Snowflake Connector for ServiceNow Available in Public Preview

ServiceNow, Inc. offers a well-known SaaS application, with companies in multiple industries using it to help manage digital workloads for a variety of departments and operations. What if it was as easy as just a few clicks to get ServiceNow data directly into your Snowflake account so you could combine it with other data sources, including ERPs, HRs, and CRMs? Well, now it is. 

Today, we’re excited to announce that a native Snowflake Connector for ServiceNow is available in public preview. The connector provides instant access to up-to-date ServiceNow data without the need to manually integrate against API endpoints. Natively built inside the Data Cloud using Snowflake’s Native Application Framework, the connector leverages built-in security and reliability capabilities.

Because the native Snowflake Connector for ServiceNow is built as a native application, you can get ServiceNow data directly in your Snowflake account in just a few easy steps—and the whole setup takes less than 5 minutes. 

First, find the connector in Snowflake Marketplace and click “Get” to enable it directly in your Snowflake account. Next, establish a connection with your ServiceNow instance. Choose between basic login and password or the more secure OAuth authentication. Finally, select: (i) the tables you want to replicate; (ii) their destination; and (iii) the synchronization schedule.

That’s it! From now on, the data will automatically refresh (based on your desired frequency) in your Snowflake account.

The connector supports both the initial load of historical data as well as incremental changes. For example, if you select a TASK table for replication, it will first load all the existing records from the table and then begin periodically checking for new inserts, deletes, or updates. Currently, the sync schedule can be as frequent as every 30 minutes or as infrequent as once per day. You can enable or disable the synchronization of individual tables at any time. You can also reload an entire table from scratch if you wish.

The data is ready for querying out of the box. That’s because, after the ingestion, the connector unpacks the raw JSON format into a flattened view with each field mapped into a column and proper data type. The connector also detects schema changes and adjusts the views accordingly, so you can be sure that your data is always in perfect sync.

Monitoring the state and performance of the replication is equally easy. You can choose from a variety of views that describe the status of synchronization for each table, row count, last sync duration and throughput, error logs, and more. In addition, you can enable email alerts so you will be notified about any problems that the connector couldn’t resolve by itself and therefore require your attention.

When designing the connector, we knew that making it radically easy to use was not enough. It also had to be a fully managed service so that data engineers didn’t need to spend time managing the performance, security, and governance of transferring the data. 

You can get the historical data loads or incremental updates from any number of tables with equal ease because as a native Data Cloud integration, the connector leverages Snowflake’s scalability of compute resources. Select different virtual warehouse sizes on demand to balance cost vs. throughput, or use serverless compute to let Snowflake automatically resize and scale resources up or down, as required, based on the data volume, number of tables, and sync frequency.

On the security front, data is transferred directly from your ServiceNow instance to your Snowflake account and encrypted in transit. There is no other infrastructure used in between. Once your data reaches its final destination, access to the ingested data is governed by Snowflake’s built-in access controls.

You can now use your ServiceNow data available in the Data Cloud with your other essential data sets to get a holistic view of your business. Snowflake’s own IT team leverages data from the native ServiceNow connector in concert with other data sources including ERP, CRM, and ITSM data. In doing so, they’ve been able to streamline IT operations. Check out this video to learn more.

Likewise, Siemens Healthineers utilizes the connector to access enterprise asset information as part of its well-resonated, long-term, performance-oriented Value Partnerships with its customers. The team builds Microsoft Power BI-based reports to improve efficiency and transform care delivery, allowing managers of daily clinical operations at hospitals, country managers, and headquarters employees to get an overview of the most important operational and contractual performance indicators. These performance indicators cover clinical asset management, service ticket volume, and device uptime as well as internal risk, opportunity, and claim management, to name just a few. The data is automatically updated, once per day, to reflect the latest changes (and a more frequent update cycle would be also possible, although it is not required for this particular use case).

Accessing ServiceNow data via the Snowflake Connector for ServiceNow turned out to be an extremely high-performing and reliable solution for Siemens Healthineers, and a substantial improvement compared to other options, such as a web service. Since the connector does not put significant load on the ServiceNow instance, it does not affect regular operations of the enterprise asset management system at all.

The reports based on the data from the Snowflake Connector for ServiceNow give Siemens Healthineers an overview of the operational performance of clinical equipment at a hospital site. In addition, the reports aid in managing contractual indicators such as risks and opportunities, and make these indicators transparent to internal stakeholders in management, operations, and finance, enabling fact-based business decision-making.

Try out the Snowflake Connector for ServiceNow by installing it from Snowflake Marketplace. It’s available with no additional licensing cost and uses Snowflake credits for compute and storage. You can also explore the product documentation here.