There is a growing demand for data center management automation among enterprises and software advancement and technical modernisation are the keys to unlocking these new efficiencies. The complexity of data centers continues to increase, and organisations must adapt to meet the rising challenges of efficient management. Tier44 Technologies has developed new approaches to address the cause. It is a leading developer of Data Center Management Software and has partnered with the ServiceNow platform to extend the native capabilities of ServiceNow in DCIM to enable monitoring, baselining and graphical visualization of data center configurations and to automate standard operating procedures. As an embedded application, fast and seamless implementation is possible. Clemens Pfeiffer, CEO of Tier44 Technologies was with the CEOViews team to share their business story.
Tier44 Technologies provides several innovative solutions and has more in the pipeline.
Story of Inception and Mission
Based in Santa Clara, California, Tier44 Technology was started in 2014 with the goal to build applications on ServiceNow by utilizing the knowledge and experience of the founders in data centres management, IT devices and applications. Since its inception, the team has kept looking for innovative approaches and unique capabilities to bring to ServiceNow users to improve operational efficiencies. Through automating tasks wherever possible, implementing “digital employees” where appropriate, reducing the number of clicks performed to complete a task and by eliminating data inconsistencies, they have succeeded in advancing the ability of users of ServiceNow to enable end-to-end management of a company’s data centres.
Over time, Tier44 Technologies has become the leading ServiceNow technology partner for Data Center Management specific applications and services to organizations using ServiceNow. Its certified solutions provide visibility, actionable intelligence, analytics and automation to help CIOs, IT directors, and facility managers to dynamically optimize capacity, and manage service levels and power consumptions within and across an organizations data centers.
Journey
For Tier44 Technologies, the journey toward success has been quite interesting. The company has won multiple awards. But Covid somewhat derailed the progress, which can mainly be attributed to missing in-person ServiceNow user group conferences. These “Knowledge” conferences were a great lead generation opportunity, and they were great for leveraging the excitement around ServiceNow. With over 20,000 people in 2019, there is a huge amount of energy and enthusiasm coming from such a conference, something an “online only” version could not generate. So, to present new innovations, and ideas and learn from other organizations about new priorities and requirements, the team is looking forward to the in-person conference in Las Vegas this year.
Approach
Tier44 Technologies provides several innovative solutions and has more in the pipeline. Offerings include award-winning applications via the ServiceNow store for visualization, rack elevation views and capacity aggregation of space, power, and network ports, and an add-on module for monitoring and data collection from a variety of IT and data center facility components directly into ServiceNow.
Tier44 also provides implementation services within ServiceNow for modules like IT Asset Management, CMDB, discovery, custom application development, UI builder components and flow designer-based workflows. There are graphical views like floor plans, and rack elevation views that Tier44 has added to ServiceNow. These graphical elements are natural extensions to the default forms/tables and basic charts provided by ServiceNow to greatly increase data center asset observability and management functions. New modules around monitoring and data collection are planned, including some related to Tier44’s patented dynamic power management which enables data centers to dynamically adjust the operation of large server farms to match variable demand, which can result in huge power cost savings while reducing the carbon footprint of an enterprise.
Welcoming new ideas
Ideas usually come from potential or existing customers during discussions about their specific use cases. Hearing about them gives a chance to validate these ideas with some other customers to see if it is something generic or just for a specific customer need. If similar requirement comes from multiple organisations, then the team investigates ways to build it, and if it is for a specific customer, they offer it as a one-off implementation.
ServiceNow as a platform
As a platform, ServiceNow provides unlimited opportunities for innovation but at the same time limits the process of implementation of certain solutions. Over time ServiceNow has become more and more flexible to allow partners to create a wide variety of innovative solutions, not just by Tier44 but by other ServiceNow technology partners as well.
Staying ahead of the competition
Innovation is all about doing things nobody has done before. Adding value to the users requires the right mix of potential, technology, experience, and implementation. An expert team with a strong technical background and willingness to listen to customer needs and an affordable price point can drive significant value to the user. Tier44 combines these and figures out ways to implement something innovative with a great user experience and then packages it up for release on the ServiceNow store.
Tier44 is an application developer but also provides consulting services on a limited basis to selected organisations and partners either by being a sub-contractor to a service provider or helping a service provider to learn how to best use and set up the Tier44 application.
Dynamic market trends
Dynamic market trends are somewhat limited in scope by the ServiceNow roadmap. When asked about what could be the future trends, Clemens said, “With the adoption rate of ServiceNow and the fact that over 50% of F1000 organizations already use it we are working within a steadily expanding SAM. We have seen this in the past with SAP and others, when such platforms and ecosystems materialize, if you can innovate quickly you might be able to leverage this growth. The main challenge is about finding the right organizations, requirements that we can meet to generate value and development/rollout cycles.”
Future vision
Tier44 Technologies has been in business for several years now but they believe they are still in the early stages of opportunity, and have a variety of innovations yet to be released. Adding more to that, Clemens said, “We will continue adding better products to the store as we implement more capabilities. We will also increase our services so we can support more service partners and help us identify additional innovative solutions.”
Tier44 Technologies is a Premier ServiceNow technology partner, building all its solutions on the ServiceNow platform for large enterprises, government agencies, and managed service providers. It provides strategic value-added solutions to users by utilizing data center facility components and hands-on technical improvisations. This is complemented by implementation services to enhance observability and management functions, delivering comprehensive, automated, cutting-edge solutions to companies.
