Case Study

How Armstrong World Industries Is Accelerating Service Delivery With Itential

From a homegrown Python platform stretched past its limits to event-driven orchestration – service delivery from 5 days to 10 minutes, 15,324 productivity hours back, and 7,114 days of wait time eliminated.

Challenge

A homegrown Python orchestration platform hit its limits. Service requests piled up. Maintenance depended on a few specialized engineers. Every new tool meant custom development.

Solution

Itential replaced the homegrown stack with event-driven orchestration – ServiceNow as the front door, Itential as the engine, downstream tools called via API for end-to-end fulfillment.

Impact

Service delivery times collapsed from 5 days to 10 minutes. 15,324 productivity hours saved. 7,114 days of wait time eliminated across the business. ROI tracked in Splunk dashboards executives actually look at.

The Challenge

When Your Homegrown Automation Platform Becomes the Bottleneck

Armstrong World Industries is a global leader in ceilings and wall solutions – a fast-paced, project-driven business where IT service delivery directly impacts how the company runs. As demand grew, the IT team’s existing manual processes (and the basic scripts propping them up) couldn’t keep pace. Backlogs grew. Visibility into productivity didn’t exist. Internal customers waited.

The team had built a homegrown Python orchestration platform to take the edge off, but it introduced its own set of problems. It didn’t scale with rising request volume. Every new integration required custom development. And the whole thing leaned on a handful of specialized engineers – a fragility risk masquerading as an automation strategy. Armstrong reached the tipping point: scaling automation needed a real platform, not another internal tool to maintain.

Armstrong didn’t need more Python. They needed an event-driven orchestration platform that could scale beyond a handful of engineers, integrate with the tools the business already runs, and deliver service requests end-to-end without manual handoffs.

Why Itential

Choosing the Foundation, Not Building One More

Armstrong’s homegrown Python platform did real work – until it couldn’t. Scaling demand, integration complexity, and key-person dependency made it clear that growing automation meant moving to a platform built for it. Itential brought event-driven orchestration, deep integrations, and a workflow model the team could actually maintain.

Five Criteria, One Platform That Met Them All

After their internal Python platform hit its scaling ceiling, Armstrong evaluated what a real orchestration platform needed to do. Five criteria shaped the decision.

Event-Driven Orchestration That Actually Scales

ServiceNow tickets trigger Itential workflows automatically – no manual intervention, no engineer-in-the-loop for routine fulfillment. The entire lifecycle from request submission through completion runs as a governed, event-driven workflow.

API-Driven Integrations Out-of-the-Box

Open source integrations with ServiceNow, GitLab, Office 365, and Active Directory connect Itential to the systems Armstrong already runs. No custom development for every new tool – the integration tax that broke the homegrown platform is gone.

Reuse Existing Automation, Don’t Replace It

End-to-end orchestration unifies workflows across multi-domain infrastructure – Python scripts, REST API calls, security checks, inventory steps. Existing automation assets become callable building blocks instead of code to retire.

Workflow Building Without the Specialist Tax

Drag-and-drop workflow building abstracts infrastructure complexity. Engineers create modular, reusable, scalable workflows without writing every integration from scratch – and without the platform depending on a handful of specialists to maintain.

ROI Visibility Executives Can Defend

Real-time automation metrics flow into Splunk dashboards – hours saved, wait time eliminated, throughput. The numbers leadership needs to fund the next wave of automation, captured automatically as workflows run.

We reached a tipping point where it became clear that to scale and grow our automation efforts, we needed to invest in a robust platform.

Eric Anderson

Armstrong World Industries

The Solution

Event-Driven Service Delivery in Production

Itential is in production at Armstrong – driving switch deployments, subnet creation, DNS requests, AD changes, and VM lifecycle. The architecture is simple and load-bearing: users submit in ServiceNow, Itential orchestrates everything downstream, results flow back to ServiceNow, and metrics land in Splunk dashboards leadership uses to fund what’s next.

Request Submission Through ServiceNow

Users submit service requests in ServiceNow. On approval, an API call hits Itential with the task number – the entire lifecycle from submission through fulfillment runs without manual intervention.

End-to-End Workflow Execution

Itential queries ServiceNow, pulls task variables into a JSON object, and applies workflow logic. The same orchestration engine handles switch deployments, subnet creation, DNS requests, AD MACDs, and VM lifecycle – one platform, every IT service.

API-Driven Downstream Integration

Workflows call downstream tools – GitLab, Office 365, Active Directory, network systems – through API integrations. No custom glue code per service. The integration tax that broke the homegrown platform is gone.

Modular, Reusable Workflow Components

Pre-built components and reusable workflows replace one-off scripts. Engineers compose new automations from existing building blocks instead of starting from zero – and the platform doesn’t depend on a few specialists to keep running.

Closed-Loop User Communication

Users get automated status updates throughout fulfillment, and tasks are logged back in ServiceNow. The system of record stays the system of record – with orchestration happening underneath.

Splunk-Powered ROI Dashboards

Real-time automation metrics flow into Splunk dashboards – hours saved, wait time eliminated, services delivered. The data that secured executive buy-in for the next wave of automation, captured automatically as workflows run.

Itential allowed us to automate the entire lifecycle of service requests – from submission to fulfillment – without relying on manual intervention.

Eric Anderson

Armstrong World Industries

The Outcome

What Event-Driven Orchestration Delivers at Armstrong

Numbers leadership trusts, captured in real time. Time back for engineers to work on higher-value projects. The kind of measurable ROI that gets the next phase of automation funded.

10 Min

IT Service Delivery Time

Routine IT service requests now fulfill end-to-end in minutes, not days.

15,324

Hours Saved to Date

Productivity time returned to the business – logged in real-time Splunk dashboards.

7,114

Days of Wait Time Eliminated

Wait time eliminated across infrastructure services for internal customers.

8+

Tools Integrated

ServiceNow, GitLab, Office 365, Active Directory, Infoblox, VMware, Cisco ISE/Meraki, Splunk – one platform unifying the IT stack.

5+

Service Types Automated

Switch deployments, subnet creation, DNS requests, AD changes, and VM lifecycle – all running through the same orchestration engine.

Built for What’s Next

Governed workflows, deep integrations, executive-grade ROI visibility – the foundation Armstrong is using to scale automation today, and the execution layer ready when AI is part of the picture.

What’s Next

With event-driven orchestration in production and ROI dashboards driving executive buy-in, Armstrong’s IT team is positioned to expand automation across more services and workflows. The platform handles request volume that broke the homegrown predecessor, the integration model scales without specialist dependency, and the governed execution layer is ready when agentic operations are part of the picture. The numbers fund the next wave. The platform delivers it.

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