Technology Reference Model
Summarize
Summary of Technology Reference Model
The Technology Reference Model (TRM) in ServiceNow’s Enterprise Architecture helps organizations define and enforce standards for software and hardware products. This is crucial to mitigate risks such as security vulnerabilities, delivery challenges, and legal issues that arise from using unapproved or unsupported software. The TRM enables organizations to approve, restrict, and manage software usage, ensuring compliance with defined technology standards.
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Starting with the Xanadu release, the TRM module has been moved to the Enterprise Architecture Workspace for enhanced management.
Key Features
- Software Approval and Restriction: Approve or restrict specific software products and versions within the organization to maintain control over technology usage.
- Lifecycle Management: Each TRM product has lifecycle phases such as approved, unapproved, approved with constraints, divest, and evaluation, enabling precise governance of software status and usage timelines.
- Business Application Integration: Review which business applications use software that is either approved or unapproved, helping to identify compliance gaps.
- Request Handling: Submit and manage requests to introduce new software or versions, facilitating controlled expansion of the technology portfolio.
- TRM Library Maintenance: Maintain and update the TRM library with approved products and versions tailored to organizational standards.
- Integration with Other Modules: Requires Software Asset Management (SAM) Foundation or Professional plugins. TRM integrates with TPM for software searches and with SAM to fetch or define software products and versions.
Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers
- Risk Reduction: By defining and enforcing approved technology standards, customers reduce security, delivery, and legal risks associated with unapproved software.
- Improved Governance: Lifecycle management and approval workflows provide visibility and control over software usage across the enterprise.
- Cost and Technical Debt Management: Setting technology standards helps manage technical debt and optimize costs by avoiding unsupported or redundant software.
- Streamlined Software Requests: Centralized requests for new software or versions support orderly growth and compliance with organizational policies.
Next Steps for Implementation
- Ensure SAM Foundation or SAM Professional plugins are installed to enable TRM functionality.
- Use the TRM module to define approved software products and their lifecycle phases.
- Review and monitor software usage within business applications to identify unapproved or non-compliant software.
- Leverage TRM workflows to approve or reject product and lifecycle requests as business requirements evolve.
- Maintain the TRM library regularly to reflect current technology standards and organizational policies.
Use the Technology Reference Model (TRM) feature in Enterprise Architecture to define the standards for your software and hardware products and manage unapproved products in your organization.
Starting with the Xanadu release, the legacy Technology Reference Model module is moved to the Enterprise Architecture Workspace. To learn more, see Managing the Technology Reference Model in Enterprise Architecture Workspace.
Overview and benefits of a TRM
In your business enterprise, using an unapproved software can create a risk to the organization. The risks can include the following:
- Security risks: The software might be exposed to security issues.
- Delivery risks: There might not be sufficient knowledge on how to support the software.
- Legal risks: A business application might use the software in illegal ways.
You must define the standards for the software to be used. You must define the software versions that are permitted for use in your organization. Also, you must have a way to explore when a non-permitted software is being used within the organization and in which business applications.
- Approve or restrict the use of a software product within the organization.
- Define how versions of the software can be used within the organization.
- Request an introduction of a new software or the business applications, as new requirements arise.
- Maintain TRM library for your organization.
Using the TRM module, you can manage the standards of the technology and set the right guardrail for technology usage. Setting the standards can improve the technical debt, security posture and save costs for the organization.
TRM Product Lifecycle
Each product in the TRM library is associated with a set of life-cycle phases with a start and end date. The life-cycle phases could be approved, unapproved, approved with constraints, Divest, and evaluation.
The TPM home page fetches all the business applications that are being used in your organization. It helps to review the status of the software that is being used. You can understand if any business application is using the software that is not part of the TRM or a software version that is not approved for production. For more information, see Review the TRM lifecycle status in the Technology Portfolio Management page.
TRM and other modules
The TRM module uses a similar module to TPM to search in the TRM library. You can view the software that is part of the TRM library, and initiate a request to add the software or software version to the TRM library.
You can also use the TRM with the Software Asset Management (SAM) plugin. This plugin helps you to fetch or select the products and versions for the TRM library. You can also define your own software products when the Software Asset Management integration module is not available for your instance.