Blancco is primarily looking to use the new integration to deepen their relationship with existing mutual customers, but also hopes to add a few new Fortune 1000 companies who are on the ServiceNow platform.
Anders Klemmer, VP Business Development at Blancco
Data erasure vendor Blancco Technology Group has announced a new integration with ServiceNow, through which Blancco’s Secure Data Erasure app becomes available as a free app in the ServiceNow Store.
Blancco, which was founded in Finland and remains headquartered there, has been in data erasure since 1997, and for most of that period, sold direct, with the Global 2000 being their sweet spot. They established a channel and channel program in 2015, and are in the process of transitioning to a channel-first company.
Anders Klemmer, VP Business Development at Blancco, said that integrating Blancco into a comprehensive automation platform like ServiceNow Now, is a major move for the company.
“We listened closely through our customer advisory boards and sales feedback, and we heard that when people are involved in data erasure, it can get wonky, because people fear deleting the wrong thing,” he indicated. “ServiceNow automation and the AI and privacy policies that exist within their workflows can make the process much more efficient. You can never truly eliminate the people, but the process that ServiceNow uses can eliminate the noise, and in cybersecurity, where I come from, the key issue is separating valuable insights from noise.”
Within ServiceNow, the Blancco Secure Data Erasure app lets users easily view erasure-eligible ServiceNow assets and apply erasures through approvals, workflows, scripting or on-demand from the user interface, to reduce noise and labour costs, thus efficiency. The erasure covers servers, loose drives, PCs, laptops and other drive-dependent devices, and is all captured with audit trails for compliance purposes.
Blancco’s data erasure solution will be the first of its type available directly to Service Now customers through their store.
“We will be the only data erasure company in their app store,” Klemmer said. “ServiceNow has had visibility into assets – such as every device, and every OS that needs to be updated. But traditionally that has been more about upgrade cycles, and more operationally focused, not security, which we play into. They also had nothing natively to do what we do. For the Fortune 1000 companies which are critical to Service now – they have over 60% of them – our integration can be a massive asset for them.”
Blancco’s offering will be available as a free app within the ServiceNow store.
“ServiceNow lets you go as either a free or a paid app, and we decided to go with the free one,” Klemmer stated. “This will allow customers who need data sanitation to download us. ServiceNow will prepopulate all the endpoints, and the customers can use ServiceNow workflows to trigger erasures around policy things like GDPR, or things like when people leave companies. We want to make it easier for them to consume our licenses and we think this is the best way to do that.”
There is a direct way for Blancco and its partners to monetize the ServiceNow integration.
“There is a ServiceNow SKU on the Blancco side, and part of it is professional services to get these two systems to talk to each other,” Klemmer said. “But at the end of the day, the real opportunity here for us is more about increasing the velocity of license utilization.”
“Historically, we have been strong globally in the Global 2000, and the beauty of that is our growth metrics as a company don’t require a large percentage of net new customers,” Klemmer added. “Our low hanging fruit here is our existing mutual customers with ServiceNow, and going deeper on those workflows with customers already using ServiceNow, and increasing the velocity of licensing because of ServiceNow’s automation. We also want net-new customers from this, but we know it will take years to get a larger part of their base, so for now we want to get a few and go deep with them.”
Klemmer said Blancco will also benefit by the way that the ServiceNow platform facilitates horizontal integrations.
“A lot of companies do very well with vertical integrations, but the secret sauce to get them to work is horizontal alignment, where companies like us can put our products together with other vendors,” he indicated. “That way, we are not a point solution but part of a platform, where companies don’t have to puzzle pieces. ServiceNow is one of the best companies in terms of allowing this horizontal alignment, like AWS. For our GSI and MSP partners, the ServiceNow workflows will also make more of a seamless Go-to-Market where we can be integrated within the bill of materials that extends well beyond data erasure.”
