ServiceNow
ServiceNow founder, chief product officer, Fred Luddy
ServiceNow is absolutely killing it in the cloud computing software world. And Fred Luddy, the company's founder and visionary, has a new plan to keep it that way.
ServiceNow had an awesome IPO in 2012, the first company to go public after Facebook's IPO disaster, and has been firing on all thrusters ever since. It just reported a solid beat-the-street quarter, too, telling investors that it expects to grow 2014 revenues by about 55% to finish at $652 million to $657 million. Analysts had previously expected $644.24 million.
The company's flagship offering helps companies diagnose and manage tech problems when glitches occur, and automate routine technical tasks, so a human doesn't have to.
Next up, Luddy wants to turn you into a programmer, giving you the freedom to write the apps you need for work for your PC, smartphone and tablet, with no programming experience whatsoever, Luddy told Business Insider. You would just point, click, drag some stuff around and you have yourself a new app.
About a year ago, it introduced the basic service for this, called "ServiceNow App Creator" and on Tuesday it introduced an app store where those homegrown apps can be shared, called ServiceNow Share.
This is a concept called "citizen programmers." In 2009 Gartner predicted that by 2014, 25% of new business apps would be created by non-programmer business users.
That hasn't exactly happened. Most of us are still dependent on our IT department to give us a new app for our smartphones, tablets, SharePoint or the web app to do our work.
Or we go out and find a cloud app that works, and buy it ourselves. While that helps us, it has created an IT security horror called "shadow IT." That's when a company's sensitive data winds up stored in all kinds of places in the cloud, or on devices, that the IT department doesn't know about. Good for hackers. Bad for keeping the company's materials secure and compliant with laws that regulate how they protect information.
There's is a rising tide of companies trying to change this move to shadow IT by offering citizen developer tools. These include TrackVia, Interneer, Appery.io and ServiceNow.
So instead of using someone else's cloud service, you create the app you want yourself. For instance, business users have created apps that reports maintenance issues in office cubicles, handle requests for marketing materials, track equipment loans, and so on.
The downside is, your company would have to buy a subscription to ServiceNow App Creator. It's not something you can fire up on your own.