ServiceNow Partners with IBM and Microsoft and Adds New Automation Solutions

ServiceNow on the second day of its Knowledge 2024 customer and partner event in Las Vegas announced new partnerships with IBM and Microsoft to expand their generative artificial intelligence capabilities and the addition of several automation solutions to its Now Platform.

The collaboration with IBM will combine the ServiceNow Now Platform with IBM watsonx to boost productivity for mutual customers and partners. ServiceNow will also incorporate watsonx.ai and IBM Granite foundation large language models (LLMs) into its Now Assist GenAI experience for ServiceNow customers.

Bringing IBM watsonx onto the Now Platform will help customers connect their ServiceNow workflows to models they have trained and tuned within watsonx.ai, IBM's enterprise studio for AI builders. Access to these models will also expand Now Assist's multilingual capabilities and enhance summarization, virtual agent conversational exchanges, and resolution generation.

"Our expanded collaboration with IBM reinforces our genAI strategy to prioritize choice and flexibility for customers," said CJ Desai, president and chief operating officer of ServiceNow, in a statement. "We are giving organizations access to two of the top AI platforms, working together to fuel a new era of enterprise productivity and innovation. The Now Platform helps customers deploy the LLM that best fits their unique needs, and incorporating watsonx models will help customers create more intuitive, efficient, and seamless experiences."

"Organizations that can turn data into a competitive advantage are the ones that will win with AI," said Rob Thomas, senior vice president of software and chief commercial officer of IBM, in a statement. "By expanding our collaboration with ServiceNow to combine watsonx with the ServiceNow platform, together we'll enable clients to generate more insights from their data, which can help them unlock the full value of AI throughout their enterprise."

The Microsoft partnership will bring together ServiceNow's Now Assist and Microsoft's Copilot to meet employees where they are so they can execute common productivity tasks. Specifically, Copilot will be able to hand-off employee requests to Now Assist in Microsoft Teams. Now Assist will provide employees with responses to questions as well as recommend actions and next steps in a conversational manner. These actions combine Now Assist's domain knowledge of the enterprise and awareness of the user's context and organizational data from Microsoft 365 chats, email, calendar, and files.

"We strongly believe that the next shift in generative AI will result from the collaboration of industry leaders putting AI to work for their customers. We're on our way to bringing the best of both worlds with the combined power of Now Assist and Microsoft Copilot to transform how work happens," Desai said. "Today's news marks a new chapter in the way businesses will operate. With Microsoft as our partner, we’re enabling a smarter way to work, where generative AI assistants can cohabitate and interact to unlock new levels of productivity."

"At Microsoft, we are committed to helping our customers adapt and thrive in this new age of AI," said Rajesh Jha, executive vice president of Experiences + Devices at Microsoft. "Fundamental shifts are transforming productivity for every individual, organization, and industry, which is why our work with ServiceNow is so valuable. The seamless integration of our AI-powered assistants will help usher in improved levels of employee and IT productivity, reduce context switching, and ensure easier execution of everyday work tasks, adding to the value of our customers' technology investments."

The new automation solutions to the Now Platform include enhancements to Contracts Management Pro, and Field Service Management and the new ServiceNow Project RaptorDB, a Postgres-based database.

"Experience is everything in the fast-paced digital workplaces of today. Inefficient tools and processes lead to bottlenecks and disengagement that businesses can't afford," Desai said. "ServiceNow continues to focus on delivering new integrated, intelligent solutions that help our customers create better employee experiences and drive business growth, all on one platform."

Contract Management Pro is a workflow-based solution for customers considering a contract lifecycle management (CLM) tool. Legal, procurement, sales, and IT teams can use CM Pro. Key capabilities include self-service, templates, repository, audit trail, and obligation management via enterprise-grade workflow capabilities.

Field Service Marketplace, a new feature within Field Service Management, enables field service organizations to collaborate with third-party contractors. With features like advanced contractor selection, dispatchers can assign jobs to the most suitable contractor, considering factors like availability and service ratings. Additional features include push notifications for outsourcing work and automated task assignments..

ServiceNow Project RaptorDB acts as a foundational data layer that will allow ServiceNow customers to process massive volumes of transactional data on the Now Platform in real time. The new database, made possible through ServiceNow's acquisition of Swarm64 in 2021, significantly boosts processing speed.

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