’s full network footprint and allows these providers or channel partners to automate resources and services using a single platform, according to the Santa Clara, Calif.-based workflow platform provider.

AT&T gave ServiceNow strategic design and technical guidance for the development of Telecom Network Inventory, which was first introduced last year. Now, the carrier giant is also planning on using the product itself with the goal of getting clearer insight into its own massive network operations and to resolve issues faster, Rohit Batra, vice president and head of telecommunications, media, and technology products at ServiceNow, told CRN.

“In conversations that we’ve had with AT&T, we identified there was a core use case around providing a single telecom network interface into our platform. We worked with AT&T and they’ll now give us firsthand feedback on their experience with it and how we can continue to innovate on the product,” Batra said.

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For AT&T, consolidating hardware and software equipment and services onto a single platform is critical as its network footprint expands, the companies said. AT&T will continue to provide ongoing strategic guidance as ServiceNow builds out the Telecom Network Inventory platform.

ServiceNow is working to redefine network inventory for its partners, especially as the company seeks to work more diligently with its channel partners, a growing base that includes resellers, consultants, MSPs, and increasingly, developers, Batra said. The company is specifically focusing on partners that want to co-create and co-deliver with ServiceNow, he added.

Telecom Network Inventory will let partners simplify increasingly complex network environments and support network automation, all while creating a unique revenue stream for the channel at a time when investments are being made in new networks, like 5G, the company said.

“We’re providing that end-to-end visibility of what’s in the network, into a single platform,” Batra said.

The companies’ “Build” partners will be able to develop an entire solution on top of the ServiceNow platform, Batra said.

“[Partners] can take what we’ve built, contextualize the platform for the business use case and the requirements of the of the customer, and then do things like data migration, because some of these businesses have obviously existing, siloed data in legacy inventory systems so they don’t know what their investments are yielding or if there’s unused capacity,” he said. “[The partner] can make that integration work in their ecosystem.”

ServiceNow also plans on partnering with more carriers across the globe in the near future with its Telecom Network Inventory platform as more service providers show interest in the platform, Batra said.

ServiceNow in January introduced a new partner program and Erica Volini, who joined the company in August, as its new channel chief.