ServiceNow to Acquire Lightstep, Combining Next-Generation Observability with the World’s Leading Enterprise Digital Workflow Platform
ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW) has agreed to acquire Lightstep, a leader in observability solutions, enhancing its position in digital workflows. This acquisition aims to improve application performance monitoring across enterprises, helping DevOps teams optimize software delivery. By integrating Lightstep's capabilities, ServiceNow anticipates transforming how software solutions are provided, facilitating faster innovation and operational insights. The deal, expected to close in Q2 2021, will leverage Lightstep's technology to strengthen the Now Platform, although financial details remain undisclosed.
- Acquisition strengthens ServiceNow's position in digital workflows.
- Integration of Lightstep's observability technology enhances application performance monitoring.
- Potential to accelerate innovation and operational insights for enterprises.
- No financial terms disclosed, raising transparency concerns.
- Integration challenges may arise from assimilating Lightstep's technology.
- Potential retention issues with key Lightstep employees post-acquisition.
ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW), the leading digital workflow company that makes work, work better for people, today announced it has signed an agreement to acquire next-generation observability leader Lightstep.
By acquiring Lightstep, ServiceNow will solidify and accelerate its position as the world’s leading enterprise platform for digital businesses. ServiceNow is already a recognized market leader in IT service management, IT operations management, and digital workflows. With Lightstep, an emerging pioneer in next-generation application monitoring and observability, ServiceNow will help DevOps engineers build, deploy, run, and monitor state-of-the-art, cloud-native applications. Together, ServiceNow and Lightstep will extend the benefits of observability across the enterprise through digital workflows that convert real-time insights into action across all the technologies, people, and processes that enable digital business.
In a cloud and DevOps based world, the software that powers today’s enterprises is increasingly complex. Yet, companies are expected to increase innovation and velocity without sacrificing reliability and performance. The combination of ServiceNow and Lightstep will deliver deep operational insights so enterprises can more effectively use modern technology stacks. Lightstep’s solution analyzes system-wide metrics and tracing data in real-time to understand the cause and effects of changes to application performance, reliability, and development velocity. The Now Platform coordinates the technical and team response, connecting insights with actions needed to drive digital transformation. Customers will be able to more easily monitor and respond to critical signals and indicators of software health using Lightstep’s capabilities with ServiceNow’s IT workflow solutions’ ability to weave disparate elements into a seamless digital fabric. This gives business the confidence and clarity to drive faster innovation and better outcomes across the entire digital experience.
“Companies are betting on going digital in order to thrive in the 21st century, but the transition is often challenging to navigate,” said Pablo Stern, SVP, IT Workflow Products at ServiceNow. “With Lightstep, ServiceNow will transform how software solutions are delivered to customers. This will ultimately make it easier for customers to innovate quickly. Now they'll be able to build and operate their software faster than ever before and take the new era of work head on with confidence.”
Lightstep is the trusted observability solution for both born-in-the-cloud companies like GitHub, Spotify, and Twilio, and fast-growing enterprises whose businesses are increasingly reliant on software applications. The Lightstep platform provides a unified approach to observability with system-wide visibility and insights integrated across metrics, distributed traces, and logs. This helps organizations speed software development velocity without compromising quality and to drive faster innovation across the entire digital customer experience.
“Today, observability primarily benefits the DevOps teams that build and operate mission-critical apps,” said Ben Sigelman, CEO and co-founder at Lightstep. “We've always believed that the value of observability should extend across the entire enterprise, providing greater clarity and confidence to every team involved in these modern, digital businesses. By joining ServiceNow, together we will realize that vision for our customers and help transform the world of work in the process – and we couldn't be more excited about it.”
San Francisco-based Lightstep was co-founded in 2015 by CEO Ben Sigelman, COO Ben Cronin, and Chief Architect Daniel Spoonhower. Key Lightstep team members helped define modern observability with their prior work on tracing and metrics monitoring at Google. Lightstep team members also co-created both the OpenTracing and OpenTelemetry open-source projects, leading the industry’s overall migration away from proprietary agents towards the portable, always-on, and open standards-based acquisition of traces, metrics, and logs.
ServiceNow expects to complete the acquisition in Q2 2021. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Use of Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains "forward–looking statements" about the expectations, beliefs, plans, intentions and strategies relating to ServiceNow’s acquisition of Lightstep. Such forward–looking statements include statements regarding future product capabilities and offerings and expected benefits to ServiceNow. Forward‑looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties and are based on potentially inaccurate assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expected or implied by the forward‑looking statements. If any such risks or uncertainties materialize or if any of the assumptions prove incorrect, our results could differ materially from the results expressed or implied by the forward‑looking statements we make. We undertake no obligation, and do not intend, to update the forward‑looking statements. Factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those in any forward‑looking statements include, without limitation, assimilating or integrating Lightstep’s technology into our platform; the inability to retain key employees of Lightstep after the transaction closes; unanticipated expenses related to Lightstep’s acquired technology; potential adverse tax consequences; disruption to our business and diversion of management attention and other resources; and potential unknown liabilities associated with Lightstep’s business. Further information on factors that could affect our financial and other results is included in the filings we make with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time.
About ServiceNow
ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW) is making the world of work, work better for people. Our cloud-based platform and solutions deliver digital workflows that create great experiences and unlock productivity for employees and the enterprise. For more information, visit: www.servicenow.com.
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