ServiceNow acquires Cuein, aims to create AI agent feedback loop

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

Read more

ServiceNow said it will acquire Cuein, a startup that analyzes AI and human chat interactions. The company said the deal will accelerate its roadmap for ServiceNow AI Agents.

Terms of the deal weren't disclosed.

The thinking behind the acquisition is worth noting. Cuein provides a platform that understands and provides insights on customer interactions across systems.

• Liz Miller: ServiceNow Hits the Gas on Agentic AI Roadmap with Cuein AI Pick Up
• Agentic AI: Three themes to watch for 2025
• 2025 in preview: 10 themes in enterprise technology to watch
• Enterprise software 2025: Three big shifts to watch

What ServiceNow is hoping to do with Cuein is create a continual feedback loop that will make its AI agents more effective over time. Cuein measures conversations between humans and AI agents and gives enterprises the ability to address customer issues. Cuein also features inferred customer satisfaction scores for each exchange.

Constellation Research analyst Liz Miller said in a blog post:

"Cuein is about more about continuous improvement than it is about a tool for a specific function. In an age when agentic AI is being infused in almost every process and every interface in the enterprise, mining for patterns, flows, breaks and failures should be one of those ambient processes focused on improvement and optimization rather than reporting and post mortems."

Dorit Zilbershot, group vice president of AI Experiences and Innovation at ServiceNow, said in a statement that Cuein's ability to process data on the fly and provide real-time insights will give customers the ability to "unlock the full potential of agentic AI."

ServiceNow's plan is to integrate Cuein's capabilities into ServiceNow's Workflow Data Fabric.

The purchase of Cuein, founded in 2021, is expected to close in the first quarter.

More:

• ServiceNow launches AI governance tools, contract management, Five9 partnership
• ServiceNow posts strong Q3, launches Workflow Data Fabric, expands partnerships, hires Zavery as product chief
• ServiceNow's Xanadu release adds AI Agents, RaptorDB Pro, genAI enhancements
• ServiceNow CFO outlines method to Pro Plus SKU pricing
• ServiceNow to integrate Now Assist with Microsoft Copilot
• ServiceNow Knowledge 2024: Model choices, genAI everywhere, automation, process optimization

Infosys sees 'good traction' with SAP S/4HANA migrations

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

Read more

Infosys CEO Salil Parekh said his company is seeing "good traction" with enterprises moving to SAP S/4HANA as well as the use of generative AI as enterprises look for efficiencies.

The comments from Parekh landed after Infosys reported its third quarter earnings, which fell short of expectations.

Infosys reported third quarter revenue of $4.94 billion with earnings of 19 cents a share. The company projected revenue growth of 4.5% to 5% for fiscal 2025.

Infosys research: AI Global Services: Infosys Topaz | Constellation ShortList™ AI-Driven Cognitive Applications | Constellation ShortList™ AI Services: Global | Constellation ShortList™ Innovation Services and Engineering

"We are seeing good traction on areas like SAP S/4HANA," said Parekh. "We are seeing good traction on cost takeout."

Parekh added that Infosys was seeing strong demand on SAP cloud migrations under the Rise with SAP program. "That work is more implementation of migration," said Parekh.

CFO Jayesh Sanghrajka added that "the S/4HANA migration deadline is driving budget allocation to make enterprise workloads compliant."

• DSAG: SAP's innovation focus on cloud, discriminates against on-premise users
• SAP ups 2024 outlook as Q3 better than expected
• SAP gives ABAP code a genAI boost, adds data lake capabilities to Datasphere
• BT150 CXO zeitgeist February edition: Low marks for SAP RISE, process automation, change management, AI risk
• Amazon Bedrock integrated into SAP AI Core, SAP to use AWS chips

The SAP comments from Infosys follow a talk by UiPath at the Needham Growth Conference this week. UiPath CFO Ashim Gupta said the company's partnership with SAP has been a win-win due to the automation capabilities that help migrate to S4/HANA. SAP reports earnings Jan. 28.

Gupta said:

"The value proposition is two-fold. When you move to S/4HANA you want to customize it less. SAP calls it a clean core. To maintain a clean core, you can really do a lot of your customization through the automation that surrounds the ERP. You can automate upon delivery of the ERP or as a part of that implementation. That value proposition is felt by our customers. We've already seen some traction and some wins for it."

Infosys is also adding genAI agents to some of the financial processes that touch finance processes. Parekh said that invoicing is a key area.

According to Infosys, enterprises are showing interest in the company's small language models designed for specific tasks and process. Parekh added that Infosys is also using generative AI to deliver its own services.

Here's a look at some of the notable takeaways from Infosys' third quarter earnings:

• "We are seeing an improvement in retail and consumer product industry in the U.S. with discretionary pressures easing," said Parekh. "Demand trends remain stable in other industries with clients continuing to prioritize cost takeout over discretionary initiatives."
• "We have built four small language models for banking, for IT operations, for cyber and for enterprises broadly. These small language models have 2.5 billion parameters. These models are built using some of our proprietary datasets," said Parekh.
• Infosys is developing more than 100 new genAI agents for clients. Parekh noted that Infosys has created a research agent for a product support team at a large technology company as well as three audit agents for a services firm.
• Parekh said small language models are being used for software development, customer service and knowledge transfer in clients. Infosys is betting that it can deploy these models and then gain share by helping enterprises build their own models. "It's like having the model as a service," said Parekh.
• AI budgets are broad-based and separate initiatives relative to the IT budget, said Parekh.
• IT spending has picked up and enterprises are focused on cost optimization, AI, cloud adoption, cybersecurity and analytics.

More:

• GenAI's 2025 disconnect: The buildout, business value, user adoption and CxOs
• Agentic AI: Three themes to watch for 2025
• 2025 in preview: 10 themes in enterprise technology to watch
• Enterprise software 2025: Three big shifts to watch

SentinelOne enables its Singularity Platform, Purple AI to ingest data from rival security vendors

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

Read more

SentinelOne said its Singularity Platform and Purple AI security analyst can now ingest data from third-party security offerings including Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange platform, Palo Alto Networks Firewall, Okta, Proofpoint TAP, Fortinet FortGate, and Microsoft Office 365.

The move by SentinelOne, a smaller security vendor relative to the giants such as Zscaler, Palo Alto and CrowdStrike, has seen more interest from enterprises looking to resist the march toward platformization.

SentinelOne said the addition of third-party data to the Singularity Platform enables Purple AI to accelerate the automation of security investigations, prioritize threats and cut response times. Purple AI uses the Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework (OCSF) to query data that has been normalized on ingestion via natural language.

In addition, SentinelOne said it will support natural language queries and summaries in Spanish, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Arabic, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Malay and Indonesian.

• Constellation ShortList™ Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
• Constellation ShortList™ Endpoint Protection Platforms
• Constellation ShortList™ Extended Detection and Response Platforms (XDR)
• Enterprise security customers conundrum: Can you have both resilience, consolidation?

Constellation Research analyst Chirag Mehta said the SentinelOne moves are likely to be well received by customers. SentinelOne is likely to have multiple joint customers with larger vendors. Mehta said:

"Cybersecurity is a team sport, and integrating telemetry from diverse third-party systems isn’t just valuable—it’s essential for enhancing security posture. As the drive toward platformization accelerates, it’s refreshing to see solutions that prioritize strengthening the SOC by collaborating with other security providers—even competitors—rather than confining customers within proprietary ecosystems. Additionally, as AI democratizes cybersecurity skills, multilingual support is a significant step forward, enabling organizations to leverage globally distributed talent to address today’s complex security challenges."

Key points about the SentinelOne innovations:

• In a release, SentinelOne cited an out-of-the-box integration with Zscaler so customers can pull Zscaler Security Service Edge (SSE) into Singularity.
• The company said in a blog post that Purple AI can handle natural language queries from security analysts.
• Purple AI can also provide contextual follow-ups for more security insights.

Taking stock of quantum computing’s kerfuffle and what's next

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

Read more

For an industry that's allegedly 15- to 30-years from being useful there’s a lot of news being generated from quantum computing.

As previously noted, CxOs need to think through quantum computing and potential use cases even though there is a lot of noise surrounding the sector. The timeline to date goes like this:

• Quantum computing pure play stocks took off at the end of 2024 due to Google's Willow quantum processor, which is a long way from production. Stocks surged past any reasonable valuation, but the run was great while it lasted.
• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang then said quantum computing is 15- to 30-years from being useful to corporations.
• The merry band of quantum computing stocks were halved in some cases as investors realized that they may be a bit ahead of themselves.
• Quantum computing vendors launched a flurry of news announcements about backlog, bookings and contracts. Quantum stocks rebounded.

You'd be forgiven for having a bit of whiplash over this quantum computing kerfuffle. However, we'd be remiss if we didn't highlight some of this week's quantum computing news, which is pretty significant.

• Nvidia GTC 2025 will feature its first ever Quantum Day, which will feature Huang and quantum computing vendors, on March 20. The discussion will feature "a comprehensive and balanced perspective" on quantum computing's future.
• Microsoft launched its Quantum Ready Initiative, which helps enterprises sort out use cases for quantum computing and get ready to deploy.
• IonQ, University of Maryland and State of Maryland announced a $1 billion investment to create the "Capital of Quantum." Under the initiative, IonQ will be an anchor partner as it continues to pursue federal government contracts. IonQ at the University of Maryland's Discovery District, which is near Washington, DC and Annapolis, MD.
• D-Wave said it will expand distribution of its quantum computing offerings via a partnership with Carahsoft, which is a premier distributor of IT to the government. Under the deal, Carahsoft will aggregate D-Wave's offerings as a reseller. The partnership will give D-Wave throughput under Carahsoft's contract vehicles.

Practical quantum computing advances ramp up going into 2025 | Quantum computing all in on hybrid HPC with classical computing

What now?

Going forward, you can expect a lot of volatility across the quantum computing sector. One thing I've been watching closely is the type of quantum computing technology used by vendors.

Given the various flavors of quantum computing it's not difficult to foresee a VHS vs. Betamax scenario emerging in the years ahead. You’d be advised to spread your use case bets.

Research:

• IBM Boosts the Software Side of Quantum
• Quantum Computing Platforms
• Quantum Computing Software Platforms
• Quantum Full Stack Players

Here's a look at the types of quantum computing and the vendors in that category.

• Superconducting qubits are seen as general quantum computing options and vendors in this category include IBM, Google and Rigetti Computing.
• Trapped Ion quantum computing has high fidelity and long coherence times. IonQ is the big player in this category along with Quantinuum, which was created by the merger of Honeywell's quantum unit and Cambridge Quantum.
• Neutral atom quantum computing has the potential to scale better and QuEra is a player here.
• Quantum annealing is designed for optimization over general purpose computing and D-Wave has championed this approach.
• Topological quantum computing has the potential to be more fault tolerant and is an avenue being pursued by Microsoft. Topological quantum computing uses a concept similar to semiconductors using "anyons," which can arrange qubits into patterns.

Today, quantum computing chatter talks about the sector as if all the vendors are all using the same technique. Ultimately, CxOs will have to ponder use cases and how they align to the various flavors of quantum computing.

As quantum computing matures, the focus will likely go to the software layer and ways to abstract quantum computing instances. Given that nearly all quantum computing resources will be delivered through the cloud, the various technologies may not matter enough as long as your cloud provider offers a broad range of instances.

• Quantinuum, Microsoft claim quantum reliability breakthrough
• Microsoft claims hybrid quantum breakthrough with Quantinuum, partners with Atom Computing
• IonQ’s bet on commercial quantum computing working, acquires Quibitekk
• IonQ's quantum computing bets: Quantum for LLM training, chemistry and enterprise use cases
• IBM upgrades IBM Quantum Data Center with Heron
• IBM Boosts the Software Side of Quantum
• Quantinuum, Microsoft claim quantum reliability breakthrough
• Microsoft claims hybrid quantum breakthrough with Quantinuum, partners with Atom Computing
• Quantinuum raises $300 million, valued at $5 billion
• Quantum Brilliance, Oak Ridge National Laboratory aims to meld quantum computing, HPC

Microsoft launches Copilot Chat, pay-as-you go AI agents

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

Read more

Microsoft launched Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat which brings its free chat experience for Microsoft 365 commercial customers to a broader base. The catch is that there are pay-as-you-go agent capabilities.

The news comes as Google Workspace dumped Gemini add-ons in favor of an increase in pricing. Google's model, which follows the playbook of Zoom and Adobe, is cleaner.

Microsoft's move is designed to bring copilots and agents to a broader base of employees. Copilot Chat can enable an entire workforce to use AI chat powered by OpenAI's GPT-4o, agents that are easily accessible and IT controls.

That last item is going to be critical since Microsoft has a consumption plan for Copilot Chat that will impact how enterprises approach agent democratization (and AI agent sprawl).

In a blog post, Microsoft outlined a few pay-as-you go agent scenarios. Agents created in Microsoft Copilot Studio will be available from Copilot Chat. Usage of agents is measured by messages and total cost is based on the sum of messages used by an enterprise. You can pay a penny per message or use pre-paid message packs via Azure at $200 for 25,000 messages a month.

Microsoft charges for agent responses and whether they are predefined, generated, grounded with information from Microsoft Graph and autonomous. Here's a breakdown:

Enterprises are going to have to experiment with consumption costs and models and what happens if agents are allowed to be created by an entire workforce. Microsoft outlined the following scenario:

• A hypothetical agent might answer questions from customers on a website. Yesterday, it consumed 500 classic answers and 2,000 generative answers. Therefore, it would cost 4,500 messages, equivalent to $45 for that day.
• A hypothetical agent in Copilot Chat uses data stored in Microsoft Graph to answer employee questions about HR policies. Yesterday, the agent consumed 200 generative answers and 200 tenant Graph grounding for messages. Therefore, it would cost 6,400 messages or $64 for that day.
• A hypothetical autonomous agent responds to and routes inbound sales orders from customers. Yesterday, it consumed 100 generative answers, 100 tenant Graph grounding for messages, and 800 autonomous actions. Therefore, it would cost 23,200 messages or $232 for that day.

It's unclear how this model will play out for customers. One thing is clear: Your software vendors will be trying out a variety of agentic AI models throughout the year.

Google Workspace drops Gemini add-on charge, raises business, enterprise plan prices

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

Read more

Is this the beginning of the end of generative AI add on charges?

Google said Google Workspace will include Gemini for its business and enterprise plans and that it is dropping add-on charges for genAI functionality.

In a blog post, Google said a customer using the Workspace Business Standard plan with Gemini Business add-on previously paid $32 a month per user. Now that customer will pay $14 per user per month, or $2 more than they were for Workspace without Gemini. You can find the new pricing on Google Workspace.

With the launch of generative AI, many vendors went crazy with copilot add-on pricing and plenty of enterprises balked at the changes. A few companies like Workday, Zoom and Adobe refrained from that add-on pricing model. Those vendors either raised overall pricing with AI features included, added a credit model or launched new SKUs.

In many respects, Google may just be getting ahead of a change that's going to happen anyway. AI is a feature set not an upcharge--especially when everyone and their mother has genAI tools now. In fact, Zoom launched a catchy commercial that turns the add-ons back on the competition.

For new customers, the Workspace pricing kicks in tomorrow. If you had an annual or fixed plan, there will be credits. Monthly plans will drop the add-on charges at the end of January.

The upshot here is that Workspace customers will get features like help me write, take notes and NotebookLM Plus.

A few items to note:

• Google Workspace Business and Enterprise Starter, Standard and Plus plans are affected.
• Gemini Business, Gemini Enterprise, AI Meetings and Messaging and AI Security plans are going away.
• If you prepaid your Gemini for Workspace subscription you'll be credited Feb. 1. Credits will be prorated.
• Google won't renew Gemini for Workspace add-on orders.
• Existing Google Workspace pricing changes won't start until March 17, 2025.

CxOs upbeat on economy, plan to invest heavily on genAI, AI agents

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

Read more

CxOs are optimistic about the economy and prospects for artificial intelligence, ready to invest and confident they can navigate emerging risks, according to a trio of surveys gauging enterprise sentiment.

Deloitte's CFO Signals survey for the fourth quarter found financial chiefs more bullish than they've been in 10 quarters about the economy. For instance, 72% of CFOs believe the North American economy will improve over the next year and 67% of respondents said it is a good time to take greater risks.

The percentage of CFOs saying it's a good time to take greater risks is the highest since 2018, said Deloitte. Meanwhile, 42% of CFOs are prioritizing risk management and 40% are focused on optimizing costs, according to Deloitte, which surveyed 200 CFOs in North America between Nov. 13 and Nov. 25.

Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in its AI Radar survey found that three quarters of 1,800 executives surveyed said they would make genAI a top-three priority for 2025. BCG said that one in three companies across all markets are planning to spend more than $25 million on AI in 2025.

BCG found the following:

• 75% of executives rank AI and genAI as a top 3 priority, but only 25% are seeing significant returns.
• Companies with the best AI returns are focused on an average of 3.5 use cases compared to 6.1 use cases for other enterprises.
• 60% of companies aren't tracking AI projects with financial KPIs.
• 67% of enterprises are considering autonomous agents as part of their AI transformation.
• Less than 10% of executives expect a decrease in headcount due to AI automation, but 68% will get by with their existing workforce.

On the risk side of the CxO pendulum, an Allianz survey focused on enterprise risks. The Allianz Risk Barometer noted that cyber-attacks are the biggest worry for enterprises followed by business interruptions and natural disasters.

More:

• Agentic AI: Three themes to watch for 2025
• Why your IT strategy will be easier (in theory): There's only one path
• 2025 in preview: 10 themes in enterprise technology to watch

Microsoft launches Quantum Ready Initiative

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

Read more

Microsoft launched the Quantum Ready Initiative to help businesses prepare for quantum computing as well as align it with business strategy and returns.

The effort lands during an interesting time in quantum computing as vendors scuffle over when the technology will be useful to corporations. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang put the quantum computing usefulness timeline at 15- to 30-years, but other vendors disagree.

Microsoft's Quantum Ready Initiative launched just a few weeks after the company outlined other quantum computing advances. Microsoft is also building its own quantum computer and partnering to offer services via Azure.

• Quantinuum, Microsoft claim quantum reliability breakthrough
• Microsoft claims hybrid quantum breakthrough with Quantinuum, partners with Atom Computing

The Quantum Ready Initiative includes industry-specific skilling modules, expert-guided workshops and roadmaps for integrating quantum computing and classical systems. Microsoft has a small services unit, but is aiming to build a quantum computing ecosystem that would include large systems integrators in the future.

• CxOs need to focus on quantum computing readiness, not the noise
• Practical quantum computing advances ramp up going into 2025
• Quantum computing all in on hybrid HPC with classical computing

Microsoft's Quantum Ready Initiative rhymes with AWS' Quantum Embark Program, an advisory service.

According to Microsoft, the new Quantum Ready Initiative will enable enterprises to build practical hybrid applications, invest in skilling and access to quantum computing, focus on quantum safety and cryptography and prepare to scale.

Microsoft's focus is on hybrid applications for quantum computing--a direction other vendors have followed. In a nutshell, quantum computing and high-performance computing will be paired for developing artificial intelligence and algorithms.

In the near-term, Microsoft is betting that quantum computing will primarily be leveraged for AI applications in chemistry for protein folding and drug candidate use cases and material science. These projects are more proof-of-concept efforts. For the mid-term, Microsoft sees drug chemistry, manufacturing and energy use cases.

"You can tell things are really moving fast in the quantum space when more and more vendors of the caliber like Microsoft join. With its Quantum Ready Initiative, Microsoft couples hardware readiness, software and adoption in the enterprise to make it easier to move to quantum which excitingly is in the foreseeable future, meaning 2025. Now it's all about figuring out what the first use cases will be that companies will be using Quantum for," said Constellation Research analyst Holger Mueller.