The 2024 World Forum is right around the corner, and ServiceNow is bringing its best—introducing the ServiceNow Xanadu release, their biggest release yet. With an ambitious roadmap, these updates are designed to deliver the best of both worlds: the intelligent automation power of AI and the transformation that comes with smarter integration processes. So, what’s in this release? What benefits does it bring? In today’s article, we’ll cover everything you need to know to get the most out of it.
What Is ServiceNow ServiceNow Xanadu Release?
ServiceNow’s ServiceNow Xanadu release is a major release of the Now Platform, featuring advanced new AI features. These aims to enhance productivity, personalization, and value by integrating AI across various business functions like:
- Information Technology (IT).
- Customer Service.
- Human Resources (HR).
The importance of this major AI release is reflected by the fact that, according to the Enterprise AI Maturity Index, about 61% of organizations classified as AI pacesetters use platforms that deliver integrated AI capabilities across their enterprises. This is just one of many examples that show the potential impact of Xanadu release.
What Is Agentic Artificial Intelligence?
The main attraction of ServiceNow Xanadu release is the integration of Agentic Artificial Intelligence. This refers to a specific kind of AI system that can operate with a higher degree of autonomy. Rather than simply answering questions or performing predefined tasks, it can take the initiative without relying only on human-generated prompts and predefined tasks to operate.
This means that, while it needs human direction, it can perform related sub-tasks on its own thanks to its deep context understanding. For example, if we request information about the devolution policy of a product, the AI agent divides the action into several micro-tasks to accomplish the main objective. This level of autonomy allows it to:
- Make decisions.
- Plan actions.
- Learn from its experiences.
Now Platform GenAI Xanadu release
Now that we have seen how Agentic AI can leverage ServiceNow AI capabilities, let’s explore some of Xanadu’s key new features. These involve almost all platform roadmaps, so we are talking about a massive change. However, they could be reduced to 5 principal upgrades. These are:
- AI Agents.
- The new Now Assist Skill Kit.
- Data visualization (analytic skills).
- Automation of chat and email replies.
- RaptorDB Pro database.
In the following sections, we’ll analyze each one of them. However, this and other important topics about how to put AI to work for business will be discussed in this year’s ServiceNow World Forum in Dallas. And we’ll be there to discuss the details with you.
1. AI Agents
One of the main upgrades on ServiceNow Xanadu release is the introduction of AI agents into Now Platform. This is an intelligent conversational platform that incorporates Agentic AI technology. This not only promises to unlock 24/7 productivity at massive scale, but also redefine how AI agents collaborate with employees and customers.
Combining the Now Platform real-time access to enterprise knowledge and tools with the agents’ contextual understanding will allow to transform workflows across an entire enterprise. This way, you can handle every aspect of your organization with unprecedented efficiency and productivity.
What is the difference between ServiceNow AI and Virtual Agents?
We have talked about ServiceNow Virtual agents before, but what is the difference between them and the new AI agents? While both types of agents leverage AI to improve efficiency, they are focused on different tasks. To save you some time, we will summarize these differences in the following table:
| ServiceNow AI Agents | ServiceNow Virtual Agents | |
| Purpose | – Boost productivity by managing workflows and data. – Automate repetitive tasks and complex workflows. | – Offer self-service support to users. – Answer questions and handle routine tasks. |
| Capabilities | – Can be customized and improved through learning. – Built into the Now Platform to work with your data and workflows. | – Learn from interactions for better, more personalized responses. – Built to natively support your business operations. |
| Use Cases | – Common in IT and customer service for reducing errors and improving efficiency. | – Often used for employee and customer support to solve issues faster. |
2. Now Assist Skill Kit
The ServiceNow Xanadu release introduces the new Now Assist Skill Kit, designed to boost existing AI capabilities. With this update, you can build, test, and deploy custom GenAI skills right on the ServiceNow platform. This means you can tailor AI skills to fit your needs and assign them to specific applications.
The Skill Kit integrates effortlessly with the data and knowledge on the Now Platform, providing enhanced context and accuracy. Plus, you can link your custom GenAI skills to AI agents, boosting their ability to handle manual tasks. It also allows agents to learn alongside your business, collaborating with employees to manage workflows from start to finish.
3. Data Visualization Generation
One of the highlights of the ServiceNow Xanadu release is its first analytics skill: Data Visualization Generation. This upgrade makes extracting insights from data easier, even for those who aren’t familiar with the data sources. It also enables users to dynamically create various chart types and seamlessly integrate these visualizations into their existing dashboards.
4. Chat and Email Reply Generation
ServiceNow Xanadu release on AI also brings chat and email reply generation as another of the main new upgrades. In this case, it boosts agent productivity and enhances customer satisfaction by providing context-aware response recommendations. Additionally, the integration with Microsoft Copilot, now generally available, allows users to get answers and take actions seamlessly without switching between applications.
5. RaptorDB Pro: The Next-Generation Database
The ServiceNow Xanadu release also brings the next generation database: The RaptorDB Pro. This is one of the main innovations of these upgrades, and it’s specifically designed to offer unprecedent speed and scalability. With its improved performance on workloads, this database promises a 53% improvement in general transaction times and 27 times faster execution of queries and analysis.
All these improvements are thanks to its parallel consulting processes and columnar storage rate. With this kind of technology, organizations can scale up to 3 times more transactional throughput to handle business growth and its operations. On the other hand, their Knowledge Graph will provide real-time personalization, orchestration, and process automation across systems and data sources.
Now Platform New GenAI Solutions for Specific Sectors
Besides the specific AI upgrades, Xanadu release brings several innovations to enhance the operation of some specific areas. These are for:
- Retail Operations: Unified expertise among store associates, managers, headquarters employees and field technicians.
- Integrated Development Environment (IDE): Tools to enable developers to create or modify applications with minimal coding effort.
- AIOps in ITOM: Enhanced capabilities to quickly investigate and resolve incidents, improving end-user experiences.
Xanadu Release on ServiceNow World Forum 2024
The upgrades of ServiceNow Xanadu release not only aims to enhance their own capabilities, but also to change the way we conceive the use of AI in business. The incorporation of Agentic AI is proof of this, as its potential to strengthen operational resilience and efficiency seems almost unlimited. However, as with any other digital transformation process, it is important to know how to implement it accordingly to your business goals and needs.
In this sense, integration is key to generate the proper data and business logic flow necessary for this kind of technology to operate properly. Without this, they are just another expense. At Inclusion Cloud, we’re here to support you with integration solutions tailored to your enterprise needs. Reach out to our team, and we’ll help plan the perfect integration project to boost your enterprise. And don’t forget to follow us on LinkedIn and our social channels to keep up with the latest industry trends!