It’s not an exaggeration to say that acting as the “platform of platforms”, ServiceNow is devoted to constant development and improvement of its overall performance. The platform is driven by the simple goal to enable enterprises to thrive in their Digital Transformation journey and meet the complex and evolving requirements of the business environment.
ServiceNow family releases
To achieve that, ServiceNow releases new platform versions at least once per year (twice for the past nine years). Upgrading to a new ServiceNow family release provides various new functionalities, features, and fixes and ensures continued platform support.
Below is the up-to-date list of the previous, current, and upcoming ServiceNow releases.
- Aspen (2011)
- Berlin (2012)
- Calgary (2013)
- Dublin (2013)
- Eureka (2014)
- Fuji (2015)
- Geneva (2015)
- Helsinki (2016)
- Istanbul (2017)
- Jakarta (2017)
- Kingston (2018)
- London (2018)
- Madrid (2019)
- New York (2019)
- Orlando (2020)
- Paris (Q3 – 2020)
- Quebec (Q1 – 2021)
- Rome (Q3 – 2021)
- San Diego (Q1 – 2022)
- Tokio (Q3 – 2022)
- Utah (Q1 – 2023)
- Vancouver (Q3 – 2023)
- Washington DC (Q1 – 2024)
It may have caught your attention that the names of the releases are in alphabetical order, following the ServiceNow naming convention. They are named after cities from North America to South America, Europe, and Asia.
“Customers will have a conversation with me and say, “CJ, we went on Helsinki, we’re upgrading to Istanbul, or we’re going to skip Istanbul, and go straight to Jakarta.” shares CJ Desai, Chief Product Officer at ServiceNow.
What do you need to consider before moving to a new release?
Upgrading to new release families is crucial to customer success. Staying current enables you to take full advantage of the innovations made available through ServiceNow releases, deploy new products, and get the highest levels of security, availability, and performance.
Moving to a new ServiceNow version provides various new functionalities, features, and fixes, and ensures continued platform support. However, it hides various risks and may cause a negative impact on hundreds or even thousands of users if not planned and executed professionally and diligently from both managerial and technical perspectives.
Before you start, take into consideration the following steps:
- First, read the release notes provided by ServiceNow for every release and plan your upgrade.
- Based on the release notes and other release materials, determine which ServiceNow instances are in-scope for upgrade, new functionality or notable changes that need to be validated after the upgrade and create a project plan for cloning, upgrading, and testing.
- Verify your upgrade configurations and schedule the development instance upgrade.
- Upgrade and validate the development instance
- Prepare and upgrade the production instance
Check out the ServiceNow Upgrade Checklist for more information on migrating correctly.
Which is the next ServiceNow release?
The general availability of the new San Diego release is expected for late March 2022.
The new family release version promises many new exciting features that will help your organization work smarter, faster, and better. Our experts at Do IT Wise are already getting in dept with the release notes and the opportunities and key features that are coming in San Diego.
Follow our blog to be the first to know what our specialists’ top picks are and how your business may benefit from the new updates in our next article.
