Three years ago, "I never would have predicted that I would have had 1,000 iPads out in the field" used by sales, he said.

Kim Liston, the senior director of service delivery at Omnicare, a pharmaceutical provider and another ServiceNow adopter, said a well-run service desk is essential to the perception that the business has of an IT department.

"I believe that the reputation of an IT organization starts at the service desk," said Liston.

Patrick Thibodeau covers cloud computing and enterprise applications, outsourcing, government IT policies, data centers and IT workforce issues for Computerworld. Follow Patrick on Twitter at or subscribe to . His e-mail address is .

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