New Zealand's national entertainment company serves 700,000+ customers daily with a 300-person IT team running 24/7. After six years on ServiceNow, they needed a platform that put control back in their hands.
SKY is New Zealand's national entertainment company, connecting New Zealanders to daily news, live sport, movies, and television from around the world. With over 30 years in operation and more than 700,000 customers served every day, SKY runs a significant IT operation: 300+ people working 24/7 to ensure television services are available to all New Zealanders at all times. The stakes for service reliability are high, and the demands on the ITSM platform reflect that.
After six years on ServiceNow, it was clear the platform could no longer meet SKY's evolving needs. Customisation was the central issue. Despite the platform's size, SKY found it could not tailor workflows to suit different teams effectively. The out-of-the-box capability had hit a ceiling, and pushing beyond it required complex, costly development work that put meaningful changes out of reach.
The platform itself felt disjointed. A modular architecture meant different parts of the system lacked a smooth, consistent flow. Asset and software management (increasingly important for a large IT operation) was not at the level SKY required. And throughout their time on ServiceNow, SKY never developed the kind of direct, responsive relationship with their provider that they felt was necessary for a platform this central to the business.
"Halo ITSM is really easy to use and integration has been pretty seamless. The Halo team support in the initial go-live days has been fantastic."
— Vamsi Dharanikota, Service Delivery Manager, SKY TVHalo ITSM brought the flexibility, ITIL alignment, and modern interface that SKY had been looking for. Critically, the platform delivered genuine customisation capability. Not the kind that required scripting or specialist development, but the ability for SKY's own team to configure workflows, SLA templates, and service catalogues for different teams independently.
Asset and software management, previously a gap, was built in as standard, giving the IT team the visibility and control they needed without bolting on additional tooling. The service catalogue was configured with multi-layer approvals to match SKY's operational structure.
The implementation ran over a tight 10-week window, achievable only because of the strong working relationship built between SKY and the Halo team from the outset. Platform upgrades are managed entirely by Halo, meaning SKY automatically benefits from new features each month without additional cost or project overhead.
"The good thing with Halo is how the tool can be customized to suit our requirements specific to SKY's business environments. This is a much better state to be in rather than the tool asking the business to adapt to make it work."
— Vamsi Dharanikota, Service Delivery Manager, SKY TVHalo ITSM replaced both ServiceNow and a secondary Activate integration that SKY had been managing, consolidating everything into a single, centralised system that the team had genuine control over from day one.
The relationship between SKY and Halo (direct, responsive, and collaborative) was something SKY did not experience with their previous vendor. For a 24/7 operation serving 700,000+ customers daily, that matters as much as the platform itself.
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