What are ServiceNow instances?
Understanding the most effective way to buy, deploy, and manage your ServiceNow instances starts with a clear understanding of exactly what a ServiceNow instance is, which requires a little bit of knowledge of the component parts. In general, web applications consist of infrastructure running one or more web servers, application servers, and a database with more advanced applications having additional services or variations on this theme. Part of the value of a SaaS cloud offering is that the details of the servers and component parts aren’t important to the customers, but it is still useful to think of a ServiceNow instance as Core Application Code
+ Data
running on ServiceNow’s cloud infrastructure (in the ServiceNow data centers). Note that we say Core application code because ServiceNow stores a lot of the JavaScript code that defines the business logic and even UI in the database.
An instance of ServiceNow can be seen from a few...