ServiceNow has launched its most extensive set of AI innovations to date with the Now Platform Xanadu release. This update introduces hundreds of new AI features designed to enhance customer agility, boost productivity, and improve employee experiences. It also expands ServiceNow’s generative AI (GenAI) capabilities to critical enterprise functions such as Security Operations and Sourcing & Procurement Operations. Additionally, the integration of Now Assist with Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 is now generally available, providing a cohesive and connected experience for employees within their everyday workflows.
According to Gartner, $3 trillion will be invested in AI between 2023 and 2027, with GenAI accounting for 36% of this spending by 2027. As CEOs seek new growth opportunities and drive digital transformation, ServiceNow is ahead of the curve, offering unique GenAI capabilities that streamline operations, maximize productivity, and deliver top-tier experiences to clients like American Honda Motor Company, Bayer, Boomi, Eaton, and Olam Global Agri. Notably, in Q2 2024, Now Assist continued to be ServiceNow’s fastest-growing product set, doubling its net-new annual contract value (NNACV) quarter-over-quarter.
“Our customers are eager to leverage AI now and demand more from their GenAI deployments—more productivity, personalization, and value,” said Jon Sigler, Senior Vice President of Platform and AI at ServiceNow. “That’s why we are committed to delivering a comprehensive, end-to-end platform experience. The Xanadu release is a major leap forward in our GenAI roadmap, empowering enterprises to swiftly harness GenAI’s potential and drive exceptional business outcomes.”
With the Xanadu release, ServiceNow significantly broadens its GenAI offerings, bringing Now Assist to more enterprise areas to create impactful results. This includes addressing crucial needs such as security and threat management, where speed is essential for safeguarding IT environments. Now Assist for Security Operations (SecOps) is designed to help organizations accelerate security incident response (SIR) workflows and manage threat exposure proactively in real-time.
Now Assist for SecOps improves response times by quickly containing security threats. It leverages AI-driven incident summaries and interactive Q&A to automatically prioritize and address each security event, enhancing incident response protocols and speeding up the assessment, prioritization, and resolution of critical threats.
ServiceNow is also extending Now Assist to Finance and Supply Chain Workflows, initially targeting Sourcing and Procurement Operations with plans to introduce more GenAI features. According to Gartner, “GenAI can already enhance many different workflows in procurement, and 73% of procurement leaders expected to adopt the technology by the end of 2024.” ServiceNow recognizes the potential for intelligent automation to unify complex and fragmented processes. Now Assist simplifies procurement, boosts compliance, improves control over enterprise spending, and drives tangible business value.
Now Assist for Sourcing and Procurement Operations streamlines the procurement process by making it simple and seamless to submit requests, leading to greater accuracy and compliance while reducing friction with fulfillment. Employees can initiate procurement requests or access information through conversational prompts with Now Assist, bypassing complicated systems. This reduces the workload on procurement and finance teams, allowing them to focus on more strategic, high-value tasks.
ServiceNow continues to prioritize customer agility with the introduction of Now Assist Skill Kit, a new feature enabling the development and deployment of custom GenAI skills and prompts. Among the hundreds of new AI innovations in the Xanadu release are features such as data visualization generation, chat and email reply generation, change summarization, and LLM-based proactive prompts. These enhancements improve IT productivity, simplify complex processes, and foster easier internal collaboration, allowing employees to work more effectively and efficiently.
The Now Assist Skill Kit offers a pro-code environment for partners and customers to create custom GenAI skills tailored to their unique business needs. With this toolkit, developers can easily build, test, and deploy new GenAI skills and their underlying prompts, providing enhanced context and customization options whether using Now LLMs or third-party/custom LLMs.
Data visualization generation, Now Assist’s first analytics generation skill, empowers teams to visualize data and make quick, informed decisions, reducing bottlenecks and accelerating response times. It allows users to obtain targeted insights from their data through natural language prompts and add them to interactive dashboards without needing in-depth knowledge of the data structure.
Chat and email reply generation minimizes the time spent on manual responses by providing AI-generated suggested replies and revisions. Available within Agent Workspace, it enables agents to quickly resolve issues and enhance communication, particularly during mission-critical incidents.
Change summarization, powered by Now Assist for IT Service Management (ITSM), allows IT teams to efficiently summarize change requests and assess related data, leading to better decision-making, increased productivity, and reduced cycle times while minimizing risks.
LLM-based proactive prompts, powered by Now Assist for HR Service Delivery (HRSD), actively engage employees and managers with timely reminders for tasks such as approving travel requests or submitting career goals, providing a more streamlined work experience.
At Knowledge 2024, ServiceNow previewed an expanded partnership with Microsoft to integrate ServiceNow’s AI-powered workflows with Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365. The Xanadu release officially launches this integration, delivering a unified, seamless experience that enhances employee productivity.
The integration of Copilot for Microsoft 365 is now generally available, combining the capabilities of Now Assist and Copilot in a cohesive experience. Copilot can manage automated self-service tasks like ordering a new laptop or querying company policies through Now Assist within Microsoft Teams, providing employees with real-time responses and initiating workflows on their behalf.
The Xanadu release solidifies ServiceNow’s leadership in GenAI with one of the most ambitious roadmaps in enterprise software. With GenAI embedded directly into the Now Platform, customers can access out-of-the-box intelligence through ServiceNow’s multimodal model—Now AI—designed to deliver actionable AI across the enterprise. Earlier this year, ServiceNow also introduced the Bring-Your-Own GenAI Model, allowing customers to customize their AI-driven transformation to suit their unique needs.
In addition to expanding its GenAI capabilities, ServiceNow has introduced new data enhancements with the Xanadu release, providing significant value through ultra-scale performance. New features, such as the premium RaptorDB high-performance database, improve data processing, enabling better execution of mission-critical workflows across industries.
ServiceNow remains committed to secure, responsible, and ethical AI, fostering innovation that augments human capabilities and positively impacts the world. The Now Platform incorporates robust internal processes and safeguards to enhance security and reliability, including data encryption, secure communication, vulnerability scanning, accuracy checks, post-processing filtering, and policy compliance. Through collaborations with NVIDIA, Hugging Face, IBM, and others, ServiceNow is dedicated to promoting an open, transparent, and responsible AI ecosystem. For instance, as a founding member of the AI Alliance, ServiceNow is actively contributing to the advancement of responsible AI. Additionally, the integration with NVIDIA NIM optimizes the performance of Now Assist generative AI services, enhancing productivity for employees, customers, and developers.
