The ServiceNow Knowledge 2025 event unveiled ambitious advancements in AI-driven enterprise technology, with a focus on autonomous workflows, unified data platforms, and human-machine collaboration. Key announcements included the launch of the AI Control Tower for managing AI agents, the expansion of Workflow Data Fabric to unify disparate data sources, and the intent to acquire data.world to enhance data governance and cataloging capabilities.

While the announcements were bold, they also raised questions about the practical challenges of implementation. But what do Forrester analysts think about these announcements? What challenges do we see?

ServiceNow Offers A Refreshingly Unified Take On CRM — Yet Does Not Appeal To All

Kate Leggett, VP and principal analyst

ServiceNow’s platform-first focus addresses the real issues facing enterprises — siloed organizations, siloed processes and applications, and legacy architectures — that hinder productivity and negatively impact customer experiences. The CRM, which consists of Sales and Order Management, Customer Service Management, and Field Service Management, was launched earlier this year.

ServiceNow is well rated in our latest evaluation, The Forrester Wave™: Customer Relationship Management Software, Q1 2025, and enables organizations to work across multiple functions. It orchestrates and automates CRM workflows from product launch to selling, fulfilling, servicing, and renewals — workflows that are not just contained in the front office. It has special appeal to customers in asset- or product-centric industries such as communications, technology, manufacturing, and healthcare devices. Conversations with customers highlighted the real value in complex, workflow-driven scenarios such as financial dispute management.

The product leadership of the new enterprise architecture product indicated that the new offering has substantially exceeded expectations for revenue, and mindshare (anecdotally) is excellent.

Finance And A New Mega-Cycle

Charlie Betz, VP and principal analyst

According to briefings with the product team, ServiceNow’s enterprise architecture (EA) offering has exceeded expectations. This does not surprise me, as EA itself is transitioning into a more data-driven mode, moving away from a focus on siloed, ivory-tower modeling.

Enterprise architects are now expected to have a comprehensive understanding of increasingly detailed data concerning all aspects of IT operations. Enterprise architecture on the same platform as the configuration management database (CMDB) and portfolio tooling, along with access to availability, IT service management, and portfolio data, all just makes sense. And the market is proving this out.

AI is coming on quickly in this space. I saw a demo of a natural language conversation with the ServiceNow agent, reporting on and analyzing the application portfolio. Chatbots are no longer just for IT support.

The Semantic Moment

ServiceNow announced its acquisition of data.world during the conference. This merits a separate blog, but for now, I’ll just note that semantics and ontology (in the guise of intent) are having a moment now, so this acquisition makes a lot of sense. It also positions ServiceNow in the data management space in a new way.

Will ServiceNow Take On IT Finance?

We talked about this in last year’s blog about ServiceNow and Atlassian events. Notable this year was the absence of Apptio from the Knowledge show floor as a sponsor. Nicus and Proven Optics were both there again, continuing in their horse race to land the ServiceNow nod as the preferred partner (and potential acquisition target) for IT finance.

Nicus representatives got up on stage with AT&T and talked about how the company is running AT&T’s internal IT finance; it has reimplemented the solution on the ServiceNow Ppatform with some additional cloud processing support from Microsoft Azure. If ServiceNow takes on IT finance, Nicus will finally be a complete “ERP for the CIO” solution — will it be a serious threat to Apptio?

Trillion-Dollar Market

Bill McDermott is, of course, known to be a salesman par excellence, but I don’t recall hearing him speak previously of multi-trillion-dollar market opportunities as he did this year with respect to generative AI (genAI).

The funny thing is that I agree with him. I believe, after having done my own investigations, including ongoing proof-of-concept work, that genAI, agentic AI, and the learning feedback loops that they enable are a new economic trend on the order of a new Perez cycle (aka “zone” — previous zones being waterpower, rail transportation and coal power generation, steel and electric mass production, and the first generation of computing and information/communication technology starting in the 1950s).

This commodification of knowledge is itself a significant and unique new economic era. We are seeing all the turbulence, boom-bust cycles, froth, hype, and uncertainty — just as in those earlier eras. ServiceNow is making some very sensible bets in this new world (e.g., the AI Control Tower) — but who knows how it will play out? Exciting times.

The Age Of Platforms

Christopher Condo, principal analyst

In previous years, the prevailing belief favored the use of best-of-breed tools for delivering value to customers, with integrated platforms such as ServiceNow often regarded as less capable due to their broader functionalities. The emergence of artificial intelligence has shifted this perspective, however. Now, a unified product suite, supported by a robust data model, can generate diverse value streams for its customers. AI integration throughout the platform captures and analyzes data from various phases of IT service delivery, thereby optimizing processes and enhancing the overall delivery of value while minimizing inefficiencies.

Moreover, a cohesive user experience facilitated by AI allows teams to concentrate on innovation rather than being hindered by context switching. End users experience reduced cognitive load, which in turn increases productivity and lowers costs associated with value delivery. ServiceNow’s agentic AI capabilities further empower human workers by allowing them to automate routine tasks, such as research and task prioritization. This automation enables individuals to become orchestrators of their own processes, ultimately expanding their influence on the products and services they develop.

AI Skepticism And Culture Must Be Addressed

Enterprises are hesitant to fully adopt AI solutions, particularly when it involves their data, as they require assurances of security and reliability. While many are open to using AI for coding and generative tasks, the emergence of agentic AI raises skepticism; vendors are promoting these solutions without sufficient evidence of their effectiveness. To foster trust, it’s crucial for vendors to develop credible use cases, clarify data integration needs, and ensure transparency about how these agentic solutions operate and are governed.

Lastly, Bill McDermott went straight after CRM without naming names (specifically, Salesforce). From his point of view, ServiceNow has the upper hand because it owns IT, and IT is where all the technical people live. But that’s not the real world; the real world is filled with IT teams that have all the technical tools at their disposal and yet still trip over governance, slow processes, silos, and an attitude of “we know what’s best.” Know-it-all IT is shadow IT’s best friend, frustrating business stakeholders to such a high degree that many go out and hire their own IT from general service integrators whenever possible. Unless ServiceNow’s AI strategy can also update the culture of many IT teams, business-led innovation will continue.

Orchestration And Contextualization Across The Ecosystem Is Vital

Carlos Casanova, principal analyst

Forrester has long recognized the need for operational insights that are deeply rooted in IT infrastructure and broadly applicable across the business landscape as vital to the success of enterprise leaders. Telemetry pipelines provide deep insights, but they don’t, on their own, provide all the necessary orchestration and contextualization that enterprises need for the type of AI activation today.

ServiceNow sees its role as central to this vision as the “AI operating system,” a branding that was repeated throughout Knowledge 2025. This is ambitious, something that only time will tell if it’s feasible, but ServiceNow’s expansive platform is uniquely positioned to deliver on far more than just IT insights and move in this North Star direction.

CSDM 5.0, after years in draft, was finally officially released and will play a significant role going forward, not just for its CMDB but beyond. The evolution of its automation engine to include both structured and unstructured connectors, now branded as Workflow Data Fabric, will be vital to diversifying enterprise data sources. Both will play key roles in delivering the aspirational objective of providing deep and contextually relevant real-time insights to personas across the enterprise when needed, in a format that can be best consumed.

Competitive Strategies In Agent Solutions

Rowan Curran, principal analyst

ServiceNow introduced several capabilities designed to support its agent ecosystem, including the AI Control Tower, AI Agent Fabric, and Workflow Data Fabric. The company is presenting a strong and cohesive vision for the future of how its customers and partners will build agents into its platform, but for most companies, that is very much still a future vision. ServiceNow aims to be the nexus of agents from across the enterprise, both native agents and third-party agents, with ServiceNow’s workflow expertise being the facade that makes these agents both flexible and reliable.

Like every other agentic platform on the market, however, there are still key questions around testing, validation, evaluation, and security that need to be answered before many customers will feel ready to deploy agents in non-low-risk scenarios. Early adopters should be prepared for the pains of pioneering as well as the rewards.

IT Organizational Maturity Limits AI Integration Potential

Julie Mohr, principal analyst

The announcements at ServiceNow Knowledge 2025 signal a transformative shift for IT operations, positioning AI as a central driver of efficiency, automation, and decision-making. With tools like the AI Control Tower and Workflow Data Fabric, IT teams are promised the ability to manage complex systems with greater precision, automate routine tasks, and proactively address issues before they escalate. The introduction of agentic AI capabilities, such as incident resolution and change management automation, suggests a future where IT operations are less reliant on human intervention and more focused on strategic oversight and innovation.

This vision is not without challenges. The reliance on trusted data and seamless integration across platforms assumes that organizations have robust data governance frameworks and mature IT ecosystems, conditions that may not exist universally. Additionally, the shift toward autonomous workflows could create friction among IT staff, who may feel displaced or undervalued as AI takes over traditional responsibilities. Ensuring the accuracy and reliability of AI-driven decisions will require rigorous testing, monitoring, and governance, which could strain already stretched IT resources.

Rethink The Status Quo

The cultural shift from process-oriented ITIL frameworks to AI-driven models necessitates retraining and rethinking traditional workflows. ​Organizations need to strike a balance between the promise of efficiency and the need to maintain human oversight, particularly in high-stakes scenarios such as security operations and major incident management. ​For many enterprises, AI readiness is sorely lacking and trusted knowledge for training data is limited. While ServiceNow’s innovations offer exciting possibilities, their adoption will require careful planning, change management, and a clear strategy to address these challenges.

New Tech Requires New Skills

The announcement of ServiceNow University will help to prepare IT organizations for this rapid transformation. ServiceNow University aims to empower professionals with the necessary skills for the AI-driven enterprise landscape. By offering tailored courses and certifications, this initiative addresses the growing need for competencies in AI and workflow automation and helps bridge the skills gap for IT professionals, HR teams, and business leaders. Its success, however, will depend on delivering practical training aligned with real-world use cases. Overcoming employee resistance to new technologies and addressing the pending skills gap won’t be easy. Ensuring accessibility across global regions and industries will also be crucial for maximizing its impact.

Transformation At What Cost?

Empowering enterprise technology leaders with more powerful AI capabilities is a key aspect of the ServiceNow mission. The questions are: Will it be too much to take on simultaneously for ServiceNow? Are resources spread too thin to deliver on it at a meaningful and impactful level? Will enterprise leaders be able to implement the foundational pillars to make this vision possible? It won’t be easy, fast, or inexpensive. AI for the sake of AI is not the right path forward. Executives want to understand the value and make informed investments for use cases that will truly drive transformation.

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