ServiceNow launched its Zurich release of its platform with tools to build AI apps and agents more easily, attach identities to digital workers and integrate process and task mining into agentic workflows.
With ServiceNow's previous releases--Yokohama and Xanadu--the company began rolling out AI agents throughout its platform. The Zurich release is aimed at providing more agentic AI tools to developers and scaling agents automation.
In addition, ServiceNow is bringing process mining and task mining to that agentic AI pipeline. As previously noted, process is often overlooked in agentic AI plans and that's a strategic mistake for enterprises.
ServiceNow acquired UltimateSuite in late 2023 to build out its native process and task mining capabilities.
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Kush Panchbhai, Senior Vice President of AI Platform, Zurich is an effort to give customers the tools to "pivot from legacy automations to proactive automations across all of the workspace" and structured and unstructured data.
Process optimization is also critical. Zurich will include task mining to observe what humans are actually doing in an enterprise. Combined with process mining, Panchbhai said Zurich brings the ability to optimize "how work is flowing in an enterprise."
The ability to identify inefficiencies via process and task mining is critical because those insights "are then food for our AI agents" to automate with streamlined processes, he said.
"You want to make sure that all the inefficiencies the customers have today can be solved by agentic scenarios. That's why we are launching agentic playbooks," said Panchbhai.
To Panchbhai, process mining is "step zero" to building AI agents. ServiceNow has more than 20 years’ worth of workflow and process automation data that developers can use to create adaptive AI agents. He said:
"When you use these mining capabilities, you essentially find lot of bottlenecks and it can take days to get from one step to another step. Most of the time, process mining doesn't reveal an optimized map. It's like spaghetti when we run process mining across different use cases. We analyzed all that spaghetti and returned recommendations so we can give you tools to fix inefficiencies with a click of a button. That's why I think about this as step zero in building an agent."
Developer tools
Jithin Bhasker, Group Vice President and GM of Creator Workflows and App Engine at ServiceNow, said the Zurich additions recognize that "in the next two years, a third of every application will be refactored and rewritten to be able to support data and AI readiness."
Bhasker said that once applications are revamped for agentic AI workflows will be optimized and tweaked using no code and low code tools. "This will effectively drive a massive amount of customer AI applications and agents being built," said Bhasker, who said software will be built with natural language and simple prompts.
Add it up and ServiceNow is aiming to be the platform that is that tweener between building and buying enterprise software. You buy the platform and then build AI applications and agents with governance, integration and security.
The vision for ServiceNow rhymes with the strategy for Salesforce and a bevy of other SaaS players. Give every employee a digital coworker to boost productivity.
Key enhancements to Zurich include:
- Build Agent, which includes conversational development tools so business experts can built apps with generative AI and sandboxes. "It's all about how you automate and accelerate the entire lifecycle from idea to an app in a minute," said Bhasker.
- Built-in process mining. Bhasker said process and task mining is baked into Build Agent to recommend process flows and automatically provide optimization insights.
- Developer Sandbox, a dedicated environment for agentic app development.
- Adaptive Agents, which are self-optimizing applications to deliver outcomes.
- Machine Identity Console with governance enhancements via AI to ensure compliance.
Amanda Grady, Vice President and GM of AI Platform Security, said the upcoming proliferation of AI agents will require a machine identity console.
Grady said AI agents are a new type of identity more akin to a service manager. The Machine Identity Console in Zurich will assign identities to AI agents and identify high-risk integrations and security improvements.
The Machine Identity Console includes the following:
- Centralized visibility of all inbound API integrations.
- The ability to identify high-risk service account identities with preventative actions.
- Improved security with recommendations with clear steps.
Grady said ServiceNow is also adding features to Vault Console to know, protect and monitor data. ServiceNow Vault includes a guided experience for sensitive data auto-classification and protection, streamlined security tools and audit and compliance management.
