ServiceNow’s proven
ideas,
in your data center.
Covan deliberately keeps many of ServiceNow’s proven ideas: update sets, script includes, dictionary overrides, a flow designer and an identification engine. The differences are in architecture, deployment and cost model.
One platform instead of a fragmented stack.
Organizations rarely switch to replace a single product; they switch to reduce the number of tools. Covan keeps ServiceNow’s proven ideas without the separately licensed module stack or the heavy ecosystem.
A fragmented stack
before- A separate product, contract and data model for each department.
- CMDB, discovery and asset management as separate licence lines.
- Integration projects for cross-process reporting.
- Customisations frozen during upgrade cycles.
- Compromises on data residency and AI policy.
With Covan
after- Every service team on one platform, configured per app.
- CMDB, discovery, software assets and event management included.
- Reporting without integration, thanks to one data model.
- Configuration travels as data; upgrades do not conflict.
- On-premises deployment and AI on your own model.
Total cost of ownership is not the licence fee alone: integration effort, upgrade risk, training and audit workload count too. Covan removes most of those by architecture.
Eleven topics, two approaches.
The table below is a positioning guide that reflects publicly known product structure; it is not a feature-by-feature evaluation.
| Topic | Covan | ServiceNow |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment | On-premises or private cloud by design; data stays in the customer’s data center. | Primarily vendor-hosted SaaS; self-hosted options are limited and specialised. |
| Data model | One shared table per record kind; custom fields, tables and types are configuration rows plus JSON. | Table hierarchy (e.g. Incident extends Task); custom tables and columns become real database objects. |
| Multi-company | Tenant → company → app is built in, with per-company CMDB and access scopes out of the box. | Domain separation exists, but needs its own design and setup effort. |
| New service desk | A new app from a template in one step; any module can be mixed into any app. | Separate applications and modules, often licensed individually. |
| Workflows | Lifecycle (allowed status moves) and process (approvals, tasks, timers, parallel) as two explicit kinds. | State models plus Flow Designer / Workflow Editor. |
| Scripting | JavaScript in an isolated sandbox with a tenant-guarded API; reusable Script Includes. | Server-side JavaScript (Glide API); Script Includes and business rules. |
| Moving configuration | Configuration packages with a full dry-run preview; no instance-specific IDs travel. | Update sets and application repository. |
| CMDB & discovery | Included: CMDB, identity and reconciliation, service mapping, SAM, vulnerability matching, event management. | ITOM Discovery, Service Mapping, SAM and SecOps are separate, separately licensed products. |
| AI | Bring your own model (cloud or local); agents act only through permission-checked tools with confirmation. | Vendor-provided Now Assist, licensed as an add-on. |
| Maturity & ecosystem | Young platform; integrations built per need; English and Turkish today. | Very large ecosystem, store, certified partners and many languages. |
Organizations that need control.
Covan does not try to match ServiceNow’s ecosystem. It aims to be the simpler, self-hosted platform with CMDB and discovery included.
- Organizations that must keep data on-premises
- Public sector, finance and defense
- Holdings and service providers running many companies on one installation
- Teams that want ITSM, ITAM, CMDB, discovery and ESM under one license and one data model
- Teams that want AI on their own models, inside their own network
An open roadmap.
Evaluating a platform means knowing what is missing, too. What is not finished today:
Working today: local and AD/LDAP login, user provisioning, REST API, e-mail, inbound alert sources, discovery and the CMDB.
Architectural difference
One table, JSON fields and configuration rows. Custom tables and columns never become real database objects.
Deployment difference
On-premises or private cloud. Data stays in the customer’s data center; SaaS is not mandatory.
Cost-model difference
CMDB, discovery, SAM and event management are not separate licenses; they come in one data model.
ServiceNow is a trademark of ServiceNow, Inc. The comparison reflects publicly known product structure and is offered as a positioning guide, not a feature-by-feature evaluation.
See the difference on your own scenario.
In the demo we compare both approaches on the same scenario: data model, deployment and total cost of ownership.