An ITILv4 CMDB for internal IT, without the enterprise overhead
Unlimited technicians, 1,500 configuration items, advanced reporting, and workflow automation across teams. The internal-IT CMDB and ITSM platform for businesses that have outgrown spreadsheets but want a faster, lighter alternative to a year-long ServiceNow rollout.
For: Internal IT teams, IT directors, and CIOs at growing and mid-sized organisations, typically 50 to 5,000 employees, with anywhere from a handful to 100+ technicians and up to 1,500 configuration items.
Why Kovira fits
Internal IT at a growing business has a specific problem: the platforms that fit your scale are either underpowered (Freshservice, Jira Service Management) or overpowered (ServiceNow, BMC Helix, Cherwell, Ivanti Neurons). The former leave you stitching ITSM and a CMDB together. The latter take a year to deploy and assume a dedicated platform team you do not have.
Kovira sits in the middle, deliberately. The Business plan lifts technician seats to unlimited, raises configuration items to 1,500, opens the workflow engine to 30 workflows, and turns Kovira into a single platform for the work an internal IT team does: keep an accurate CMDB, run incident and change management, automate repetitive work, and produce evidence for auditors.
It is ITILv4-aligned where ITIL helps (typed CIs, change enablement with independent approvers, problem management, and an immutable audit trail) and pragmatic where ITIL gets in the way. You can run it with a four-person team or a forty-person team. There is no consultant in the middle.
What you get
What's in the Business plan
Unlimited technician seats, advanced reporting, and workflow automation across teams.
- Unlimited technician seats
- 1,500 configuration items across every CI type
- Up to 500 ATLAS endpoint agents
- VECTOR network scanning across every site
- Microsoft 365 sync (Entra ID and Intune)
- Structured document storage linked to CIs
- Up to 30 workflows and 3 monitored mailboxes
- Full audit trail and reporting surface
A real CMDB, not a tab in a ticketing tool
Typed configuration items with dependency mapping that updates itself.
Where most ITSM platforms ship a token "CMDB" (a generic asset table with a JSONB blob for everything specific), Kovira ships a typed CMDB. Devices, racks, networks, domains, software, services, contracts, certificates, sites, and dozens more each have their own purpose-built schema with the fields you need to do real impact analysis.
Relationships are first-class. Every CI carries the dependencies it consumes and provides, and the dependency map updates as VECTOR, ATLAS, and the Microsoft 365 connector feed in new data. Before approving a change, you can see exactly what it is going to touch.
Highlights
- Typed CMDB with 19 purpose-built CI types
- Interactive dependency mapping
- Impact analysis before a change is approved
- Versioned CIs with one-click rollback
Incidents with real ITIL depth, change enablement, and SLAs
ITILv4 where it helps. No consulting engagement required.
Open an incident from a CI and the dependency context is already attached. Incidents carry the ITIL fields auditors look for: response and resolution SLA timers driven by per-customer policies and coverage windows, resolution and closure codes, who resolved it, watchers who get notified on updates, parent and child links for major events, and a postmortem document reference for major incidents. Promote a recurring incident to a problem record. Raise a change linked to the incident, route it through CAB approvals, and the platform enforces an independent approver before it can move forward.
The workflow engine fires on CMDB events, ticket transitions, SLA events, schedules, and incoming email when a monitored Microsoft 365 mailbox is connected (three on Business). It supports branching, conditions, delays, retries, webhooks, send-email, and data transforms over the run scope. Built-in system workflows already cover ticket-created, ticket-assigned, SLA at-risk, and SLA breach notifications, so the standard automations are wired up before you start. Most internal IT teams replace four or five point automations with workflows in their first week.
Highlights
- Incidents with response and resolution SLAs, watchers, parent and child links
- Resolution and closure codes, reopen tracking, postmortem document references
- Change approvals with independent-approver enforcement
- Triggers: CI changes, incidents, SLA events, schedules, incoming email
- Actions: send email, update CI, webhook, SLA pause/start/stop/reset, data transforms
- Built-in email automations ready to use
- 3 monitored Microsoft 365 mailboxes on the Business plan
- Up to 30 workflows on the Business plan
Three discovery sources, one source of truth
VECTOR + ATLAS + Microsoft 365 with cross-source deduplication.
VECTOR scans subnets and surfaces every device on the network. ATLAS agents on Windows and Linux endpoints report hardware, software, and security posture. The Microsoft 365 connector syncs Entra ID users and groups, plus Intune managed devices.
Records from all three sources are correlated into single configuration items, with the source of every field tracked. A laptop discovered by VECTOR, reporting via ATLAS, and registered in Intune becomes one CI (not three duplicates), and the audit trail tells you which source last updated which field.
Highlights
- Agentless network discovery (VECTOR)
- Endpoint inventory and posture (ATLAS)
- Microsoft 365 Entra and Intune sync
- Cross-source deduplication and source provenance
Audit, RBAC, and compliance evidence
Reports that satisfy auditors without a manual export project.
Every mutation (CI edit, document change, password access, login, role change) is captured in an immutable audit log. Four built-in roles (Owner, Admin, Editor, Viewer) cover the standard separation-of-duties story; finer-grained controls layer on top.
Compliance evidence is a query, not a Q4 project. Exports cover access reviews, change approvals (including independence verification), and configuration change history per CI.
Highlights
- Immutable audit log of every action
- Owner / Admin / Editor / Viewer RBAC
- Independent-approver enforcement on changes
- Per-CI version history and provenance
Automation sized for cross-team work
Up to 30 workflows, with webhooks, retries, and full run history.
The Business plan raises the workflow allowance to 30. Workflows can fan out to webhooks (Teams, Slack, PagerDuty, Jira), update CIs in bulk, create incidents from monitoring alerts, and run on schedules.
If a workflow stalls (a webhook is down, an external API rate-limits you), Kovira retries with exponential backoff and surfaces the failure in the run history.
Highlights
- Up to 30 workflows
- Branching, conditions, delays, and webhooks
- Retries with backoff on failed steps
- Full run history with per-step diagnostics
Switching from another tool?
Switching from an enterprise or mid-market ITSM
Kovira is most often picked by internal IT teams that have either outgrown a small ITSM tool or stalled out on an enterprise rollout. Here is how it lines up with the platforms you have probably evaluated.
Coming from ServiceNow
ServiceNow is the enterprise standard, with the rollout footprint to match. Kovira gives growing internal IT teams the ITILv4 surface (CMDB, incidents, changes, workflows, audit) without the year-long deployment or the dedicated platform team.
Coming from Freshservice
Freshservice is a polished ticketing tool, but its CMDB is shallow and discovery is a paid add-on. Kovira inverts the model: the CMDB is the centre of the product, with discovery and ITSM included.
Coming from Jira Service Management
Jira Service Management is excellent at tickets if your team already lives in Atlassian. Kovira offers a richer CMDB, real change enablement, and built-in discovery in one product, rather than assembled from Insight, Opsgenie, and Confluence.
Coming from ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
ServiceDesk Plus has the right surface area but a heavy implementation footprint. Kovira reaches the same operational outcomes (CMDB + tickets + changes + automation) with a fraction of the deployment effort.
Coming from Cherwell / Ivanti Neurons
Cherwell is end-of-life, and Neurons is an enterprise transformation. Kovira is a clean place to land for teams that want a modern ITILv4 platform without re-buying the same complexity.
Coming from BMC Helix
BMC Helix is full enterprise ITSM. Kovira covers the practical 80% (CMDB, ITSM, discovery, automation) without the rollout footprint, the integration partner, or the multi-year platform commitment.
Common questions
Is Kovira a real ServiceNow alternative for internal IT?
For most growing and mid-sized internal IT teams, yes. Kovira covers the ITILv4 surface (typed CMDB with dependency mapping, incident and problem management, change enablement with independent approvers, workflow automation, RBAC, and a full audit trail) without ServiceNow's deployment timeline or the requirement for a dedicated platform team.
How does the CMDB compare with Freshservice or Jira Service Management?
Both Freshservice and Jira Service Management are ticketing-first products. Their CMDBs are shallow (a single asset table) and discovery is a paid add-on. Kovira's CMDB is the centre of the product: typed CIs across 19 purpose-built types, dependency mapping, three built-in discovery sources, and impact analysis on changes.
Can the workflow engine handle cross-team automations?
Yes. The Business plan supports up to 30 workflows with branching, conditions, delays, retries, and webhooks. Common patterns take minutes to set up: notify Teams when a critical CI changes status, open a Jira issue from a high-priority incident, or run a scheduled certificate-expiry sweep.
What about audit and compliance reporting?
Every mutation is captured in an immutable audit log. Change approvals enforce an independent approver, every CI has a version history with restore, and the platform exports access reviews, change approval evidence, and configuration change history per CI. The free tier ships the same audit posture; the Business plan adds capacity, not a different security model.
Do you support SSO and SCIM provisioning?
Yes. Single sign-on is available on every paid plan, including Business. Kovira also exposes a SCIM 2.0 endpoint for user and group provisioning from Okta, Microsoft Entra ID, JumpCloud, and other standards-compliant identity providers. SCIM bearer tokens are created, shown once, hashed at rest, auditable, and individually revocable from Access settings.
Be ready on launch day
Kovira is launching soon. The free tier will include the full CMDB, VECTOR network scanning, and ATLAS endpoint agents. Leave your email and be first in line.