Amit Zavery, who spent almost 25 years at Oracle before joining Google, is taking the COO role at ServiceNow as the company attempts to draw a line under investigations surrounding an earlier executive hire.
Just a day after announcing his departure from Google to his LinkedIn followers, Amit Zavery said that he is joining ServiceNow as COO.
ServiceNow said that Zavery will serve as 鈥減resident, chief product officer (CPO), and chief operating officer (COO) to lead product and engineering, effective October 28, 2024.鈥�
鈥淚n his role as president, CPO, and COO, Zavery鈥檚 responsibilities include ServiceNow鈥檚 platform, products, engineering, cloud infrastructure, and user experience. He also leads enterprise-wide operations,鈥� 蝉补颈诲.听
The post Zavery is filling was left vacant after an earlier executive hiring saga, which now involves investigations from US government entities including the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, and the Army Suspension and Debarment Office. That matter involved ServiceNow hiring the 娇色导航of the US Army to serve as its head of its global public sector.
On July 24, ServiceNow said that an internal investigation had determined that the company鈥檚 president and COO, CJ Desai, 鈥渉ad violated company policy regarding a possible conflict relating to such individual鈥檚 hiring鈥� and that it had reached an agreement with Desai that he would immediately resign from all positions with the company.
The former Army CIO, Raj Iyer, also quit ServiceNow. He told CIO.com at the time, 鈥淚 resigned because I didn鈥檛 want to be associated with this fiasco in any way. It鈥檚 not my fault.鈥�
In an earnings call with analysts on Wednesday afternoon, ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott championed Zavery鈥檚 hiring.
鈥淒uring his tenure, he helped build Google Cloud into the fourth-largest enterprise software company by increasing annualized revenue from $7 billion to over $41 billion. Before joining Google Cloud, Amit had a distinguished career at Oracle, where he presided over their growth and Platform as a Service and data analytics,鈥� McDermott said. 鈥淲ith sterling educational and career credentials, Amit is a world-class engineer and engineering leader. From a commercialization perspective, he鈥檚 also an expert in packaging and pricing.鈥�
In his , Zavery said leaving Google was 鈥渢he toughest goodbye,鈥� but added, 鈥淚鈥檓 excited about the new adventures and opportunities ahead.鈥�
One of his first adventures at ServiceNow will be figuring out how best to package and price the company鈥檚 new tools for creating AI agents, introduced in September in the Xanadu release of the company鈥檚 Now Platform for managing workflows.
鈥淲hile the suddenness and manner of CJ Desai鈥檚 departure seemed unfortunate, it provides an opportunity for ServiceNow,鈥� said Charles Betz, VP and principal analyst at Forrester Research. 鈥淚n the IT space, ServiceNow鈥檚 primary competitor is Atlassian, which has a strong grip on the developer community. Amit Zavery鈥檚 experience with the famously developer-centric culture at Google, building Cloud products primarily consumed by developers, has the potential to strengthen ServiceNow offerings such as Agile development and collaborative work management, improving competitive positioning versus Atlassian. His hyperscaler experience will also be relevant to the escalating competition between ServiceNow and Salesforce. 鈥�
This post has been updated to include Forrester鈥檚 comment.
