Implementing ServiceNow Data Synchronization

Without the right expertise and solutions, ServiceNow data synchronization can be difficult to implement. However, there is a lot to gain from synchronizing your ServiceNow data with other tools (or even another ServiceNow instance).

In this post, we’ll discuss how you can introduce data synchronization to your ServiceNow capabilities. 

What is Data Synchronization?

Data synchronization is a method of ensuring consistency across different data sources and applications. The complexity of modern organizations makes such a capability vital.

Organizations often work with 100s of applications. Handling all this information from many different tools can complicate your databases, leaving them disjointed and disorganized.

This is what makes data synchronization so vital to a business.

Data synchronization helps employees stay efficient and keep data secure and up to date. That’s because data synchronization cuts down on the amount of manual process regarding extracting and moving data between systems – where breaches and errors are most likely to occur.

Implementing the right data synchronization approach helps create a consistent, secure, real-time view of data across different departments. This improves data availability and helps democratize data across the organization.

What does Data Synchronization achieve?

In simple terms, data synchronization consolidates all data instances across different devices and software applications and ensures that all your systems’ data is consistent and accurate.

It’s a continuous process that applies to existing and new data to ensure the data remains consistent over time.

Any change to one data instance must be reflected across other data sources in real-time.  You can make better decisions when your business has access to up-to-date data.

Synchronization enables you to transform heaps of disparate data into actionable insights your business can leverage for better outcomes.

And these insights offer several advantages:

• In-depth visibility into all aspects of the business
• Actionable reports that allow you to make faster and smarter decisions
• Alignment, transparent communication, and real-time visibility across departments to achieve common goals
• The ability to share ongoing updates on products and services to customers to ensure their expectations are met

On the other hand, not implementing a strategic data synchronization strategy will result in:

• Data silos
• Misleading information due to inefficient communication
• Duplicate/outdated/low-quality data that results in poor decision-making
• Collection of large unnecessary volumes of unnecessary information which renders the business incapable of extracting valuable data

When implemented correctly, you can expect data synchronization to deliver data accuracy, cost-efficiency, security, and consistency.

Data Synchronization vs. Data Integration – similar concepts but are they synonymous?

Data integration moves data from one place to another, combining two or more pieces of software so that they work in alignment. The process typically involves large volumes of data, and the integrations are often one-way.

For ServiceNow users, data integration often happens on an “as-required” basis. It can be used to replicate prod to subprod instances, sync data into a reporting database, upgrade assurance, or move data into a data warehouse for analytics or BI work.

On the other hand, data synchronization is a type of integration in which data is kept consistent between two or more databases.

What sets synchronization apart from other integration processes is that it can keep databases in constant communication. So while synchronization is a type of integration, not all integration processes deliver synchronization.

How your business can implement ServiceNow Data Synchronization

Businesses have a variety of options for data synchronization. Before we delve into discussing these options, it’s essential to consider the following factors:

• What type of data/data sources are you trying to sync?
• What kind of software applications do you need to integrate?
• How do you want your data to move across your apps?

There are three primary ways to achieve data synchronization:

Custom integrations: These are typically built by your organization’s in-house team. While immediate costs may seem lower than other options, maintenance costs swell over time. Additionally, the impact on internal resources (time spent maintaining the integration for example) is costly in and of itself.

Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS): iPaaS providers are cloud-based third-party integration solutions. While multiple iPaaS tools are available, not all of them specialize in data synchronization. A few iPaaS options for you to consider are Unito, SkySync, and Zapier.

But be aware: iPaaS tools typically leverage API calls to facilitate the integration, which consumes ServiceNow bandwidth, putting stress on your instance and causing performance degradation. You may even have to combine the use of two or more iPaaS tools, depending on which types of data each tool can sync – which can further complicate your enterprise architecture.

• Learn more: IaaS vs iPaaS – What’s the Difference?

Native integrations: These are offered by the vendors of the software application you wish to integrate, or approved partners. They can be great for automating specific workflows and delivering several common use cases, and can do so without leveraging API calls that degrade ServiceNow performance.

Offered as an integration as a service solution (IaaS, not iPaaS), native integrations are the easiest, most straightforward way to sync data. 

The integration service provider is responsible for implementation and maintenance. Both the expertise of the provider, and the performance benefits of using a native application limit the risk of integration failures. Even if your end-point suffers an outage, a native application dynamically backs up your data so you can restore it when the end-point comes back online. 

Sync your Data with Perspectium’s DataSync

Perspectium DataSync is a native, IaaS solution, for ServiceNow integrations, delivered by experts.

Unlike a typical point-to-point replication tool, Perspectium’s DataSync provides the highest data transfer rate with the most negligible impact on the performance of the applications.

The Perspectium solution is built on a highly scalable enterprise message-bus architecture and offers a flexible publish and subscribe framework that can be integrated into your existing ServiceNow interface.

Why Choose Perspectium’s DataSync

Perspectium DataSync is delivered as a comprehensive application in ServiceNow that allows sophisticated data synchronization scenarios to be created. And the best part?

• You don’t require any coding
• Your data is secure and private due to end-to-end and at-rest encryption
• The performance of your application instances is minimally impacted due to “push” data streaming
• By utilizing a message queue, DataSync removes the need for data endpoints to be up and functional all the time, eliminating the risk of data loss during intermittent outages at the endpoints
• Additionally, due to our use of message brokering, your data stream can be flexibly re-configured without any change to the source – allowing you to flow your data to different targets with minimal impact
• Finally, automatic schema creation and maintenance of your data lake means data appears as soon as the schema changes.

Get started with Perspectium’s DataSync

With Perspectium DataSync’s uniform deployment that leverages best practices from hundreds of implementations, you can get data synchronization up and running fast and ensure that your data gets to where you need it to be.