ServiceNow, Inc. (NOW) 2018 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Q3 2018 ServiceNow Earnings Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this call will be recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference, Mr. Michael Scarpelli, Chief Financial Officer. You may begin.

各位女士、先生，大家好，歡迎參加 ServiceNow 2018 年第三季（Q3 2018）財報電話會議。(接線員指示) 提醒各位，本次通話將被錄音。現在我想介紹今天會議的主持人：Michael Scarpelli 先生，財務長。您可以開始了。

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. On the call with me today is John Donahoe, our President and Chief Executive Officer. During today's call, we will review our third quarter financial results and discuss our financial guidance for full year 2018. We'd like to point out that the company reports non-GAAP results in addition to, and not as a substitute for or superior to, financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP. All financial figures we will discuss today are non-GAAP, except for revenues and revenue growth. To see the reconciliation between these non-GAAP and GAAP results, please refer to our press release filed earlier today, and for prior quarters, previously filed press releases, all of which are posted at investors.servicenow.com.

各位下午好，感謝各位加入我們。今天與我一同出席電話會議的還有我們的總裁兼執行長 John Donahoe。在今天的電話會議中，我們將回顧第三季財務結果，並討論 2018 全年的財務指引。我們想指出，公司除依據 GAAP 計算的財務衡量指標外，也會揭露非 GAAP 結果；非 GAAP 結果並非用來取代或優於依 GAAP 計算的財務衡量指標。除營收與營收成長外，我們今天討論的所有財務數字皆為非 GAAP。如欲查看非 GAAP 與 GAAP 結果之間的調節，請參閱我們今天稍早提交的新聞稿；至於前幾季，請參閱先前提交的新聞稿，以上皆刊載於 investors.servicenow.com。

We may make forward-looking statements on this conference call, such as those using the words may, will, expects, believes or similar phrases to convey that information is not historical fact. These statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Please refer to the press release and risk factors and documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our most recent quarterly report on Form 10-Q, for information on risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth in such forward-looking statements. I would now like to turn the call over to John.

在本次電話會議中，我們可能會做出前瞻性陳述，例如使用「可能」、「將」、「預期」、「相信」或類似措辭，以表達相關資訊並非歷史事實。這些陳述受到風險、不確定性與假設的影響。有關可能導致實際結果與此等前瞻性陳述所述結果出現重大差異的風險與不確定性資訊，請參閱新聞稿以及向美國證券交易委員會（SEC）提交的風險因素與文件，包括我們最新的 Form 10-Q 季度報告。現在我想把電話交給 John。

Thanks, Mike. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's call. We had a strong third quarter, continuing our global momentum and accelerating our role as a strategic partner enabling digital transformation. Our teams continue to execute well, and our focus and commitment to customer success is evident in our results. We closed 25 deals in the third quarter, with ACV greater than $1 million, and we now have 614 customers doing more than $1 million in business with us. 11 customers are doing more than $10 million, almost triple the prior year, including 4 U.S. federal agencies. And we ended the quarter with more than 5,000 enterprise customers. The U.S. federal government represented our biggest deals in the quarter, accounting for 1/5 of our total net new ACV. This was our largest federal quarter ever. For example, the U.S. State Department is now our largest platform customer. We're becoming a critical strategic partner to the U.S. federal government as it modernizes its IT infrastructure and moves to cloud-based services and platforms. And further strengthening our public sector capabilities, we just announced an alliance with Microsoft to deliver digital workflows through the Azure government cloud. This alliance is designed to help federal agencies move faster and securely to cloud-based solutions.

謝謝你，Mike。各位下午好，感謝各位參加今天的電話會議。我們第三季表現強勁，延續全球動能，並加速我們作為推動數位轉型之策略夥伴的角色。我們的團隊持續良好執行，而我們對客戶成功的專注與承諾也清楚反映在成果之中。第三季我們完成了 25 筆交易，年約合約價值（ACV）超過 100 萬美元；目前已有 614 家客戶與我們的業務規模超過 100 萬美元。有 11 家客戶的業務規模超過 1,000 萬美元，較去年幾乎成長近三倍，其中包括 4 個美國聯邦機構。本季結束時，我們的企業客戶數超過 5,000 家。美國聯邦政府是本季我們最大的交易來源，占我們總淨新增 ACV 的五分之一。這是我們歷來最大的聯邦政府季度表現。例如，美國國務院目前已成為我們最大的平台客戶。隨著美國聯邦政府現代化其 IT 基礎架構並轉向雲端式服務與平台，我們正成為其關鍵的策略夥伴。此外，為進一步強化我們的公部門能力，我們剛宣布與 Microsoft 結盟，透過 Azure 政府雲提供數位工作流程。此聯盟旨在協助聯邦機構更快速且安全地移轉至雲端式解決方案。

Just as we've seen in the private sector worldwide, digital transformation is becoming a public sector imperative, and we are deeply committed to being a preferred strategic partner, helping governments modernize, drive efficiency and deliver better experiences for employees and their citizens. I spent much of my time in Q3 traveling the world and meeting with our customers in Australia, Japan, France, Sweden, the U.K. and all across the U.S. In every discussion with CIOs and CEOs, a few common themes emerge, most importantly, the business imperative for digital transformation, the need for trusted technology partners and the challenges of driving cultural change. And in more and more conversations, we are being seen as a strategic partner of choice.

正如我們在全球私部門所見，數位轉型正成為公部門的當務之急；我們也深度承諾成為首選的策略夥伴，協助政府現代化、提升效率，並為員工與民眾提供更好的體驗。第三季我花了很多時間在全球各地出差，與澳洲、日本、法國、瑞典、英國以及全美各地的客戶會面。在與 CIO 與 CEO 的每一次討論中，都出現幾個共同主題，最重要的是：數位轉型的業務迫切性、對可信賴科技夥伴的需求，以及推動文化變革的挑戰。而在越來越多的對話中，我們被視為首選的策略夥伴。

Our core focus is on delivering digital workflows that create great experiences and unlock productivity. We make work, work better for people, and our powerful platform and diverse product portfolios give us great opportunities. We're well positioned to play a broader strategic role in digital transformation journeys as our customers embrace this part of their future. Product innovation is essential to our success and continues to be a top priority. Our London release went live in the quarter, delivering customers exciting new product capabilities, such as virtual agents that we announced earlier this year at Knowledge.

我們的核心重點是提供能創造卓越體驗並釋放生產力的數位工作流程。我們讓工作對人而言更有效率；而我們強大的平台與多元的產品組合，為我們帶來極佳的機會。隨著客戶擁抱其未來的一部分，我們已做好充分準備，在其數位轉型旅程中扮演更廣泛的策略角色。產品創新對我們的成功至關重要，並持續是最優先事項之一。我們的 London 版本已於本季上線，為客戶帶來令人振奮的新產品能力，例如我們今年稍早在 Knowledge 大會上宣布的虛擬代理（virtual agents）。

Our London release demonstrates our ongoing commitment to delivering innovative, intelligent capabilities across our Now Platform and product portfolio. And looking ahead, we're investing heavily in more intuitive consumer-like user experiences and building more mobile-friendly, mobile-first capabilities. We expect to be launching significant enhancements in our mobile capabilities and user experience over the coming year.

我們的 London 版本展現了我們持續致力於在 Now Platform 與產品組合中提供創新、智慧化能力的承諾。展望未來，我們正大力投資於更直覺、類消費者（consumer-like）的使用者體驗，並打造更適合行動裝置、以行動優先（mobile-first）為核心的能力。我們預期在未來一年將推出行動能力與使用者體驗方面的重大強化。

Customer success is also a big priority for us, and we continue to make good progress. We're driving customer success to be a natural extension of our sales motion and are committed to both landing new customers and expanding our existing customer relationships in a healthy and sustainable manner. And our customer success approach is paying dividends. For example, our customer success team helped land a significant deal with a European Fortune 200 financial institution in the third quarter. This team showed how we can help enable and deliver key elements of their transformation initiatives and drive successful business outcomes. And we continue to focus on supporting a strong partner ecosystem. For example, Accenture just announced deeper investments with us in Europe to give their European customers a full range of implementation services and expertise in ServiceNow.

客戶成功同樣是我們的重要優先事項，我們也持續取得良好進展。我們正推動讓客戶成功成為我們銷售動能的自然延伸，並承諾以健康且可持續的方式，同時拓展新客戶並擴大既有客戶關係。而我們的客戶成功方法正在帶來回報。例如，我們的客戶成功團隊在第三季協助拿下與一家歐洲《財富》200 大金融機構的重要交易。該團隊展示了我們如何協助啟動並交付其轉型計畫的關鍵要素，並推動成功的業務成果。我們也持續專注於支持強健的合作夥伴生態系。例如，Accenture 剛宣布在歐洲加碼與我們的投資，為其歐洲客戶提供完整的 ServiceNow 導入服務與專業能力。

And following on the heels of our recognition in May as Forbes #1 World's Most Innovative Company, it was equally gratifying to be recognized this month as a top 3 company on Fortune's Future 50 list. The Future 50 identifies companies that are "firmly focused on the long term." And that's us. In addition, Forrester recognized us as a leader in enterprise service management, and Gartner named us as a leader in their Magic Quadrant IT Service Management tools for the fifth consecutive year, citing our completeness of vision and ability to execute.

繼我們在 5 月獲《富比士》（Forbes）評選為「全球最具創新公司」第 1 名之後，本月同樣令人欣慰的是，我們也獲《財富》（Fortune）Future 50 榜單評選為前 3 名公司。Future 50 用以辨識那些「堅定聚焦長期」的公司，而這正是我們。此外，Forrester 將我們評為企業服務管理領域的領導者；Gartner 也連續第五年在其 IT 服務管理工具魔力象限（Magic Quadrant）中將我們列為領導者，並稱許我們願景的完整性與執行能力。

In closing, I'm very pleased with our strong quarter. We have strong momentum, and we're continuing to make progress against our strategic priorities. At the end of the day, digital transformation is about delivering great experiences and unlocking productivity, and our digital workflows enable both. With our Now Platform and our 3 workflow clouds: IT, employee experience and customer service, our customers can create intelligent and intuitive experiences to make work, work better for people, and that in turn unlocks productivity, both for the employees who can now focus on higher value-added work and for the entire enterprise by making work simpler, easy and faster. That is the future of work, and we're committed to helping our customers create it. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Mike.

最後，我對我們強勁的季度表現感到非常滿意。我們擁有強勁動能，並持續在策略優先事項上取得進展。歸根結底，數位轉型是關於提供卓越體驗並釋放生產力，而我們的數位工作流程能同時達成這兩點。透過我們的 Now Platform 以及三大工作流程雲：IT、員工體驗與客戶服務，我們的客戶能打造智慧且直覺的體驗，讓工作對人而言更有效率；進而釋放生產力——不僅讓員工能把重心放在更高附加價值的工作上，也能透過讓工作更簡單、更容易、更快速，提升整個企業的生產力。這就是未來的工作型態，而我們致力於協助客戶打造它。接下來，我把電話交回給 Mike。

Thank you, John. Our first half momentum continued into Q3, and we delivered another quarter of strong performance, setting us up for a great finish to 2018. Subscription revenues were $627 million, representing year-over-year growth of 39% and constant currency growth of 40%. And subscription billings were $674 million, representing year-over-year growth of 35% and constant currency and duration growth of 34%.

謝謝你，John。我們上半年延續的動能持續到第三季，我們又交出一季強勁的表現，為2018年畫下亮眼句點奠定基礎。訂閱營收為6.27億美元，年增39%，以固定匯率計年增40%。訂閱帳單金額為6.74億美元，年增35%，以固定匯率與合約期間計年增34%。

Our strong top line performance was driven by bookings outperformance, coupled with accelerated revenue recognition from self-hosted deals. Our U.S. federal business highlighted the quarter. Government agencies are increasingly looking for strategic partners to help them digitally transform their businesses. While IT is a key driver of this initiative, we're also seeing federal customers look to our emerging products, including our platform offering, which drove our largest deal in the quarter. Our investments in our federal sales force and FedRAMP-certified data centers are paying off, and we view this sector as a large opportunity going forward.

我們強勁的營收成長主要由預訂（bookings）優於預期所帶動，並且自建部署（self-hosted）交易帶來加速的營收認列。本季美國聯邦業務表現突出。政府機關愈來愈希望尋找策略夥伴，協助其業務進行數位轉型。雖然IT是此項計畫的關鍵推動力，但我們也看到聯邦客戶開始關注我們的新興產品，包括我們的平台產品，並促成了本季最大的一筆交易。我們在聯邦銷售團隊與通過FedRAMP認證的資料中心上的投資正在見效，我們也將此領域視為未來龐大的機會。

In Q3, the U.S. federal sector represented 20% of net new ACV, up from 18% in the prior year. We also saw strong profitability in Q3, including 24% operating margin and 17% free cash flow margin, driven by some marketing expenses shifting to Q4, back-end hiring linearity and lower-than-expected professional services partner fees.

在第三季，美國聯邦部門占淨新增ACV的20%，高於去年同期的18%。我們在第三季也看到強勁的獲利能力，包括24%的營業利益率與17%的自由現金流利益率；主要受惠於部分行銷費用遞延至第四季、後端招募的線性分布，以及專業服務合作夥伴費用低於預期。

Due to the strong performance through the first 3 quarters of the year and expectations going into Q4, we are raising revenue, billings and free cash flow guidance in 2018. We now expect subscription revenues between $2.415 billion and $2.42 billion, representing 39% year-over-year growth and 37% constant currency growth. We expect subscription billings between $2.83 billion and $2.835 billion, representing 33% year-over-year growth and 31% to 32% constant currency and duration growth. We are maintaining 2018 subscription gross margins of 85% and operating margin of 20%.

由於今年前三季表現強勁，且對第四季的展望良好，我們上調2018年的營收、帳單金額與自由現金流指引。我們目前預期訂閱營收介於24.15億至24.20億美元，年增39%，以固定匯率計年增37%。我們預期訂閱帳單金額介於28.30億至28.35億美元，年增33%，以固定匯率與合約期間計年增31%至32%。我們維持2018年訂閱毛利率85%與營業利益率20%的目標不變。

We continue to see strong productivity from our sales force, and we will continue to hire aggressively after adding a record 500-plus net new employees in Q3. We are increasing our 2018 free cash flow margin guidance to 28%. Finally, we expect 188 million diluted weighted average shares outstanding for the year. With that, operator, you can now open up the line for questions.

我們持續看到銷售團隊的高生產力；在第三季新增超過500名淨新進員工、創下紀錄之後，我們仍將持續積極招募。我們將2018年自由現金流利益率指引上調至28%。最後，我們預期全年稀釋後加權平均流通股數為1.88億股。接下來，接線員，請開放提問。

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from Rob Owens with KeyBanc Capital.

(接線員指示) 我們的第一個問題來自KeyBanc Capital的Rob Owens。

I'd love to drill down a little bit more into the success you've seen overall in the federal markets and kind of the breadth of the portfolio, which I think you touched on a little bit. But is the take typically around ITSM, and then further add-ons? Number one. And number two, is this more of a greenfield opportunity you're seeing within Fed? Or a brownfield opportunity at this point? Would love to get some color.

我想更深入了解你們在聯邦市場整體看到的成功，以及產品組合的廣度，我想你剛才也稍微提到一些。不過，通常切入點會是ITSM，然後再往上加購其他模組嗎？這是第一點。第二點，你們在聯邦端看到的機會，更多是綠地（greenfield）機會嗎？還是目前更偏向棕地（brownfield）機會？希望能多分享一些看法。

Sure, Rob. I'll tell you, the -- in my travels over the last year, I've met with governments now in all 3 continents, multiple countries, federal, state and local. And a couple of things are clear. I think initially, when cloud came around, governments were a little bit suspicious and maybe a little bit slow to embrace it for security concerns, for the newness factor. I will tell you that's changing, and governments are under pressure to deliver efficiency and deliver better citizen experiences, and they now recognize cloud -- and to do that in a safe and secure way, and they now recognize cloud is an important enabler of that. So we are seeing strong demand from governments, again, federal, state and local, really around the world. Now in the U.S. federal sector, the good news is ServiceNow has been investing in this sector and in this team over the last several years. We have a dedicated sales team in Washington, with a lot of resident expertise there. And the demands -- I was in Washington for a full week. It's probably end of Q2, early Q3. Literally, across multiple federal agencies, they're looking for their own equivalent in digital transformation, and they view our platform -- what's fascinating is they -- they, perhaps even more than the commercial sector, start with our platform and the power of the platform. And so the state department deal that we talked about in the script was fundamentally a platform deal, and then ITSM and other products on top of it. One of the military services is using our platform in some very creative ways to look at how they onboard their soldiers, how they move their soldiers around, how they off-board over time. And so we're very excited about the opportunity with both the U.S. federal government and governments more generally, because obviously, they have big budgets, they have big needs, they're under pressure to deliver and they're turning out to be some of our more innovative customers on how aggressively they're embracing the platform. One final story. You can sort of hear my excitement on this. In Australia, and the same thing is true in the U.K., some of the state and regional governments are using our platform for some really creative ways. For instance, one of the port authorities that also oversees a bus -- the busing system is talking about how they're delivering better end-to-end experiences, both for the packages and for the people, using the ServiceNow Platform. So again, I think there's an enormous opportunity here. And obviously, the reason federal is so big in Q3 is the U.S. federal budget cycle ends at the end of September 30. So this is obviously their equivalent of what commercial business will be at Q4.

當然，Rob。我跟你說，過去一年我出差拜訪的過程中，我已經在三大洲、許多國家，與各級政府（聯邦、州與地方）會面。有幾點很明顯。我認為一開始雲端出現時，政府對它有些疑慮，可能也因安全考量與新事物因素而較慢採用。但我可以告訴你，這正在改變；政府面臨提升效率、改善民眾體驗的壓力，他們也已經認知到雲端——以及以安全可靠的方式來做到這些——是重要的促成因素。因此我們看到全球各地政府（聯邦、州與地方）都有強勁需求。在美國聯邦部門方面，好消息是ServiceNow過去幾年一直在這個領域與團隊上持續投資。我們在華盛頓有一支專責銷售團隊，並具備大量在地專業。而需求——我在華盛頓待了整整一週。大概是第二季末、第三季初。確實，在多個聯邦機關之間，他們都在尋找屬於自己的數位轉型版本；而他們看待我們的平台——有趣的是，他們可能比商業部門更常從我們的平台與平台能力開始。因此，我們在講稿中提到的國務院交易，本質上是一筆平台交易，之後再加上ITSM與其他產品。其中一個軍種正以非常有創意的方式使用我們的平台，來思考如何讓士兵入伍報到、如何調動、以及如何隨時間進行退伍離隊流程。所以我們對美國聯邦政府以及更廣泛的政府市場機會都非常興奮，因為很明顯他們預算龐大、需求龐大、交付壓力也大，而且他們在多積極採用平台方面，正成為我們更具創新性的客戶之一。最後再分享一個故事。你大概也聽得出來我有多興奮。在澳洲，以及英國也是同樣情況，一些州與區域政府正以非常有創意的方式使用我們的平台。例如，有一個港務機關同時也管理公車——公車運輸系統——他們正在談如何使用ServiceNow平台，為貨物與民眾提供更好的端到端體驗。所以再一次，我認為這裡有非常巨大的機會。而且很明顯，第三季聯邦業務之所以這麼大，是因為美國聯邦預算年度在9月30日結束。因此，這顯然相當於商業業務在第四季的情況。

And our next question comes from Jennifer Lowe with UBS.

下一個問題來自UBS的Jennifer Lowe。

First, I just had a question for Mike. If I look at the outperformance that you had in Q3, sort of normalizing for duration and currency, it looks like, from the slide deck, it was about $21 million of outperformance relative to the midpoint of guidance. Certainly, you're taking the full year numbers higher for non-GAAP subscription billings, but maybe by a little less than the outperformance you saw in Q3. Is there any sort of -- did you see things that you thought would be in Q4 pull forward? I'm just trying to contextualize what looks like sort of an implicit guide down for Q4 relative to what sounds like pretty bullish commentary on the environment.

首先，我有個問題想請教Mike。如果我看你們第三季的超預期表現，並對合約期間與匯率做正規化處理，從簡報投影片看起來，相較於指引中位數大約超出2,100萬美元。當然，你們把全年非GAAP訂閱帳單金額的數字上調了，但上調幅度似乎比第三季看到的超預期表現略小一些。是否有任何——你們是否看到一些原本應該在第四季發生的事情被提前拉到第三季？我只是想釐清一下：相較於你們對環境相當樂觀的評論，這看起來像是對第四季有某種隱含的下修指引。

Yes. No, we actually raised Q4 when you look at what we did. $8 million for billings was deals that we we’re expecting in Q3 that happened in Q4 -- or sorry, we expected in Q4 that were pulled into Q3. And then you also see on the revenue side as well, too, there was about $4 million of the beat in Q3 was associated with Q4 deals that were self-hosted, that happened in Q3. And you can see that, by the way, in our IR deck. We do a reconciliation on Page 4.

是的。不，實際上當你看我們做的事情時，我們把第四季拉高了。帳單（billings）方面的800萬美元，是我們原本預期在第三季會發生、但實際發生在第四季的交易——或者抱歉，我們原本預期在第四季、但被拉到第三季的交易。另外在營收端你也看得到，第三季超出預期（beat）約400萬美元，與原本屬於第四季的自建（self-hosted）交易、但在第三季發生有關。順帶一提，你可以在我們的IR簡報裡看到。我們在第4頁做了調節（reconciliation）。

Okay, great. And maybe just a bigger-picture question. I think you and others have had a pretty phenomenal calendar '18, and we're not at the point yet to get calendar '19 guidance. But I guess, sort of 2 questions. One, there was a question earlier in the year whether tax reform and sort of -- would create sort of a high -- better-than-normal spending environment. Now that we're sort of closing out the year, I'd be curious to get your thoughts on whether that had as much of an impact as maybe you thought it would. And two, as you talk about these digital transformation projects with customers, what's sort of the time duration attached to those? Are people talking to you about multiyear deals that would carry over into future years? Or is it sort of tactical around tax reform in 2018 that maybe fueled a little more than normal activity?

好的，很棒。也許再問一個更宏觀的問題。我想你和其他人2018曆年表現相當亮眼，而我們現在還不到提供2019曆年指引的時點。但我想，大概有兩個問題。第一，今年稍早有人問過，稅改是否會——某種程度上——創造一個偏高、比正常更好的支出環境。現在我們接近年底了，我很好奇想聽聽你們的看法：稅改的影響是否如你們原先可能預期的那麼大。第二，當你們談到與客戶的這些數位轉型專案時，這些專案大概會持續多久？大家是否在跟你們談跨年度（multiyear）的合約、會延續到未來年度？還是說，這比較像是2018年圍繞稅改的戰術性需求，讓活動量比正常稍微多一些？

Yes. I'll start, Jennifer. I don't think we've really seen any big impact to tax reform. I'm not hearing customers spending more specifically on the ServiceNow due to tax reform. I definitely don't think it's hurt us, but I would say, we weren't expecting a big uptick as a result of that. And I'll let John talk about more of the length of a digital transformation with customers.

是的。Jennifer，我先說。我不認為我們真的看到稅改帶來任何重大影響。我沒有聽到客戶因為稅改而特別在ServiceNow上花更多錢。我當然不覺得它對我們有害，但我會說，我們本來也不預期它會帶來很大的上升。至於與客戶進行數位轉型的期間長度，我讓John來談。

Well, Jennifer, the thing that's striking to me -- and I'd say this has evolved even in the 18 months I've been here. Digital transformation is no longer a business buzzword. Digital transformation is an essential strategic need for virtually every customer that I'm meeting with. And it is just stunning, the consistency around that. And in simple terms, you think about it, software is disrupting every company in every industry in every geography. Every company wants to digitally connect with their customers. They want to provide a better digital experience to their employees and they want to use digital technology to drive productivity and efficiency, so they can dedicate their scarce talent, their scarce capital, their scarce resources to innovating for their customers and not getting consumed in the global -- the complexity of running a global enterprise. So I hear that literally in every interaction. Actually, commercial and governments. And so digital transformation absolutely is at the top of the investment priorities for companies, and I don't think it's driven by tax reform or even macroeconomic factors. I think it's more strategic spend. And so we feel ourselves in the middle of that strategic spend, where -- I'll give an example. I was at a large Fortune 50 consumer products company, where they've identified -- and growth in consumer products companies are not huge, so productivity has become very, very important. And they've identified -- they said, we've done the easy cost reduction. We've done the easy, now we need to drive productivity, healthy productivity. And this is the head of their shared services, their business shared services group, which is a highly empowered group across their divisions. And he said, automating workflows, we view -- streamlining, simplifying and automating workflows across our large global entity, we view as a source of highly positive, highly healthy productivity that improves employee experience and helps reduce costs. And he said, we've looked around and we view ServiceNow as a core strategic partner and core strategic platform in helping us do that. And so what I find encouraging -- so yes, is it multiyear? It's absolutely multiyear. But increasingly, we're getting pulled into the strategic initiatives of companies and tied to real business outcomes, economic outcomes around employee experience and around productivity. So I think that's what's fueling our demand. Obviously, cloud is a phenomenon. We're still early in the cloud world, I believe. And cloud is one of the few investments you can make that can provide better experiences, faster speed and lower cost. And that's really driving the demand.

Jennifer，讓我印象深刻的是——而且我會說，即使在我來這裡的18個月裡，這也一直在演變。數位轉型不再只是商業流行語。數位轉型對幾乎每一位我正在會面的客戶而言，都是不可或缺的策略需求。而且那種一致性真的令人震撼。用最簡單的話來說，你想想看，軟體正在顛覆每個產業、每個地理區域的每一家公司。每家公司都想以數位方式與客戶連結。他們想為員工提供更好的數位體驗，並且想用數位科技來提升生產力與效率，這樣他們就能把稀缺的人才、稀缺的資本、稀缺的資源投入到為客戶創新，而不是被經營全球企業的——那種複雜性——所吞噬。所以我在每一次互動中都確實聽到這些。其實不只商業客戶，政府也是。因此，數位轉型絕對位居企業投資優先順序之首，我不認為它是由稅改、甚至總體經濟因素所驅動。我認為這更像是策略性支出。而我們覺得自己正處於這些策略性支出的核心——我舉個例子。我去拜訪一家大型《財富》50強的消費品公司；消費品公司的成長其實不大，所以生產力變得非常、非常重要。他們已經確認——他們說，我們已經做完那些容易的成本削減。容易的都做完了，現在我們需要推動生產力、健康的生產力。這位是他們共享服務（shared services）的負責人，也就是業務共享服務團隊的主管，這是一個在各事業部之間高度賦權的團隊。他說，自動化工作流程——我們把在龐大的全球組織中，對工作流程進行精簡、簡化與自動化，視為一種非常正向、非常健康的生產力來源；它能改善員工體驗並有助於降低成本。他說，我們看了一圈，認為ServiceNow是協助我們做到這件事的核心策略夥伴與核心策略平台。所以我覺得令人鼓舞的是——所以是的，是否是跨年度？絕對是跨年度。但更重要的是，我們愈來愈被拉進企業的策略性計畫中，並且與真實的商業成果、經濟成果綁定，包含員工體驗與生產力。所以我認為這就是推動我們需求的因素。顯然，雲端是一個現象。我相信我們在雲端世界仍然處於早期。而雲端是少數你可以投資、同時帶來更好體驗、更快速度與更低成本的項目之一。這正是需求的主要驅動力。

I would add, too, Jennifer. The one thing that we have seen -- and I remember from 5, 6 years ago, a lot of the analysts used to say that the role of the CIO was going to be diminished because of cloud. If anything, we see with the digital transformation, the CIOs are becoming more strategic in their companies and it helps that we have a relationship with the CIOs.

Jennifer，我也補充一下。我們看到的一件事——我記得在5、6年前，很多分析師常說，因為雲端的關係，CIO的角色會被削弱。但如果說有什麼不同，我們看到在數位轉型之下，CIO在公司裡變得更具策略性，而我們與CIO之間本來就有關係，這也有所助益。

Absolutely.

完全同意。

Our next question comes from Kirk Materne with Evercore ISI.

下一個問題來自Evercore ISI的Kirk Materne。

John, I was kind of curious, just you mentioned sort of the 3 workflow clouds, I think, in terms of IT, employee onboarding and Customer Service Management. I was just curious, are you guys doing anything around the go-to-market to try to take those kind of concepts into the market more directly? Or are there things you're thinking about? You may have mentioned that before, but that's the first time I've heard you sort of talk about them in those 3 buckets. And then Mike, I was wondering if you could just touch upon -- well, a big hiring quarter for you guys where you're adding people maybe, and where you're focused on with those hires for next year.

John，我有點好奇，你剛才提到大概有3個工作流程雲（workflow clouds），我想是指IT、員工到職（onboarding）以及客戶服務管理（Customer Service Management）。我想請教的是，你們在市場推進（go-to-market）方面，有沒有做些什麼，想把這些概念更直接地帶到市場上？或者你們正在思考哪些事情？你可能以前提過，但這是我第一次聽到你把它們分成這3個類別來談。另外Mike，我想請你也談一下——嗯，你們這一季招募（hiring）規模很大，新增了不少人；以及你們明年在這些招募上會聚焦在哪些方向。

Yes. Great question, Kirk. And to be honest, it's sort of funny. Mike and I are sitting in the room right now where we did our end-of-summer product reviews and looking about our strategy. And I had just come back from a month on the road, meeting with customers, CJ Desai just come out of all his product reviews. And what we sort of realized that -- we've been describing our product portfolio in what I would describe as inside-out terms: HR, security, customer support, ITOM, ITSM. And the reality is, those aren't the words the customers are using. And so, this move to the 3 -- or the Now Platform and 3 clouds is, to some extent, adopting the same language that customers are using when they think about it. So let me just sort of describe each. Customers almost inevitably talk about our platform first, not our products. They say, your platform is powerful. We recognize the power and value of your platform, both your out of the box and our ability to build applications on it. And it's becoming one of the core platforms, one of our core -- if I've heard this once, I've heard it 25 times in the last 60, 90 days. You're now one of our core strategic platforms going forward. So the Now Platform is the sort of foundational element. And then the 3 clouds are really describing our products, our existing products around the business areas that they're addressing. So our IT work -- we call it 3 workflow clouds. Our IT workflow cloud is helping the IT run their business as if -- run IT as a business. So that's IT Service Management, ITOM, that's IT analytics management, IT Business Management. And so the CIOs are increasingly looking at our capabilities to help them run their own function better. The employee workflow cloud or the employee experience cloud is how they're describing their desire to automate workflows to deliver better end-to-end employee experiences and drive better efficiency. And so that's where ITSM, HR case management, HR onboarding and off-boarding, those all tie together to help build end-to-end employee experiences. And they're asking us around facilities and finance and other functions that -- can we automate workflows. And so you'll see us -- our product development and NowX focus will be on building out some of those workflows to deliver the end-to-end experiences and help them drive greater productivity across that. And then the last cloud, the customer support, the customer service workflow cloud, is really driven by a subset of customers, frankly, more B2B customers, who are increasingly using our capabilities to serve their customers. And I think about the whole customer support market or customer service market as 2 broad segments. One, a B2C segment, where customer service platforms seem to be more CRM-based. That's not our sweet spot. But B2B environments, where the inbound customer contacts need to get to the root cause of what's causing the problem, get that root cause addressed, and then getting back to the customer with resolution. That -- our platform is very well suited to that, and that's really when you look at our growth in customer support, where it's driving. So these, I think, 3 -- grouping in these 3 areas -- I was at the major CIO organization a couple of weeks ago -- I think allow us to more critically describe who we are, we're the digital workflow company, and help drive our incremental innovation investment and link it to their business outcomes, link it to the goals that they've established for themselves. So I think you'll see us drive a little more of our marketing and how we talk about the company in these terms.

是的。好問題，Kirk。老實說，這還有點好笑。Mike 和我現在就坐在我們做夏末產品檢視、並檢討策略的那個會議室裡。我剛結束一個月的出差行程、與客戶會面回來；CJ Desai 也剛完成他所有的產品檢視。我們有點意識到的是——我們一直用我所謂「由內而外」的方式來描述我們的產品組合：HR、安全、客戶支援、ITOM、ITSM。但現實是，客戶並不用這些詞。因此，轉向 3——也就是 Now Platform 與 3 個雲，在某種程度上，是採用客戶在思考這件事時所使用的同一套語言。我先大致說明每一個。客戶幾乎無一例外會先談我們的平台，而不是我們的產品。他們會說，你們的平台很強大。我們認同你們平台的力量與價值，包含你們開箱即用的能力，以及我們能在其上建置應用程式的能力。而它正成為核心平台之一、成為我們的核心——如果我在過去 60、90 天內聽過一次，我就聽過 25 次。你們現在是我們未來的核心策略平台之一。所以 Now Platform 是一個基礎性的要素。接著，3 個雲其實是在描述我們的產品——我們既有產品——圍繞它們所對應的業務領域來描述。所以我們的 IT 工作——我們稱之為 3 個工作流程雲。我們的 IT 工作流程雲是在協助 IT 像經營企業一樣來運作——把 IT 當作一門生意來管理。所以那包括 IT 服務管理（IT Service Management）、ITOM，也包括 IT 分析管理、IT 業務管理（IT Business Management）。因此，CIO 們愈來愈在看我們的能力，來幫助他們把自己的職能做得更好。員工工作流程雲或員工體驗雲，是他們用來描述其想要自動化工作流程、提供更好的端到端員工體驗並提升效率的需求。因此，這就是 ITSM、HR 個案管理、HR 到職與離職（onboarding 與 off-boarding）等，如何串在一起以打造端到端的員工體驗。他們也會就設施、財務與其他職能來問我們——我們能否自動化工作流程。所以你會看到我們——我們的產品開發與 NowX 的重點，會放在擴展其中一些工作流程，以交付端到端體驗，並協助他們在整體上提升生產力。最後一個雲，客戶支援、客戶服務工作流程雲，坦白說主要是由一部分客戶——更多是 B2B 客戶——所驅動；他們愈來愈多使用我們的能力來服務他們的客戶。我把整個客戶支援市場或客戶服務市場看作兩個廣泛的區隔。第一個是 B2C 區隔，在那裡客戶服務平台似乎更偏向以 CRM 為基礎。那不是我們的強項。但在 B2B 環境中，進線的客戶聯絡需要追溯造成問題的根本原因、把根因處理掉，然後再回覆客戶提供解決方案。我們的平台非常適合這種情境；而當你看我們在客戶支援上的成長時，驅動力就在這裡。所以我認為，這 3 個——以這 3 個領域來分組——我幾週前在一個大型 CIO 組織那裡——我認為能讓我們更精準地描述我們是誰：我們是數位工作流程公司；並有助於推動我們的增量創新投資，且把它連結到他們的業務成果，連結到他們為自己設定的目標。所以我想你會看到我們在行銷，以及我們如何談論公司時，會更多用這些用語。

And then Kirk, on your question with regards to headcount, where we're putting these people. Most of these people, the -- #1 is R&D, #2 is our sales organization, and that kind of flows through the rest into the others. And we think that R&D and sales will be the big investment areas as well, and actually in our next 3 years is what we're planning on hiring most of our people in those 2 groups as we see the opportunity in front of us.

然後 Kirk，關於你問到的人力編制，我們把這些人放在哪裡。這些人當中，大多數——第一是研發（R&D），第二是我們的銷售組織，接著才依序分配到其他部門。我們認為研發與銷售也將是主要的投資領域；事實上，在接下來 3 年，我們的規劃是，隨著我們看到眼前的機會，將大部分的人才招募都放在這兩個群組。

Our next question comes from Kash Rangan with Merrill Lynch.

下一個問題來自美林（Merrill Lynch）的 Kash Rangan。

I just wanted to get your thoughts very quickly. Do you see any tailwinds or headwinds to IT spending in 2019 based on, John, your conversations with customers? And secondly, when I look at the way you categorize your clouds, you've got a play in HCM broadly, being [industrialized] HCM. You've got a play in the CRM market. Also, I cannot help but wonder, but as you look at your plans to be a $5 billion, $10 billion revenue company, it appears to me that there could be other major markets that you'd have to participate in a pretty big way. Because, obviously, companies like Salesforce.com worked -- made some significant acquisitions along the way, en route to trying to be large companies. So I just wonder how you think about the acquisition road map and your potential of playing in markets in a much bigger way, that you have to if you were to become a multiple of your current size. And it's meant to be worded in constructive way rather than a critical way.

我想很快請教一下你的看法。John，根據你與客戶的對話，你是否看到 2019 年 IT 支出有任何順風或逆風？第二，當我看你們對雲的分類方式，你們在廣義的 HCM 上有布局，屬於（被）[industrialized] 的 HCM。你們也在 CRM 市場有所布局。另外，我不禁在想，當你們規劃成為一家 50 億、100 億美元營收的公司時，看起來你們可能還需要以相當大的規模參與其他主要市場。因為很明顯，像 Salesforce.com 這樣的公司一路走來——為了成為大型公司——也進行了一些重要的併購。所以我想知道，你們如何看待併購路線圖，以及你們在更大規模參與市場方面的可能性——如果你們要成為目前規模的數倍，可能就必須如此。我的措辭是出於建設性的角度，而不是批判性的角度。

Well, Kash, let me -- on IT spend, as I said earlier, to be honest, it's digital transformation investment that every company is needing to make. They're embracing software, they're embracing cloud and that's, therefore, driving IT spend. So we see continued strength there. I appreciate your question because I think it's a really important one. And again, I'm going to answer this through the eyes of the customers about what I hear consistently and how we understand where we play. What I consistently hear from CIOs, COOs and, in some cases, CEOs, is as they embrace cloud at the infrastructure level, they're consolidating their infrastructure needs, and they're figuring out what their public cloud, hybrid cloud, private cloud strategies are. And then at the software layer, they're adopting 4 to 6 strategic cloud platforms. And typically, those would be -- often, it's a Salesforce for their sales cloud and sometimes their marketing cloud, Adobe for their marketing cloud, a Workday for their employee or HCM cloud, Office 365 or Microsoft, often, for their productivity. If they have a supply chain, you'll hear SAP frequently. And ServiceNow is both the IT cloud, but also the workflow cloud, the cloud that helps enable the workflow all around these other systems of record. And they say 2 things. One, they want 1 plus 1 plus 1 plus 1 to equal 10. So it is not a zero-sum game in their minds. They view each of these core strategic platforms as additive, and they want us to work effectively together, which I believe we can do and are doing. And two, our particular role is not just IT, it's workflow. And so we view our market opportunity is digitizing and automating workflows all across the enterprise. So we will never be an HCM system of record. We don't need to be, and we use Workday internally. We think they're terrific. We'll never be a CRM system of record. We think there's -- we think Salesforce and Adobe and others do that quite well. We'll never be a financial system of record or a financial ERP. What we do, do better than anyone is the workflows around those platforms. And if we look at that opportunity, that market opportunity, we think it's an enormous TAM and offers tremendous growth opportunity to $10 billion and well beyond. So the point I just want to make is, I do not see this and nor do customers see it as a zero-sum game among the major strategic cloud platforms. They want them to work together. I believe there's plenty of growth for all of them. And in particular, I think us, as the digital workflow company, we have a huge market opportunity that's additive to the others, and that's what we're pursuing. And to be honest, again, these 3 clouds, everything I'm talking about, has not been thought up here in some windowless conference room. It's based out of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds -- or conversations with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of customers. And that's what they're saying to us. I'll make one final comment. You can hear a little of my passion on this. As I said, I was fortunate enough to be able to speak to the top CIO group a couple of weeks ago. And a CIO of -- again, in this case, a different one, but about -- a major industrial company, Fortune 25, Fortune 50 company, said, hey, this is his algorithm. He called it 1 plus 1 plus 1 plus 1 times ServiceNow equals 10 times. He talked about that he has -- in his tech stack, he has a Salesforce, a Workday, an Office 365, in his case an Oracle for financial ERP. And he said, and we at ServiceNow, [that instead of it] being plus 1, it's times 1, and the multiplicative impact we can have, not just in IT, but when workflow around all those other clouds gives the 10 times impact. And that's directionally is what we're hearing and that's directionally what we're pursuing.

嗯，Kash，讓我——關於 IT 支出，如我先前所說，坦白講，這是每家公司都必須投入的數位轉型投資。他們正在擁抱軟體、擁抱雲端，因此也就帶動了 IT 支出。所以我們看到那裡持續強勁。我很感謝你的提問，因為我認為這真的非常重要。而且我會再次從客戶的角度來回答：我一貫聽到的是什麼，以及我們如何理解我們所扮演的角色。我一貫從 CIO、COO，某些情況下也從 CEO 那裡聽到的是：當他們在基礎設施層面擁抱雲端時，他們正在整合其基礎設施需求，並且在釐清其公有雲、混合雲、私有雲策略。接著在軟體層，他們會採用 4 到 6 個策略性雲端平台。而通常會是——很多時候，他們會用 Salesforce 作為銷售雲，有時也用於行銷雲；用 Adobe 作為行銷雲；用 Workday 作為員工或 HCM 雲；用 Office 365 或 Microsoft，通常用於生產力工具。如果他們有供應鏈，你會經常聽到 SAP。而 ServiceNow 既是 IT 雲，也是工作流程雲——它能協助在這些其他記錄系統周邊啟用工作流程的雲。他們會說兩件事。第一，他們希望 1 加 1 加 1 加 1 等於 10。所以在他們心中，這不是零和遊戲。他們把這些核心策略平台視為彼此加乘，並希望我們能有效協作；我相信我們可以做到，而且也正在做到。第二，我們的特定角色不只是 IT，而是工作流程。因此我們認為，我們的市場機會是在整個企業範圍內將工作流程數位化並自動化。所以我們永遠不會成為 HCM 的記錄系統。我們也不需要成為；而且我們內部也使用 Workday。我們認為他們非常出色。我們永遠不會成為 CRM 的記錄系統。我們認為——我們認為 Salesforce、Adobe 以及其他公司在那方面做得很好。我們永遠不會成為財務記錄系統或財務 ERP。我們所做、而且比任何人都做得更好的，是圍繞這些平台的工作流程。如果我們看這個機會、這個市場機會，我們認為它是一個巨大的 TAM，並提供通往 100 億美元以及更高的龐大成長機會。所以我想強調的是：我不認為這是——客戶也不認為——主要策略性雲端平台之間的零和遊戲。他們希望這些平台能一起運作。我相信它們都有充足的成長空間。尤其是我們，作為數位工作流程公司，我們擁有一個可與其他平台相互加乘的巨大市場機會，而這正是我們在追求的方向。而且坦白說，再次強調，我所談的這三朵雲、所有這些內容，並不是在某個沒有窗戶的會議室裡憑空想出來的。這是基於數百、數百、數百——或者說與數百、數百、數百位客戶的對話。而這就是他們對我們說的。我再做最後一點補充。你可以聽得出我對此有些熱情。如我所說，幾週前我很幸運能與頂尖 CIO 團體交流。而一位 CIO——同樣地，這次是另一位——來自一家大型工業公司、財富 25、財富 50 的公司，他說，嘿，這是他的演算法。他把它稱為 1 加 1 加 1 加 1 乘以 ServiceNow 等於 10 倍。他談到在他的技術堆疊中，有 Salesforce、Workday、Office 365，而在他的案例中，財務 ERP 用的是 Oracle。他說，而我們在 ServiceNow，[與其說它]是加 1，不如說是乘以 1；而我們能帶來的乘數效應，不僅在 IT 上，當圍繞所有那些其他雲的工作流程運作起來時，就能帶來 10 倍的影響。而這在方向上就是我們所聽到的，也是在方向上我們所追求的。

Our next question comes from Alex Zukin with Piper Jaffray.

下一個問題來自 Piper Jaffray 的 Alex Zukin。

Our next question is Raimo Lenschow with Barclays.

下一個問題是 Barclays 的 Raimo Lenschow。

Quick, John. Can I stay on that subject? And as you kind of move over to be -- and talk more about platform and be more the workflow platform, how do you -- as you think about 2019, how do you think about your go-to-market with your sales guys in terms of how they are positioning it? What you do with your sales guys in terms of, are they able to kind of get that message across? What needs to change there to kind of do kind of even do a better job there? And then for Mike, you gave the cash flow margin kind of framework at the Analyst Day. I see now we've kind of upgraded that a little bit. Can you talk a little bit about the drivers for the upgrade this year and if that changes your overall framework?

John，簡短問一下。我可以延續剛才那個主題嗎？當你們逐步轉向——更多談平台、成為更偏工作流程的平台時，你怎麼看——在思考 2019 年時，你怎麼看你們的 go-to-market（市場推進）以及你們的銷售團隊在定位上的做法？就你對銷售團隊的要求而言，他們是否能把這個訊息有效傳達出去？為了把這件事做得更好，需要做哪些改變？另外給 Mike，你在分析師日給了現金流利潤率的框架。我現在看到我們似乎把它小幅上調了。你能談談今年上調的驅動因素，以及這是否會改變你們整體的框架嗎？

Yes. Raimo, on your first question, I believe this allows us to even focus the sales teams even more. So obviously, our platform and IT cloud is our historically sweet spot, the CIO. And as Mike mentioned, the CIO is increasingly playing a strategic role. Describing things as the employee experience cloud or employee workflow cloud is a better description, I think, of what we do because employee experience is not just an HR issue or just an IT issue or just a legal or just a finance. That increasingly, you're seeing as companies try to embrace the end-to-end employee experience and automate workflow. The CIO has to work with the CHRO, who has to work with the CFO. And we often are sponsored or introduced into that equation by the CIO, but we find ourselves working with that triad, that team more frequently. Because there is a -- and sometimes you have a shared services, a shared business services person that often reports to the CFO. But it's that triad -- as companies are trying to say how do we digitize our internal processes and digitize our internal employee experience, it needs the CIO, CHRO and CFO or shared services, and so we're calling on that group. And then in the customer service or customer support world, by being even sharper and clearer that B2B is our focus, in many cases, customer service in a B2B environment reports either to the CFO or COO. And so again, that's an area that's a natural -- and the CIO is often involved, so it's a more natural adjacency for us. And so I think if Dave Schneider or Kevin Haverty were here, they'd say this kind of way of thinking about and describing what we are, which it actually reflects what we're doing, mirrors what we're doing in a more focused way. And again, the CIO, as Mike said earlier, is increasingly involved in almost all of those situations. So it's a -- our strength there is, I think, an asset.

是的。Raimo，關於你的第一個問題，我相信這讓我們能讓銷售團隊更聚焦。很明顯，我們的平台與 IT 雲是我們歷史上的甜蜜點，對應的是 CIO。而如 Mike 所提到的，CIO 正在日益扮演策略性角色。我認為，把我們描述為員工體驗雲或員工工作流程雲，是對我們所做事情更好的描述，因為員工體驗不只是人資議題，也不只是 IT 議題，也不只是法務或財務議題。你會越來越看到，當公司試圖擁抱端到端的員工體驗並自動化工作流程時，CIO 必須與 CHRO 合作，而 CHRO 又必須與 CFO 合作。我們往往是由 CIO 贊助或引介進入這個方程式，但我們發現自己更頻繁地與這個三人組、這個團隊合作。因為還有——有時你會有共享服務、共享業務服務的負責人，通常向 CFO 匯報。但就是這個三人組——當公司在思考如何將內部流程數位化、將內部員工體驗數位化時，需要 CIO、CHRO 與 CFO 或共享服務，因此我們會去拜訪這個群體。接著在客戶服務或客戶支援領域，透過更尖銳、更清楚地表明我們聚焦 B2B，在許多情況下，B2B 環境中的客戶服務會向 CFO 或 COO 匯報。所以同樣地，那是一個很自然的——而且 CIO 往往也會參與，因此對我們而言是更自然的相鄰領域。因此我認為，如果 Dave Schneider 或 Kevin Haverty 在這裡，他們會說，這種思考與描述我們是什麼的方式——而且它其實反映了我們正在做的事——以更聚焦的方式映射了我們正在做的事。而且再次強調，如 Mike 先前所說，CIO 正日益參與幾乎所有這些情境。所以——我認為我們在那方面的優勢是一項資產。

And then, Raimo, on cash flow, I thought you'd be happy that I was giving -- we were giving a good cash flow margin increase for the year for free cash flow.

然後，Raimo，關於現金流，我想你會很高興我給了——我們給了今年自由現金流的良好現金流利潤率提升，而且是免費奉送的。

No, I am. I am. But before...

不，我是。我是。但在那之前……

But it's driven by a couple of things this year. Part of it is Q4 is off to a very good start in terms of the billings associated with the number of customers, that I expect collections to be very strong this quarter, more than what I was thinking earlier on in the year. And it's really a timing issue. The other thing is there's a bunch of CapEx projects that we're initiating that I don't think the payments are going to happen until next year. So that's really pushing some of our spending from a cash flow perspective into '19. As a reminder, at Financial Analyst Day, we did say you will get greater than 1% operating margin and greater than 0% free cash flow margin expansion. I'm not giving guidance for '19 right now, but I do think operating margin and free cash flow will converge a little bit to growth. And then longer term though, I just want to remind people, cash taxes will kick in, in around 2023, 2024, which will have an impact on free cash flow.

但今年它是由幾個因素所驅動的。其中一部分是第四季在與客戶數量相關的帳單開立方面有一個非常好的開局，我預期本季的收款會非常強勁，會高於我今年稍早的預期。而這其實是時間點的問題。另一個因素是我們正在啟動一批資本支出（CapEx）專案，我認為相關付款要到明年才會發生。所以從現金流的角度來看，這確實把我們部分支出推遲到2019年。提醒一下，在金融分析師日（Financial Analyst Day）我們確實說過，你們將會看到超過1%的營業利潤率擴張，以及超過0%的自由現金流利潤率擴張。我現在不提供2019年的指引，但我確實認為營業利潤率與自由現金流會在某種程度上向成長收斂一些。不過從更長期來看，我只想提醒大家，現金稅負大約會在2023、2024年開始出現，這將會對自由現金流造成影響。

Our next question comes from Michael Turits with Raymond James.

我們的下一個問題來自 Raymond James 的 Michael Turits。

Guys, you did a great job of going at a very high level. And John, you answered it great. I wanted to drill downwards a little bit and ask you about 2 product areas. One, in ITOM, how much do you think about going down the stack, down closer into monitoring and actually touching the infrastructure? And then one subsegment that's been active in M&A in the industry lately has been around IT notification, where it seems to be -- or there's been some acquisitions there. I was wondering if that is in your sweet spot and if you're investing there. So down the stack towards monitoring and touching the IT infrastructure and IT notification.

各位，你們在非常高的層級上講得很到位。而且 John，你回答得很好。我想再往下深入一點，問你們兩個產品領域。第一，在 ITOM 方面，你們有多常思考往技術堆疊更下層走、往更接近監控、甚至實際觸及基礎設施的方向？另外，最近產業裡在併購（M&A）上相當活躍的一個子領域是 IT 通知（IT notification），看起來——或是那裡已經有一些收購案。我想知道那是否在你們的甜蜜點（sweet spot）之內，以及你們是否正在那裡投資。也就是往堆疊下層走、朝監控並觸及 IT 基礎設施，以及 IT 通知。

Michael, again, the way I'll answer that is we're listening intensely to the customer and listening intensely to how CIOs, how VPs of Infrastructure, VPs of Application envision running and leading IT over the next 5 to 10 years. Because there's just no doubt that the role of IT is shifting in the company and the way they're running IT is shifting and growing. And so there's -- we have very strong demand for ITOM this year, and that can be discovery, service mapping, just as they're trying to get a robust CMDB. And I think there is some appetite for us to explore, as you described, moving down the stack or to have our platform continue to broaden and expand so that they have -- I don't want to say one-stop shop, but they have -- they can build more -- have fewer applications, and then more applications on our platform, is the way I would say it. And so when you look at our road map, when you look at any M&A we may do, we're simply listening to our customers and saying, all right, how do we continue to build out our ITOM and other IT capabilities to help ensure that CEO -- I'm sorry, CIOs can run IT in a modern way? That's -- because they've got this -- they have this -- the barbell effect, where they have -- a lot of this is legacy stuff. And the legacy stuff is not going away overnight, and yet they have modern platforms, like ServiceNow and other modern applications and modern mindsets around agile and DevOps. And the CIOs want our platform to bridge -- help them bridge both. And so they can't walk away from the legacy. We help them address that. But also, we're increasingly helping them run IT in a modern way. And so that will continue to drive not only the organic growth -- organic road maps, rather, that -- for IT-related products, but also our M&A agenda. When we can add incremental capabilities to our company and our platform that match those needs that CIOs want, we'll continue to do that. And then IT notification, to be honest, I haven't really -- that may be -- I haven't heard that specific request, and CJ's not in the room with us. It's very well could be on the road map, it's just not -- do you know, Mike?

Michael，我再說一次，我的回答方式是：我們非常密切地傾聽客戶，也非常密切地傾聽 CIO、基礎設施副總（VPs of Infrastructure）、應用副總（VPs of Application）如何想像在未來5到10年運作並領導 IT。因為毫無疑問，IT 在公司中的角色正在轉變，他們運作 IT 的方式也在轉變並持續擴大。因此——我們今年對 ITOM 的需求非常強勁，這可能包括探索（discovery）、服務映射（service mapping），因為他們正試圖建立一個健全的 CMDB。而且我認為，正如你所描述的，市場對我們去探索往堆疊下層移動、或讓我們的平台持續拓寬與擴展是有一些胃口的，讓他們能夠——我不想說一站式商店（one-stop shop），但他們可以——建立更多——擁有更少的應用程式，並把更多應用程式建在我們的平台上，我會這樣說。所以當你看我們的產品路線圖（road map），以及我們可能進行的任何併購（M&A），我們只是傾聽客戶並說，好吧，我們要如何持續擴展 ITOM 與其他 IT 能力，以協助確保——我是說 CIO——CIO 能以現代化方式運作 IT？這是——因為他們有這種——他們有這種——槓鈴效應（barbell effect），也就是他們有——很多是傳統遺留系統。而遺留系統不會在一夜之間消失，但同時他們也有像 ServiceNow 這樣的現代平台，以及其他現代應用與圍繞敏捷（agile）與 DevOps 的現代思維。而 CIO 希望我們的平台能夠橋接——幫助他們橋接兩者。因此他們不能拋棄遺留系統。我們幫助他們處理那一塊。但同時，我們也愈來愈多地幫助他們以現代方式運作 IT。因此，這將持續驅動的不僅是有機成長——更精確地說，是 IT 相關產品的有機產品路線圖——也會驅動我們的併購議程。當我們能為公司與平台增加符合 CIO 需求的增量能力時，我們會持續這麼做。至於 IT 通知，坦白說，我還沒有真的——那可能是——我沒有聽到那個特定需求，而且 CJ 也不在房間裡。它很可能在路線圖上，只是目前——你知道嗎，Mike？

Yes, there's a lot of people that play in that market. There was -- you've got -- Atlassian bought OpsGenie. You have -- Zendesk bought that [Zenskill]. You got VictorOps, that was acquired. It's not something -- there's a lot players down there. Splunk is playing in that space. We're going to more partner down there right now.

是的，那個市場有很多人在做。有——你看——Atlassian 收購了 OpsGenie。你還有——Zendesk 收購了那個 [Zenskill]。還有 VictorOps，也被收購了。那不是——那下面有很多玩家。Splunk 也在那個領域。我們目前會更多採取合作夥伴方式。

Our next question comes from Justin Furby with William Blair & Company.

我們的下一個問題來自 William Blair & Company 的 Justin Furby。

This is actually Vinay on for Justin. And continuing on the product theme, if you look at the HR services or case management market specifically, just kind of wondering, how do you see the pace of spending or deal sizes trending there? And how would you characterize the competitive environment?

其實我是代 Justin 發問的 Vinay。延續產品的主題，如果你看 HR 服務或個案管理（case management）市場，特別是那一塊，我想請教你們如何看待那裡的支出節奏或交易規模（deal sizes）的趨勢？以及你們會如何描述競爭環境？

Well, the HR -- or what we have been describing as our HR product -- increasingly, I consider it a component of our employee experience -- has performed well. We've got 20 -- you asked magnitude. We have -- I think it's something -- 20 customers over $1 million. And again, where we tend to get involved is when there's an employee experience initiative. And that's when you want to combine the -- many of the finance system records, the HR HCM system of record, things like payroll, T&E and other things into a seamless experience for employees. And increasingly, companies are realizing that they want what I would have called a shared services portal. But they want to have their employees go 1 place where they can report problems, get knowledge, get their questions answered and get things resolved. And if you have to go into a different place for an IT problem, as you do an HR problem, as you do a facilities problem, employees are going to pick up the phone. And that's what -- employees don't like that and increasingly, organizations don't like it because it's high cost. And so our shared services portal, both web and increasingly mobile, allows companies to tell their employees, go one place for all of your internal problems and questions and get them resolved. And if you can use self-help, that's what employees love, that's far more productive and efficient for the company, or an automated response through Knowledge. And so that's the pull, that the underlying business pull we feel, and that's the situations where our platform, our workflow platform is relatively unique. So that may start with HR case management, that may start with our onboarding and off-boarding, it may start with the shared services portal. We had a customer, a large top 5 U.K. bank, it's a global bank based in the U.K., and they went live with our -- an end-to-end employee experience that we were fueling, in this case, alongside SuccessFactors, for -- with 173,000 employees. And I think from start to finish, they got it live in something like 6 months. It might have been a little more than 6 months. And so -- and again, that was a CEO-, COO-sponsored initiative that HR's partnering with IT, partnering with finance to drive a strong end-to-end experience. And our platform is a cross-functional workflow platform, was sort of a foundational element and the fact that we worked well with all the other supporting platforms. It's really -- and so that's what's driving our -- that's why calling it employee experience, I think, is a more accurate depiction and will also drive our incremental road map priorities.

嗯，HR——或者我們一直描述為我們的 HR 產品——愈來愈多地，我把它視為員工體驗的一個組成部分——表現得很好。我們有 20——你問的是量級。我們有——我想是——20 個客戶的合約金額超過 100 萬美元。而且再說一次，我們通常會介入的情境，是在有員工體驗倡議的時候。那時你會想把——許多財務系統的主檔/紀錄、HR HCM 系統的主檔，以及像薪資、差旅與費用（T&E）和其他事項，整合成員工無縫的體驗。而且愈來愈多，公司意識到他們想要我過去會稱之為共享服務入口（shared services portal）的東西。但他們希望員工到同一個地方，回報問題、取得知識、得到問題解答並把事情解決。如果你必須為 IT 問題去不同的地方、為 HR 問題去另一個地方、為設施問題又去另一個地方，員工就會拿起電話打。而這就是——員工不喜歡這樣，組織也愈來愈不喜歡，因為成本很高。因此，我們的共享服務入口（同時支援網頁端，且愈來愈多支援行動端）讓公司可以告訴員工：所有內部問題與疑問都到同一個地方，並把它們解決。而如果你能使用自助服務，那正是員工喜歡的，對公司而言也更具生產力與效率；或者透過 Knowledge 提供自動化回覆。所以這就是我們感受到的拉力——底層的業務拉力——也是我們的平台、我們的工作流程平台相對獨特的情境。因此，這可能從 HR 個案管理開始，可能從我們的到職與離職流程（onboarding 和 off-boarding）開始，也可能從共享服務入口開始。我們有一個客戶，一家大型的英國前五大銀行，是一家以英國為基地的全球性銀行；他們上線了我們所驅動的端到端員工體驗，在這個案例中，我們與 SuccessFactors 並行，涵蓋 173,000 名員工。我想從開始到結束，他們大概在 6 個月左右就上線了。可能略多於 6 個月。因此——而且再說一次，那是一個由 CEO、COO 贊助的倡議，由 HR 與 IT、財務合作，推動強而有力的端到端體驗。而我們的平台是一個跨職能的工作流程平台，是某種基礎性要素；同時我們也能與所有其他支援平台良好協作。這真的——因此這就是在推動我們的——這也是為什麼我認為稱之為「員工體驗」更精準，也會推動我們增量的產品路線圖優先事項。

Our next question comes from Matt Hedberg with RBC Capital Markets.

下一個問題來自 RBC Capital Markets 的 Matt Hedberg。

I wanted to ask about FriendlyData. It looks like it's bringing natural query language or natural language query to the platform. It seems like that could resonate well with some of your nontechnical users. I think you guys mentioned that you're replatforming it. Can you comment a bit about what this means to the platform? And maybe any feedback from customers when this acquisition was announced?

我想問一下 FriendlyData。看起來它把自然查詢語言或自然語言查詢帶到平台上。這似乎會在你們的一些非技術使用者之間引起共鳴。我記得你們提到正在把它重新平台化（replatforming）。你能談談這對平台意味著什麼嗎？以及在宣布這項收購時，客戶是否有任何回饋？

Yes,, Matt. This is -- I think it's now our fourth, I'll call it, AI-related acquisition, starting with DxContinuum. And look, here's what customers are saying. They're saying 2 things. One, they want to build experiences that are really easy to use and -- or really easy to build, so low code, no code kind of capabilities for the developers inside the company. And they want to have experiences that their employees can get automated or self-help kind of functionality. And so what this particular acquisition does, as you said, sort of language processing, it just helps you translate -- just helps you -- natural language search helps you translate voice or voice text, would be my simple way of saying it, but with natural language and receive responses and charts or graphs or text. And so it's a form of chatbot, is the way I think about it. But you make a request in one mode, whether that's voice or text or verbal, and it responds in the mode you want back. And so it's a nice team, it's a good team of engineering talent and a good platform, and we're doing what we do with every acquisition we make, that they're recoding it into the core ServiceNow Platform. I'll remind you, of one core platform driving all of our applications and customers. And we think it accelerates our road map significantly. It will be used across all products and will help drive platform adoption. And we're thrilled to have the team, really, really, really strong team, nice team. And we're excited to have them part of our overall organization.

是的，Matt。這是——我想這已經是我們第四起（我稱之為）與 AI 相關的收購，從 DxContinuum 開始。你看，客戶是怎麼說的。他們說兩件事。第一，他們想打造真正容易使用的體驗——或者真正容易建置的體驗——也就是給公司內部開發者的低程式碼、無程式碼能力。第二，他們希望有一些體驗，能讓員工獲得自動化或自助式的功能。因此，這次收購所做的事情，如你所說，是某種語言處理；簡單說，自然語言搜尋能幫你把語音或語音文字——我用最簡單的方式說——透過自然語言進行轉換，並回傳回覆以及圖表、曲線圖或文字。所以我把它視為一種聊天機器人（chatbot）。但你可以用一種模式提出請求，不論是語音、文字或口述，它會用你想要的模式回應你。所以這是一個很棒的團隊，有很好的工程人才與很好的平台；而我們會像對每一次收購一樣，把它重新編碼（recoding）整合進 ServiceNow 核心平台。我再提醒一次：一個核心平台驅動我們所有的應用與客戶。我們認為這會大幅加速我們的產品路線圖。它會被用在所有產品上，並有助於推動平台採用。我們很高興能有這個團隊加入，真的非常、非常、非常強的團隊，很棒的團隊。我們也很期待他們成為我們整體組織的一部分。

Our next question comes from Walter Pritchard with Citi.

下一個問題來自 Citi 的 Walter Pritchard。

A question, I think, for Mike or if Dave Schneider is in the room there. Wondering on the sales capacity build as we look at that headed into 2019. Could you maybe contrast or compare how that ramp and the composition of that ramp compared to what we've seen in the last couple of years?

我想這個問題是問 Mike，或者如果 Dave Schneider 也在現場的話。想請教在我們展望 2019 年時，銷售產能的建置（sales capacity build）情況。你能否對比或比較一下，這次的爬坡速度與爬坡的組成，和過去幾年我們看到的情況有何不同？

I expect it to be pretty similar in terms of what we're looking to add going into next year. I'm not expecting major changes to the sales organization next year. I will say, most of our revenue, as you know, comes from large enterprise. As we've said before, around 20%, 21% of our revenue is commercial, and the other is G2K and large enterprise and public sector. So obviously, we're very focused on public sector and geographically, we think there's a large opportunity continue to grow in Asia with new logos, but there's lots of opportunities still within the U.S. and EMEA to further penetrate our existing accounts. And we still find that reps have too many accounts they're covering, and we need to hire more people. And so we're going to continue to [hire] as well. We're going to continue to add more product sales specialists as well to support our emerging products within our sales organization.

我預期在我們明年要新增的人力方面會相當類似。我不預期明年銷售組織會有重大變動。我會說，如你所知，我們大部分營收來自大型企業。如我們之前所說，我們大約 20%、21% 的營收來自商業（commercial），其餘則來自 G2K 與大型企業以及公部門。所以很明顯地，我們非常聚焦公部門；在地理區域上，我們認為在亞洲透過新客戶（new logos）持續成長有很大的機會，但在美國與 EMEA 也仍有許多機會，能進一步加深我們在既有客戶中的滲透率。而我們仍然發現，業務代表負責的帳戶數太多，我們需要再招募更多人。因此我們也會持續[招募]。我們也會持續增加更多產品銷售專家，以支援我們銷售組織內的新興產品。

And then on the product side, relative to security, I'm wondering if you could update us on success there and your thoughts on it. You're sort of a fairly narrow player in that market, if you have any ambitions in terms of expanding your addressable offerings in that area.

接著在產品面、相較於資安這一塊，我想請問你們能否更新一下那邊的進展與成功情況，以及你們對此的看法。你們在那個市場算是相對聚焦的玩家；想了解你們是否有任何企圖在該領域擴大可觸及的產品/服務範疇。

Well -- I mean, I'll take this, Mike, and you can add on. So inside what we characterize as security are really currently 3 use cases. One is GRC, which by the way, there's a lot of demand for. You'd call that security or not security. It's often driven by the audit committee. And it's -- there's a growing focus on governance, risk and compliance. And I might even add privacy to that in this day and age, too. And so we think that product -- we know that product is getting a lot of demand. And increasingly, audit committees -- CIOs are being brought -- CIOs and CFOs are being brought to audit committees and they want to have automated ways of monitoring all of the various tools and all the various platforms and all the various products that go into governance, risk and compliance across an enterprise. And the ServiceNow Platform is a great way to get one source of truth for that. So that's driving that piece of the equation. And then we have incident response and vulnerability response. And it's the 2 core use cases in our security suite. And we see, I'd say, strong demand for both. And I view it, consistent with your question, as complementary to the many other security platforms and tools in that space. And so we may incrementally -- I don't think it's going to be a major area of expansion for us, simply because I think it's being well served by others. And it's a fairly fragmented space. It's a space that's changing rapidly. And so I think the workflows around security, that's going to be our sweet spot, and that's, in essence, what we do. That's why this workflow mindset, these workflow clouds will be -- will help do workflow around security. But I don't think you'll see us become one of the core security platforms, like a Palo Alto or a Splunk or a FireEye or some of the others.

嗯——我的意思是，我先回答這題，Mike，你再補充。在我們所界定的資安範疇裡，目前其實主要有 3 個使用情境。第一個是 GRC（治理、風險與合規），順帶一提，這方面需求很大。你可以把它歸類為資安或不歸類為資安。它往往是由審計委員會所驅動。而且——大家對治理、風險與合規的關注正在提升。在這個時代我甚至會把隱私也加進來。因此我們認為那個產品——我們知道那個產品需求很旺。而且愈來愈多地，審計委員會——會把 CIO 帶進來——CIO 與 CFO 會被帶到審計委員會，他們希望有自動化的方法來監控企業內所有納入治理、風險與合規的各種工具、各種平台與各種產品。而 ServiceNow 平台是取得單一真實來源（single source of truth）的絕佳方式。所以這在推動這一塊。接著我們有事件回應（incident response）與弱點回應（vulnerability response）。這是我們資安套件中的兩個核心使用情境。我們看到，我會說，兩者都有強勁需求。而且如同你問題所暗示的，我把它視為對該領域許多其他資安平台與工具的互補。因此我們可能會逐步——但我不認為這會成為我們大幅擴張的主要領域，因為我認為其他廠商已經把這塊服務得很好。而且這是一個相當碎片化的市場。這也是一個變化非常快速的市場。所以我認為圍繞資安的工作流程，將會是我們的甜蜜點，而本質上這就是我們在做的事。這也是為什麼這種工作流程思維、這些工作流程雲（workflow clouds）將會——將會協助把工作流程導入資安領域。但我不認為你們會看到我們成為像 Palo Alto、Splunk、FireEye 或其他一些公司那樣的核心資安平台。

Our next question that comes from Sarah Hindlian with Macquarie.

我們的下一個問題來自 Macquarie 的 Sarah Hindlian。

So a quick question for both of you. I'll start with you, Mike. Mike, how are you thinking about the professional services segment going forward? Because we've heard from some of your SI partners that one of their biggest issues is really a high-class problem, and it's that there's essentially not enough ServiceNow experts out there in the field to meet the demand in their ServiceNow practices. So do you think about needing to reinvest in that business? And then a quick one for you also, John. It seems to me that you guys are likely really starting to see some brand recognition for ServiceNow in the market. I imagine you would have to be given the size of some of the deals you're signing. Is there some kind of a strategic shift behind marketing to the enterprise that you're undertaking that you can share with us?

我有個給你們兩位的簡短問題。我先從你開始，Mike。Mike，你如何看待未來的專業服務（professional services）部門？因為我們從一些 SI（系統整合）合作夥伴那邊聽到，他們最大的問題之一其實是個「高級的煩惱」：也就是市場上基本上沒有足夠的 ServiceNow 專家在第一線，來滿足他們 ServiceNow 業務實務中的需求。所以你是否認為需要再投資那個業務？另外也給你一個快問，John。在我看來，你們很可能已經開始在市場上看到 ServiceNow 的品牌辨識度。以你們正在簽下的一些交易規模來看，我想你們應該會有這種感受。你們是否正在進行某種面向企業客戶的行銷策略轉向，可以跟我們分享？

So Sarah, I'll start with professional services. That is absolutely true. We do hear from partners that they can't find enough ServiceNow trained people. And as a result, and we started this over the last year, we hired a new head of training. We've been investing extremely heavily in training, where we're trying to roll out a lot of free content for our partners and others. That's why -- you see that reflected in our professional service margin, where training rolls up in there. And in terms of -- we do think our professional service organization is strategic, but we are there to support our partners doing implementations as well as our customers, where they want us there. Our preference is for partners to be doing the implementations. We want our partners to be investing in their ServiceNow business. Because if they do that, they're going to help sell ServiceNow. And we think that is the right thing to do, and we'll continue that way. And John, I'll let you talk about brand.

Sarah，我先談專業服務。這完全屬實。我們確實聽到合作夥伴反映，他們找不到足夠受過 ServiceNow 訓練的人才。因此，我們在過去一年開始採取行動，聘請了一位新的訓練負責人。我們在訓練方面投入非常多資源，嘗試推出大量免費內容給合作夥伴及其他人使用。這也是為什麼——你會在我們的專業服務毛利率中看到反映，因為訓練費用會歸在那裡。至於——我們確實認為我們的專業服務組織具有策略性，但我們的角色是支援合作夥伴進行導入（implementations），以及在客戶希望我們參與時支援客戶。我們的偏好是由合作夥伴來做導入。我們希望合作夥伴能在他們的 ServiceNow 業務上加大投資。因為如果他們這麼做，他們就會協助銷售 ServiceNow。我們認為這是正確的做法，也會持續走這條路。John，我讓你來談品牌。

Yes. I'll just -- to piggyback, Sarah, coincidently, and Mike mentioned, we hired Cath Lang, who is just a fabulous leader of our training certification. She joined us about 1 year ago. She happens to have her team -- her global team in town today, and I was down with them this morning. And one of the things that we're actively engaging with the partners on is how do we work with them to turbocharge the number of certified resources. And so big effort to certify their existing employees. But whether it's in the Europe or the U.S., we're trying to work with a Deloitte, with an Accenture, with a DXC, with a KPMG, with an IBM, going to campus and training generations of ServiceNow-certified people that they then -- that then join these firms. And so I think we're -- I hope 2019 is a year we go from defense to offense on that, to help fill the void, to have a large enough pool of certified professionals. And then, thank you for the recognition on the company brand. Alan Marks, our Chief Communications Brand Officer, happens to be sitting next to me. He was with me for 10 years at eBay and joined ServiceNow 18 months ago, and he's got a smile on his face because of your question. And he and our Chief Marketing Officer, Dan Rogers, are working really well together to try to raise our profile as a company in addition to our products. Our products are well known in IT. But we just haven't really ever focused on raising our awareness as a brand. And it helps to be named the most innovative company in the world by Forbes. It helps to be one of the Fortune's top 3 companies of the future. That's raising our visibility. But we're also -- if you happen to live in San Francisco, you may notice that we actually have a few billboards, a few wraparound buses. We're wrapping up our digital marketing a little bit. And so still, I think, relatively early days, but it is an area that we feel like it's both appropriate and the time is right to ramp up our investment in brand. And again, the way we think about it is there's product brand and company brand. Product brand is geared to decision makers. And to be honest, with IT, we're well known and increasingly, with other parts. Company brand is more focused on recruits, employees and getting some C-suite awareness outside of IT, and so that's why we think it's an important and complementary area of investment. And we're still -- I think Alan would say we've begun our path on that journey, and we still have a long way to go. But we're excited about the brand and we're excited about the opportunity.

是的。我補充一下，Sarah，剛好呼應 Mike 提到的，我們聘請了 Cath Lang，她是我們訓練認證（training certification）方面非常出色的領導者。她大約在 1 年前加入我們。剛好她的團隊——她的全球團隊今天在城裡，我今天早上也下去和他們見面。我們正在積極與合作夥伴推動的一件事是：我們要如何與他們合作，加速（turbocharge）取得認證的人才數量。因此我們大力推動讓他們現有員工取得認證。不論是在歐洲或美國，我們都在嘗試與 Deloitte、Accenture、DXC、KPMG、IBM 等合作，走進校園，培訓一代又一代取得 ServiceNow 認證的人才，之後——再加入這些公司。所以我認為——我希望 2019 年會是我們在這件事上從防守轉為進攻的一年，來填補缺口，建立足夠大的認證專業人才庫。另外，也謝謝你對公司品牌的肯定。我們的首席傳播與品牌長（Chief Communications Brand Officer）Alan Marks 剛好就坐在我旁邊。他在 eBay 跟我共事 10 年，18 個月前加入 ServiceNow；因為你的問題，他臉上帶著笑容。他和我們的首席行銷長（Chief Marketing Officer）Dan Rogers 合作得非常好，努力提升公司層級的能見度，不只是在產品層面。我們的產品在 IT 領域很有名。但我們過去其實從未真正把重點放在提升品牌知名度。被《富比士》（Forbes）評為全球最具創新公司，確實有幫助。被《財富》（Fortune）評為未來最具前景的前三大公司之一，也有幫助。這些都在提升我們的曝光度。但我們也——如果你剛好住在舊金山，你可能會注意到我們其實有一些看板廣告、一些全車包膜的公車廣告。我們也在把數位行銷再加強一些。所以我認為仍算相對早期，但這確實是我們覺得合適、而且時機成熟、可以加大品牌投資的一個領域。再說一次，我們的思考方式是：有產品品牌，也有公司品牌。產品品牌是面向決策者。坦白說，在 IT 領域我們很有名，而且在其他部門也愈來愈有名。公司品牌則更聚焦在招募、員工，以及在 IT 之外提升一些 C-level（高階主管）認知，因此我們認為這是一個重要且互補的投資方向。而我們仍然——我想 Alan 會說，我們已經踏上這段旅程，但還有很長的路要走。不過我們對品牌感到興奮，也對這個機會感到興奮。

Our next question comes from Sterling Auty with JPMorgan.

我們的下一個問題來自摩根大通（JPMorgan）的 Sterling Auty。

This is actually Ugam Kamat on for Sterling. So just to dig deeper into the Fed traction that you saw in the quarter. If you were to rate which are the products that have been -- has seen the highest adoption amongst the Fed customers, how would you rate them?

其實我是代替 Sterling 的 Ugam Kamat。我想更深入了解你們本季在聯邦政府（Fed）端看到的進展。如果要你們評比在聯邦客戶中採用率最高的產品有哪些，你們會如何排序？

ITSM and ITOM, IT, in general, is still the predominant product in the federal government. With that, we did mention platform is becoming increasingly more important. And I'd say our largest platform customer is now a government agency, but by and large, IT and ITOM are still the bulk of what's in the federal government. We have seen some CSM as well and platform. I don't really think we've seen -- I'm looking at HR. Have we seen any HR in the federal government?

ITSM 和 ITOM，以及整體 IT 相關產品，仍然是聯邦政府端的主力產品。同時，我們也提到平台的重要性正日益提升。我會說我們目前最大的單一平台客戶已經是一個政府機構，但整體而言，IT 與 ITOM 仍占聯邦政府端的大宗。我們也看到一些 CSM 以及平台的採用。我不太確定我們是否看到——我在想 HR。我們在聯邦政府端有看到任何 HR 的採用嗎？

What we're thinking -- I mean, the use case I referred to earlier, I don't know if they're using the specific HR case management product or they're building their own applications because of their -- this is a military service -- because of the specific use cases. Similarly, this is not the U.S. federal government, but ironically -- I don't know if ironically, several airports use ServiceNow to help manage -- again, it's a municipal, a more local government or regional government. And the government, they're using ServiceNow to help drive the airports, which include customers and employees. Sometimes it's with out-of-the-box applications, and sometimes they're just frankly using the platform to be configured to the specific use case of an airport.

我們的想法是——我先前提到的那個使用案例，我不確定他們是在使用特定的 HR 個案管理產品，還是因為他們——這是一個軍種單位——基於特定使用情境而自行建置應用程式。同樣地，這不是美國聯邦政府，但有趣的是——我不知道該不該說有趣——有好幾座機場使用 ServiceNow 來協助管理——同樣地，這屬於市政、更地方層級或區域政府。而政府方面，他們使用 ServiceNow 來協助推動機場營運，涵蓋旅客與員工。有時是使用開箱即用的應用程式，有時則坦白說只是使用平台並加以設定，以符合機場的特定使用情境。

Got you. That's helpful. And as a follow-up, if I were to follow on the contract land that we saw in the quarter. I mean, the new customer contract land and the upsell contract land actually shortened for the last 2 quarters. Anything that needs to be read into that? Or is it just a normal course of business?

了解。這很有幫助。接著追問一下，關於本季我們看到的合約簽入（contract land）。我的意思是，新客戶合約簽入以及加購（upsell）合約簽入在過去兩季其實都有縮短。這有什麼需要特別解讀的嗎？還是只是正常的業務進程？

It's a normal course of business. Q3 is a big federal quarter. Federal government signs 1-year deals. That's what skews that. The other thing in Q3, upsells is such a big piece of our business, and a number of our customers co-term their contract at the end of the year, and many are on a calendar year invoicing cycle for when their contract started because Q4 is such a big quarter. So that's just normal seasonality.

這是正常的業務進程。第三季是聯邦業務的大季。聯邦政府通常簽 1 年期合約。這就是造成偏差的原因。另外，第三季加購是我們業務中非常重要的一部分，而我們有不少客戶會把合約共同到期日（co-term）設在年底；也有很多客戶採用曆年制的開立帳單週期，取決於他們合約的起始時間，因為第四季是非常大的季度。所以這只是正常的季節性。

And that's all the time we have for questions. I would now like to turn the call back to Mr. Michael Scarpelli for any closing remarks.

我們的問答時間就到這裡。接下來我想把電話交回給 Michael Scarpelli 先生做結語。

Thank you. As a reminder, a replay of this call will be available as a webcast in the Investor section of our website. Thanks for joining us today.

謝謝。提醒各位，本次電話會議的重播將以網路直播回放形式，提供於我們網站的投資人（Investor）專區。感謝各位今天的參與。

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This concludes today's program. You may all disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.

各位女士、先生，感謝您參與今天的會議。今天的議程到此結束。各位可以掛線。祝各位有美好的一天。