ServiceNow, Inc. (NOW) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome, everybody, and welcome to today's webinar, where we will be looking into the amazing innovations for telecommunications for ServiceNow Vancouver release. My name is Jurie Roux. I'm the Product Marketing Manager of Telecommunication. And I'm here and delighted to be your host for today's session. And if you are a communication service provider or a partner of ServiceNow, we have a full agenda to take you through today. So let's kick it off. Our obligatory safe harbor notice for forward-looking statements can be seen here, and we appreciate you adhering to this regarding to the content you are about to see today. Let me take this opportunity to introduce you to our main speaker and product expert, Romit Ghose. Romit, can you please introduce yourself and your role here at ServiceNow?

Absolutely. Thank you, Jurie. Hello, everybody. My name is Romit Ghose, and I'm Senior Director of Product Management for our telecom, media and technology and utilities industry. And I'm really looking forward to sharing with you all the cool new innovations that we're bringing as part of our Vancouver release.

Thank you, Romit. Very excited to share all the amazing innovations that you and our product team has delivered in the Vancouver release, very exciting. So, since our agenda for today, we are going to cover a couple of topics that we're going to take you through. [Operator Instructions]. We are going to kick it off today with a little poll question that we're going to post to the audience just to get some initial feedback before we kick it off and dive into the detail of the webinar. So I'm going to push the poll on to your screen. You should be able to see that there coming up on your screen. So the first question, what is the biggest challenge you faced to achieve ecosystem agility as we are now in the world of 5G standalone, that end-to-end ecosystem for 5G slices goes across quite a complex ecosystem with many partners, many integrations inside, outside your organization. It requires workflows and processes that needs to be implemented, that needs to be maintained, that continues to change to meet the business needs. They also are many times complex, which require such amount of expertise to implement those, certainly the industry out of the box, integration certainly helps work with into those integrations. But maybe it's all of the above so let's see what our audience are thinking of that. Romit, I can see some results are coming in. It's looking pretty good. Interesting results. Let's give it 1 more, 2 more seconds and then I'm going to post the results for the audience. Yes. Let's do this. There we go. Okay. So what is the audience saying? Integration inside, outside my organization. Yes. Okay. So that's 3%. So 1 out of 5 attendees, workflows, making changes, more complex, I guess, as you continue to change and then subject matter expertise or all of the above. So I -- kind of that's what I expected. I may be a little bit surprised about the ones [ increment ] [ indiscernible] workplace and processes. So Romit, how do you respond to that?

I'm actually -- it's pretty much in line with the way I was thinking about it. I think every little piece of this has an important part to play. And making changes to existing workflows and processes is key as CSPs take on newer challenges on existing infrastructure. So I'm not surprised at all. This is very much in line with where our thinking is as well.

Yes. And as we're going down this road of dynamic, agile, on-demand world that we are approaching faster, yes, so very good to know that agility is a key enabler for the business growth. Okay. So jumping into our agenda and after [ this step ], we're going to talk about 5G services. We talked about the 5G world is changing, that innovation is happening, our standalone is deployed globally in a very exciting next step just to see the innovation that's going to come out of that through not just operators, but through hyperscalers. For those who've been at DPW, there were some great catalyst programs around that. So we're very excited. I'm going to hand it over here to Romit to take us through the first agenda topic, which is around 5G services to take us through some of the innovation that we launched as far as the Vancouver release.

All right. Thank you, Jurie. That's really exciting. Now before we talk about 5G services, I do want to do a quick refresher. For a lot of you, this may be extremely familiar. But for those of you for whom it's not, ServiceNow brings for the telecommunications industry an end-to-end operational platform. What we mean by that is that we hold your hand right through from the planned build phase where you build and roll out your networks, where you incorporate change to those networks, where you manage the assets that go into those networks from cradle to grave, going right through til managing your field technicians who implement that network for you, who go out there and make those changes for managing that workforce, for ensuring that the most optimal dispatch procedures are being followed with field service management. And then moving on to the world of service delivery with our order management offering, a catalog-driven order management offering that is rooted in the notion of workflows within ServiceNow, which is transforming time to market for our customers globally every single day. We don't stop there. Our flagship products around telecom service management and telecom service operations management ensure that your day 2 operations are all intact. You're able to monitor, observe and take the right remedial action proactively rather than waiting for your customers to come knocking on your door. So this makes ServiceNow play a part in every single piece of your operational journey. And it's all centered around a single data model, which enables siloless interactions across these different functions. For folks who span these different functions, it becomes a seamless user as well as data journey that enables them to serve your customers to the best of their ability without losing efficiency. Now having said that, let's go to what the flavor of the season is, and that is the 5G services. So essentially, the ability to offer a customized networks license to enterprises with differentiated latency, differentiated reliability, scalability and resilience. It's a major driver for the investment and the rollout of 5G networks globally. CSPs are expecting to invest upwards of $1 trillion in networks by 2025, 80% of which is expected to be on the 5G networks. And 5G is expected to drive enterprise revenue growth within CSPs by over 67% as early as 2026. Network slicing is expected to be a key enabler for a few enterprise revenue streams, and CSPs must be able to monetize their 5G slice networks. In order to do this, they require a new network, OSS and BSS function, including communication slice management functions as a key component in creating and fulfilling network services with slicing. Now what we're doing in -- with ServiceNow's 5G mobility services is that we're enabling the creation of services, the ordering and fulfillment of services as well as the ability to support and manage them once they've been delivered to customers. In our Vancouver release, we provide a reference solution, for example, for the management of 5G services, which enables operators to quickly launch these complex services. And CSPs been utilized predefined 5G less models for EMBB, URLLC, MMTC along with orchestration platforms and integration to a fulfillment platform using standard space service order APIs. There is generic network slice management templates by NEST, with reference models for EMBB, URLLC as well as MMTC, reference order management workflows to decompose the order from communication slice management functions and to network slice management functions. So let's take a deeper look at the individual feature sets that really bring this core capability to life. So first up, we're going to dive into the telecom network inventory area. So what we are launching with our telecom network inventory area is the ability to model 5G networks. So you're going to be able to access the right CI classes within our CMDB, be able to model a 5G RAN as well as core functions. All of these classes and models that we're shipping in the Vancouver release are aligned with 3GPP industry standards. And you can start modeling with some out-of-the-box 5G models as well. So that's foundational to taking the next steps in terms of the operational cadence that you want to establish on top of the network that you're creating. Now next up, we're very excited to bring to you a circuit user interface, which essentially enables you to really quickly manage complex circuit connectivity in a single user interface. So when setting up a circuit that runs from point A to point B, there are many things to take into account. What is the most optimal path in setting up the circuit? What are the different resources and devices that go into connecting that circuit from point A to point B? Agents really need and operators really need a view to be able to change and drill down and delete connections if necessary and move them around and really to be able to drill into individual circuit connections for the basic details for them to surface up. We did have in our earlier releases the ability to visualize the circuit, but it wasn't as dynamic. So our customers -- in close coordination with our customers, we've built out a circuit user interface, which is dynamic. It enables you to edit, move elements around and to be able to construct a circuit from point A to point B or to pull up an existing one and make edits as you go. It's really centered around the experience of a network engineer who is building out that circuit from point A to point B. So all the information that they need vis-a-vis the devices, their individual configurations, if they're using any kind of configuration templates, for example, access to the data around the configuration templates, it's all available then. Now another key capability...

I just want to say it's -- I'm just thinking of how we have evolved this software from where we came in the early days. Operators are dealing with millions of this type of connections and just have the ability to visualize it brings more accuracy, brings more trust to the data, which is so critical for automation as we move into a more automated [indiscernible]. It's really amazing.

100% here, Jurie. I couldn't agree more. And this is something that we've had the good fortune of working hand in glove with our customers who -- a lot of whom are our design partners. So we've brought in all the goodness of whatever they have used so far while also eliminating the pain points that they have to contend with every single day. So it's been a very enriching experience for us to approach it from the user's mindset to build this circuit design out. Now the next feature is around packs and parameters. Now being able to [ module ] is one thing, but being able to qualify the individual resources and devices that you've [ moduled ] in very specific terms as part of your inventory is really key. And what we're launching is a distinct attribute list that applies to a subset of your inventory to be able to classify it appropriately. So you can create customized groups of attributes and relate them to subsets of different inventory types as an example. You can eliminate any kind of irrelevant attribute that may or may not make sense for a specific type of device or equipment. And it gives you that flexibility to be able to qualify, categorize and specifically identify individual pieces of inventory. Now another key capability that we're launching with Vancouver is the ability to manage telephone numbers and IP addresses. And this is commonly in the industry known as telephone number management and IP address management or IPAM for short. And it comes with some table stakes capabilities, which we're considering MVP at this point around defining, managing and honoring number of blocks, as an example. For telephone numbers and IP addresses, the ability to identify and reserve telephone numbers as part of design and assign flows. So when new orders, for example, come in from customers and you actually have a task at the very end of that order management journey, in order to identify and reserve telephone numbers, this will flow right in into the design and the assign workflows that we already support. And of course, to be able to support a number of management blocks with resource inventory management industry standards of an API. So we already, of course, support the TMF standards-based resource inventory management APIs, and this ties right into that process of being able to manage these blocks externally as well. Next step is the coming together of the capabilities that we have always supported within our hardware asset management capabilities and telecom network inventory. So as a lot of you may already be aware, customers of telecom network inventory are also entitled to hardware asset management functionalities and features. But the notion of them working in tandem didn't exist until Vancouver. With Vancouver, we're breaking that silo. What we're doing is we're bridging these 2 processes together, the goal being to be able to utilize accurate inventory life cycle information as you're building out new networks. So for you to be able to track the procurement of telecom network equipment, for you to be able to institute governance around the acquisition, maintenance and retirement of network inventory, for you to be able to support basic functions like wecreate, delete and change via the resource inventory management APIs that can be accessed from the external system, for an example, or for you to be also able to use extension points on the standards API to be able to support specific modification of the API logic as you need to manage vis-a-vis the asset management. So if there's a specific asset management processes that require you to alter or change around the resource management APIs, resource and inventory management APIs, then we support that, too.

Yes. Romit, I just want to jump in and add some color to the asset management. It is -- if you think about that life cycle data points about few things are changing from an equipment perspective, it feeds into so many other aspects of the operator from revenue assurance and business assurance, from optimizing their network and those products that using. It's service assurance, just having an accurate life cycle of assets that are new to the network and something that you can trust is these downstream products and solutions that benefit from it. Additional too, it is absolutely required to have it for automation [ or ready to truly ] automate the network and things like that. So yes, it's really nice to see that we are at a point where you can trust the event to data point from asset perspective.

Absolutely, Jurie. That's a very important call out that you just made. I think -- and the notion of management of the life cycle of assets behind the scenes, it might look like a function that's just operating behind the scene. So the fact of the matter is that it has direct ramifications on customer-facing metrics like CSAT and mean time to resolution because of the far-reaching ripple effect that it may have on how you serve your customers. If your asset is not categorized right, if its life cycle is not codified correctly and representing the reality on the ground based on broken processes as an example, you're not going to be able to turn around service and operations to your customers at the speed and with the agility that you wish to. So while it might seem like a background function and might turn out to be an afterthought when it comes to CSAT and customer-facing KPIs that gets so much attention, the fact of the matter is that the workflows that maintain accurate asset life cycle go a long way in affecting your CSAT and MTTR. All right. Now the next area that we'll talk about is telecom service management. Now telecom service management, as a lot of you know, was the very first offering for the telecom industry that we launched. This was way back in -- during the Paris release in 2020. Now when we launched it, little did we know that we'll be at a place where generative AI will be completely transforming the way we approach service management, the way we approach our support functions. And here we are with our Vancouver release where generative AI is making waves in everything we do. Everything we touch is going to never look the same. The way we approach customer service is absolutely going to be no different in any which way. With analysis for telecommunications, agents are going to completely transform the way they interact with their customers, the way CSPs interact with their customers. Analysis for telecom is going to have the ability to summarize cases. When they get handed off from virtual agents to live agents or from one live agent to another, from a live agent to a network operator, from a customer support engineer over to a field service technician, mean time to resolution often gets affected when these handoffs are not smooth. When the folks that individual cases and incidents that are handed off to have to go through a complete review of the activities that may have transpired on that specific issue before they can take their next action on it, that will completely transform with analysis for telecom. Case summarization brings to fore a key capability which with context and empathy, we'll be able to inform the next agent that's being handed off to what kind of issues have -- issue resolutions have been provided so far? What has worked so far? What hasn't worked so far? What kind of root cause analysis do we already know about the problem ahead so that the next agent can hit the ground running. There are other key capabilities around searches, et cetera, that are completely transforming with generative AI. And we invite you to listen in more into our capabilities around generative AI for which there are other specific webinars as well where we deep dive into how generative AI will completely transform the world of service management for ServiceNow. All right. Another key capability that we're ecstatic about is the launching of account life cycle events. Now account life cycle events is a category of features that we're bringing to market, which will completely change the way our customers look at their existing customers. The views, the operational views and their health of the customer account is going to become extremely apparent with the account life cycle events capability. So we're picking up some key milestone events in the journey of how you manage your customers, and we're starting with onboarding. And when I say we're starting with onboarding, what we're essentially doing is we're taking the steps that are involved in the onboarding journey of an enterprise customer and removing the fact that it's a slow, error-prone, unstructured, poorly managed process into a streamlined stepwise playbook for our customers to incorporate within their onboarding processes. So we are leveraging key capabilities around playbooks. What that means is that if there are some specific steps that you want to incorporate as part of the onboarding process which are different from what we as ServiceNow ship with our product, you can absolutely do that. You can go ahead and alter using our pad workspace in order to be able to update the next step in the process. Any kind of decision-making that you want to do, which might fork the way onboarding is done, you can do that as well. So the ability to assign work, automate the steps and processes of importing data as an example of even incorporating the notion of service bridge. If your enterprise customers are running ServiceNow, one of the steps as part of the onboarding journey would be to connect to them via service bridge, and that is available as an optional step within account life cycle events. So this provides a dedicated space and a dedicated set of steps with tasks outlined to automate the capturing of data that you need in order to onboard a customer. And it's a simplified experience, which incorporates importing data, staging it, adjusting it as well as publishing the account data. So we're very excited about launching our very first edition of account life cycle events with the steps around onboarding. Now another key area that we're focusing on in Vancouver is the notion of change. Now we spoke earlier on, and a lot of you also responded on the poll that managing changes through existing processes, managing changes to existing networks is going to be key -- a key differentiator in your ability to incorporate change, in your ability to grow from strength to strength and incorporate the next technology revolution and to stay on top of any kind of trends that enable you to serve your customers about any kind of changes that are in progress in the network. So should there be a change in the network? What you ideally want to be able to do is to be able to quickly gather up what services might be impacted by the change or the switching out of one device with another. It is really important for you to be able to then understand which customers are leveraging those services and then to be able to broadcast out an update to all of those customers. In some cases, there may be hundreds. Letting them know that there is a change in the network that is in progress for the better. And to be -- to expect potentially a service outage or a disruption temporarily until the change goes through fully. So we are able to string together this entire process in what we call as proactive service experience workflows for change, which enable you to listen in to any changes in the network and to be able to be proactive about keeping your customers informed about the change that is undergoing in the network and the effect to that service.

Romit, this is such an amazing capability from a productivity and efficiency perspective for operators. They are dealing with millions and millions of pieces of equipment out there that continuously go through software updates or hardware changes of implementing a new technology. And service is often -- always disrupted and impacted as they are growing -- switching out equipment, keeping up with the latest software and hardware and just to have the ability to understand which customers will be impacted and frankly, [indiscernible] them just no swivel chair account exercises from one department to the next department. Just amazing that your customers are informed about things are changing. So I love this feature, awesome feature.

That's exactly right, Jurie. I think while this is a proactive service experience workflow for change, it's also important to know that it has a direct -- a very direct impact on immediately lowering the volume of calls that hit your call center, right? And that's a direct dollar impact for all our customers. Of course, CSAT scores naturally go up because you're being proactive about it. You're letting your customers know before they come knocking on your doors. But even from an operational cost standpoint, it completely transforms the volume that you might receive in terms of incoming phone calls to attend to any kind of change-related disruptions. And there is an auto resolution of these cases, right? So as long as the network is proceeding to make the change within the realms of change management, the cases that are being created to broadcast out these change updates are also getting auto resolved. So without any kind of a human intervention in the loop, you're able to really cascade out the impact of a change over to the customers, let them know that a change is coming. So expect a service disruption from this time window to this time window. And then also auto resolve that case so that an update goes out whenever that change is complete. So it's a full life cycle feature that completely changes the game on change management, which is an everyday headache for operators. All right. Now another key area which is very close to my heart is order management. Now order management is another key area which has been around for a long time. It's gained a lot of popularity among our customers, and our customers are expanding their use of order management. Oftentimes, I get asked, Romit, are -- is your order management in the SOM bracket? Or is it in the COM bracket? And I'm really proud and happy always to say that we operate in both. We have customers using us as -- in the COM category. We also have customers using us in the SOM category. And we are an end-to-end capture through fulfillment offering, which is catalog-driven from ground up. So let's talk a little bit more about what we're adding as part of Vancouver to order management. Now first up, jeopardy management. During sunny day, everything is good. Things are going great. You capture an order, you decompose it, you orchestrate it and you fulfill it. But the reality is very different. There are things that go wrong. There are many critical paths that might cause the fulfillment journey to derail. And that derailment is not just about one team filling in for another and for there to be redundancies in place, but it's more about breaching customer SLAs. Most of our customers have very stringent SLAs in place to meet for their customers when it comes to service delivery. And it's really important that we have features in our product to help our customers honor those SLAs. So jeopardy management is a key capability that we're releasing with Vancouver, which enables our customers to proactively manage the risk that emanates out of a normal order fulfillment process. Tasks, which are critical path tasks, to be able to identify them, to be able to keep an eye on them in terms of any kind of delays, to be able to flag those delays and cascade up what that means in terms of the delivery time frame for that order. The ability to leverage what ServiceNow has been good at for many, many years now, which is our task-centric SLA framework, where you can define expected closure times to be able to now use that within the context of order management vis-a-vis an order task and an order as a whole. Now it doesn't even stop there. It also enables you to achieve really high levels of efficiency gains because now you can track your team's performance against task SLAs. Because these get recorded over time, you can write out individual reports based on individual teams performances and the fastest bubble up to the top in terms of whether it's a resource-related problem, a human resources-related problem or there could be an issue with a third-party system that the order fulfillment journey is invoking and not getting responses back in time on. So not only does this help you manage jeopardy vis-a-vis an order that is currently in flight, but it also gives you a treasure trove of data to dive into after the fact over a span of time in order to harmonize and optimize your processes. Another key capability that we're really excited to launch with Vancouver is the coming together of our order management offering with service portfolio management. So service portfolio management is a product that ServiceNow has in order to cater to the needs of project managing and program managing activities that have a time, resource, budget-related constraints around them, right? Long-running orders and long-running fulfillment journeys often require that they get spawned off and assigned to many different teams, to many different individuals, to many different systems even along the way. Some of these tasks are sequential. Some of them run in parallel. And as our catalog dictates the decomposition of an incoming order, these tasks get generated on the fly. A few releases ago, for example, we launched a capability around staggered or a decomposition, which is potentially does not lead to the explosion or decomposition of an order upfront but does so on the basis of information acquired along the fulfillment journey. And capabilities like this and realities like this in the order fulfillment world require that order tasks are laid out vis-a-vis a project plan. They're laid out in a gantt chart visualization, wherein you're able to go in and see what kind of task depends on another. Should one slip its SLAs, what kind of an impact -- a cascading impact might it have on others? And with the integration between order management for telecom and SPM, that capability is now available. So you're able to create, manage and automate the creation of projects in SPM vis-a-vis an order. You're also able to then utilize an associate SPM projects with OMT orders automatically and create project tasks along the way and manage order task dependencies. And there's an automatic synchronization of statuses, so should there be a management of project tasks that your project is managing or your order fulfillment project manager is managing, those statuses are automatically synced. So regardless of where the update of the completed status is happening, the project and the order will stay in sync at any given point in time. So these updates flow between the order and the project, so that regardless of where the work is happening, you are looking at a singular source of truth regardless of whether you're looking at the order or the project itself.

Romit, I'm just thinking of a real-world example, enterprise customers in the fast food industry, for example. They order a new service, which could impact hundred to thousands of applications. Complex projects do typically get these things in order to get things delivered, get them installed. I think what's really amazing is just the transparency that's available to all the stakeholders involved, right? From those who need to do the work or from those that also need to monitor, understanding where do we need to prioritize things? Where do you need lots of status [ of that interpretation ], when it's going to come live. Their businesses make these changes because they want to grow -- their business grow the revenue, it impacts how they're operating their locations, et cetera. And just having that transparency and visibility for everybody and all the [indiscernible] is really amazing.

That's exactly right, Jurie. I think a couple of other mission-critical examples that come to mind is where some of our CSP customers are serving some health care customers, right? There are hospital chains that are being brought online. There are banks and financial institutions where communications and networking services are being delivered. And these are absolutely mission-critical in nature, right? Their go-live date has to be adhered to. It's really, really important vis-a-vis the SLAs. Penalties are stringent. And we have seen in some of our CSP customers back in the day when legacy systems were in place before they took on ServiceNow, there were entire large teams which had to cobble together and corral this information from many different [ quarters ] of the service delivery organization, which was not only a huge drain in terms of human resources, but a direct cost impact, a direct CSAT impact. So that completely transforms with the utilization of SPM and OMT working in tandem. Another key capability that we're extremely proud is the coming together of OMT with field service management. When delivering an order, a lot of times, there is still technician dispatch that comes with it. Now oftentimes, this happens in disconnected systems. And you're having order fulfillment agents or order fulfillment managers having to swivel chair between multiple systems, coordinate between a field service technician dispatcher and an order, data not flowing from one system to another or enough data not flowing from one system to another or the dispatcher to make the right call in terms of technicians, which technician to dispatch, where to dispatch them, how to calculate the most optimal route. That completely changes now with the coming together and the integration of order management and field service management. So any order tasks that are generated out of the order fulfillment workflows as the order is decomposed, should they require a work order to be spawned off, that can automatically now happen as long as it's indicated in the workflow, the order fulfillment workflow. The exciting part about this is that once the work order is created, a dispatcher assigns the work order to a field service technician to go out there in the field and do the job. Once the field technician checks in, does the job, sets it to complete it, that status then cascades back to the originating task at the order. This task has a very specific role to play inside of the orders. So the updating of that completed status now could release further tasks or could go ahead and update that individual order line item status to completed. It all depends on how the order fulfillment workflow has been set up, and there's a great deal of flexibility there. But this cascading of statuses completely ensures that the work that is being done on the ground is reflected in real time on the order. So that status is being reported back to the customer as a whole is always accurate and on point. All right. So Jurie, I will hand back over to you to share with our audience here what other cool stuff is happening as we speak.

Thank you very much, Romit, for that amazing review of all the capabilities in Vancouver release. I see we have quite a couple of questions coming in. So we're going to get to those very, very soon. Just a reminder, from ServiceNow perspective, we continue to make industry alignment, a key pillar of our telecommunication product strategy. We are committed to our customers that we are embedding industry standard into our architecture to further accelerate time to value and reduce integration costs by our customers along with growing out-of-the-box integrations with BSS and OSS partners. And that these out-of-the-box connectors are available for download through our store. And it really helps to accelerate time to market for those integrations. I am going to run one last poll question today, and it should come up on your screen. So if you can go ahead and make your selection. Our second question is basically on the content that we have covered today. Which capability do you believe delivers seamless customer experiences that help accelerate growth and reduce costs? So that's a mouthful. We want to do things to be efficient to reduce costs to bring products and services to market. But ultimately, you do those things to provide your end customer with a seamless experience. So we covered a couple of the topics around 5G out-of-the-box models, generative AI, the customer engagement, SLA, management of our order management, proactive communication with customers when planned maintenance needs to take place, or out-of-the-box capabilities. Maybe it's all of the above. Let's see what our audience think of the content today. I think I can see -- wow, okay. Actually, there are a lot coming in. It is -- and we have great participation on the second poll, so that's really good. Okay. Everybody ready for the results. Let's load it up. Okay. I think overwhelmingly, it is all of the above. So that is pretty good to hear. Response from my perspective, so proactive communication with customers, I agree, and our customer experience of services is really key. So we see 15% in the out-of-the-box integration. Of course, when you want to automate and integrate with the ecosystem and the agility that we require going forward, that's very important. Happy to see that. Romit, any response from your side?

Well, it is, again, reflective of what we had hoped to see. We're constantly at ServiceNow, very, very interested to only focus on attributes that are top of line for our customers. So it's a great [indiscernible] validation. That's all I'll say.

Okay. Awesome. Okay. So let's move on to the next one. So just as a reminder, next steps for you guys, visit our store to see more about Vancouver and what's available, please. We have a telecommunication community. If you have not joined, that's a great place to join where you can have access to like-minded peers, you have access to subject matter experts within ServiceNow, if you have any questions you want to pose. We regularly post content on there that we push out to the community. It's really just a awesome place to just be part of, where the entire level all goes down to very technical detailed discussions. That's really the place where you can go and find some answers and -- just share experiences, get information from other customers out, they have solved a problem. It's a great community. Also, if you want to schedule a demo or have further deeper discussion, please reach out to your local account representative, and they would be more than happy to set up and meet with you for the steps. Just a reminder, if you were not aware, we are running World Forums across the globe for the next 2 months, October and November and If you can, please join one of those or any of those that near you. They are free. They are 1 day event designed with you in mind. Come for a day, filled with impactful breakout sessions, customer success showcases, valuable conversation, partner best practices and vision and keynote sessions. This is all jampacked sessions that you can look forward to. And I can just let everybody know for the one in Dallas, we have a half-day event on the 24th, which is marked around the Telco, media and technology. And so if you want to attend additional day for that specific one, you are more than welcome to join that. And also, our Knowledge '23 that has taken place during our -- and during May for this year, that's available on demand. We have some really great and Telco customer stories out there that you can go and see on demand. So go and register. Log into those. They are recorded sessions, but it's really, really nice to see the knowledge that is shared and experiences from customers at how they utilize the ServiceNow platform and how we partner together to -- around some of the products and solutions that we have in ServiceNow. So that's available. And then a reminder, of course, our Knowledge '24, that's coming up for next year. It's going to be in May in Las Vegas, again, from the 7th to the 9th. If you would like to visit, you can go out there and register and get your trip organized for next year. So I think that's it. We can jump into Q&A. Romit, I see we have a long list of questions. What we will do is we will cover -- we have 10 minutes left. So we're going to cover some of those questions. We're very likely not going to get through all of them. But we will, on community, post answers to all of those questions. So we will work and get that out and post it on the community for all of you.

Okay, Romit, I'm going to start here -- let me just maybe make this a little bit bigger so I can see the questions. Okay. We -- okay, I'm going to start, let me kick off with this one. How are these network elements are TNI, how are these network elements discovered from actual networks? Are all these agentless discovery tools from now excel?

That's a great question. So there is a variety of ways in which the CMDB gets populated vis-a-vis populating the network elements and the topology itself. The most common ends up being service graph connectors, which is a certified -- a ServiceNow-certified capability to specific network inventory, existing network inventory platforms that our customers want to integrate with, which gets -- entitled to our customers via our TSOM product offering. So telecom service operations management professional comes with a visibility component with via which our customers get entitlements to being supported for these service graph connectors, which are purpose-built to specific network inventory management offerings. Now having said that, we do have customers who might run into situations where they are likely to pull in inventory from sources for which a service graph connector does not exist. So in those situations, our TMF APIs around resource inventory management, service inventory management, come in handy. But the best part is that they also go through the standard CMDB capabilities around IRE, for example. So IRE is an Instance Reconciliation Engine, which essentially makes sure that there are no duplicated entries. For example. So when you're pulling in network topology into the CMDB, it acts as a very, very potent tool to make sure that should you have multiple different sources that this network inventory's coming in from, you're really not ending up duplicating parts of the network which you've already taken in into the CMDB. So there are a variety of sources to populate the CMDB, and it really depends on the individual circumstances of the customer.