ServiceNow adds incident response platform to SaaS portfolio

ServiceNow has added an incident management platform to its software-as-a-service (SaaS) portfolio. Lightstep Incident Response is based on the Lightstep observability platform ServiceNow acquired last year and gives devops teams access to tools that enable them to quickly determine the root cause of incidents via a self-service portal. ServiceNow said the new platform allows developers and site reliability engineers (SRE) to reduce downtime by arming them with the service context and automation to effectively respond to incidents such as software bugs, power outages, or downed networks.

RJ Jainendra, vice president and general manager of emerging businesses at ServiceNow, stated: “What we’re hearing from developers and SREs is that eliminating ‘context switch’—flipping between observability, on‑call, collaboration, and incident management tools—would reduce human errors and speed up response times. With Lightstep Incident Response, we are providing teams with a single platform that orchestrates on‑call escalation, alert grouping, incident analysis, and remediation, while seamlessly integrating with collaboration and incident management tools to eliminate context switch and resolve incidents with speed.”

The new platform manages an organization’s on‑call rotations by synchronizing schedules onto a shared calendar; specific tags indicate who needs to be looped in based on the nature of an incident and the service that is impacted. Collaborators are then invited to a dedicated channel based on prebuilt collaboration integrations for quick remediation. They can also create automations that self‑triage and self‑remediate problems should they reoccur.

Lightstep Incident Response integrates with leading monitoring, observability, and collaboration tools such as LogicMonitor, Sumo Logic, and Zoom. “For ServiceNow customers, Lightstep Incident Response natively integrates with the Now Platform, allowing users to quickly respond to or escalate incidents to the right team all on one platform and connecting incident response to core operations—putting the entire power of their organization behind the end‑customer experience,” the firm added.

“Combining real‑time observability and incident response gives on‑call engineers powerful insight into the changes that matter and the ability to act quickly,” said Ben Sigelman, general manager of Lightstep and cocreator of OpenTelemetry. “With the introduction of Lightstep Incident Response, we are delivering the all‑in‑one solution for developers and SREs to act with the speed and efficiency necessary to maintain exceptional experiences for customers using their applications and services.”

Lightstep Incident Response is offered as free and paid versions, with a pricing model based on the number of active services being managed.