SAP's McDermott joins ServiceNow to push enterprise growth

SAP's Bill McDermott will take over as ServiceNow CEO, replacing John Donohoe, In an unexpected move, ServiceNow announced that John Donahoe will step down as CEO of the company to accept the top job at Nike Inc. Bill McDermott, who recently resigned as CEO of SAP, will take over as ServiceNow CEO in January.

While this move took many analysts by surprise, some thought it made sense to bring in McDermott, with his experience growing SAP's business, given ServiceNow's concerted move toward the enterprise applications market. ServiceNow has an opportunity to fill in some of the gaps that exist in the application markets between its own portfolio of products and those of much bigger competitors such as Oracle and SAP.

Apart from the CEO change, ServiceNow also reported its third-quarter revenues and earnings, which largely met analysts' expectations, although trended down slightly down in comparison to recent quarters. The company reported its subscription revenues were $835 million for the quarter, a 35% increase in year over year growth. Subscription revenues for the quarter were $864 million, a 29% increase compared to last year's third quarter.Analysts said that it could take the fast-growing ITSM vendor in new product directions, and it will help the firm to grow big in this sector.