What happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas — at least not when ServiceNow decides to reinvent itself.
25,000 attendees. Endless badges, lanyards, and Starbucks cups that cost more than your flight upgrade. Everyone nodding solemnly as if hearing “AI” for the first time. This wasn’t just a conference — it was ServiceNow’s declaration that it’s no longer a workflow platform. It’s an AI company.
From Workflows to AI Platform – The Glow Up
Once upon a time, ServiceNow was just the place you filed your incident tickets. Now it wants to be the AI glue of the enterprise. And this time, it’s not just marketing fluff.
- AI Control Tower – Think of it as Mission Control for AI. One dashboard to govern, monitor, and control every AI agent in your company — whether it’s ServiceNow-native, Microsoft Copilot, or some random startup you forgot you subscribed to.
- AI Agent Fabric – A communication layer where AI agents talk to each other. Yes, your Microsoft agent and your Adobe agent can now collaborate, probably to make fun of your outdated IT policies.
- Apriel Nemotron 15B – A shiny new LLM built with NVIDIA. Reads PDFs, emails, chats. Learns from feedback. Enterprise-grade, low latency, and won’t require you to mortgage the office to run it.
- Workflow Data Fabric & Zero Copy Connector – Forget migration projects. Data stays where it is, ServiceNow just orchestrates it. Call it data Feng Shui — except this time, your CFO actually approves.
ITOM – Where the Fantasy Collides with Reality
While the AI demos dazzled the crowd, the real grind was ITOM. Here’s the ugly truth:
- Credentials kill Discovery. 80% of failures come from bad or missing credentials. Without them, your Discovery project is dead on arrival.
- CMDB or bust. No clean CMDB, no ITOM. No exceptions. You can’t AI your way out of dirty data.
- MID-Servers aren’t Pokémon. You can’t just scatter them around and hope they “cover the map.” They need strategic placement and range planning.
Bottom line: ITOM isn’t a quick win. It’s a marathon. You will make mistakes. But as Conan O’Brien reminded us on stage: “Mistakes are gifts.” In ITOM, those gifts usually look like broken credentials and misconfigured firewalls.
CRM, SPM & Core Business Suite – Nice, but Not the Headliner
Yes, there was a CRM keynote. Yes, SPM got new AI toys. Yes, ServiceNow launched a Core Business Suite to unite HR, finance, and procurement.
All solid. All useful. But let’s be honest: the real headline was AI eating ServiceNow alive — and customers cheering for more.
The Takeaway – No Luck in ITOM
Knowledge25 wasn’t a conference. It was a flex. ServiceNow doesn’t want to be the “workflow tool” anymore. It wants to be the enterprise AI operating system.
And for ITOM folks like us? This is both opportunity and warning:
- Get your CMDB right.
- Fix your credential management.
- Architect Discovery properly.
Because when AI becomes the glue of enterprise workflows, companies with strong ITOM foundations will scale effortlessly. The rest will drown in their own technical debt.
Vegas runs on illusions – flashing lights, spinning wheels, and the hope that luck will save you. But Knowledge25 made one thing clear: in ITOM, there’s no luck. Only discipline, architecture, and data hygiene.
And if ServiceNow really becomes the glue of enterprise AI, the house won’t just always win – the house will be ServiceNow.
Now excuse me. I need to restart my MID-Server. Who knows – next year it might talk back.
