ServiceNow Xanadu Aims to Elevate IT Operations with AI Agents

ServiceNow on Sept. 10 enhanced its Now platform with the new Xanadu release in a bid to improve operational efficiencies.

ServiceNow Xanadu follows the company's Washington. D.C, release that came out in March and has many of the same core themes. Once again, AI-driven automation is front and center, though there's much more to the update. ServiceNow Xanadu introduces significant advancements in AI-driven enterprise solutions, data management, and industry-specific applications.

Key technical enhancements include:

• Multi-agent AI systems with advanced reasoning capabilities

• New high-performance database with RaptorDB Pro

• Enhanced development environment and AIOps functionalities

• Industry-specific AI solutions for the telecommunications, finance, and public sectors

"ServiceNow is headed toward accelerating value to customers and the C-suite through the melding of process automation with embedded genAI and analytics capabilities that will enhance team productivity levels and enable cost advantages," Stephen Elliot, an analyst at IDC, told ITPro Today. "This release is about delivering value with analytic capabilities embedded into processes across most workflows."

Elliot noted that ServiceNow has been investing in AI and analytics for many years. In his view, organizations that use the ServiceNow platform will likely gain efficiencies from using the new technologies for their everyday tasks, embedded technologies with processes, and even industry-specific model capabilities.

Related:ServiceNow Knowledge 2024 Brings New AI Power, Intelligence to ITOps

Xanadu's AI Agents to Improve Productivity

One highlight of the Xanadu release is the introduction of AI agents, which are designed to operate autonomously within the enterprise environment.

Key features include:

"ServiceNow AI agents will unlock 24/7 productivity across hundreds of tools, unique use cases, and genAI skills," Dorit Zilbershot, ServiceNow's vice president of AI product management, said during a press briefing. "Our approach offers an AI agent experience through the ServiceNow platform that expands human and AI partnership across the enterprise."

Agents aren't the only AI update in Xanadu. The Xanadu release also expands the ServiceNow Now Assist capabilities with:

Related:ServiceNow Doubles Down on GenAI as Business Transformation Catalyst

Database Enhancements: RaptorDB Pro

Central to the Xanadu release is RaptorDB Pro, a significant upgrade to ServiceNow's database architecture. This enhancement shifts from a traditional relational database model to a column-store structure.

According to ServiceNow, the database update provides up to 27 times faster query execution through column-store indexing and three times higher transactional throughput.

"What our customers can expect with RaptorDB Pro is better overall performance, making workloads more responsive," Heath Ramsey, vice president of Outbound Product Management at ServiceNow, said during the briefing.

Vertical Market IT Operation Improvements in Xanadu

ServiceNow has a growing list of industry-specific offerings to help with the IT operations and service needs of different industries.

Among the offerings getting an update with Xanadu is one for retail operations. The retail operations update provides a dashboard for regional managers to monitor store performance as well as connect store-level operations with back-office management.

For the telecommunications sector, the industry-specific solution integrates AI-driven analysis tools for network diagnostics. It also includes automated test scheduling and result interpretation.

IT Asset Management (ITAM) Enhancements

Xanadu also brings a few notable updates to ServiceNow's ITAM capabilities. The enhancements aim to reduce mean time to resolution and improve overall IT service delivery efficiency.

Among the ITAM updates:

How Trimedx Uses ServiceNow's AI Capabilities for Healthcare Asset Management

During the briefing, Brad Jobe, CIO of clinical asset management company Trimedx, shared insights on how his organization is using ServiceNow's platform and AI capabilities to drive efficiency in healthcare operations. Trimedx manages about 2.5 million medical devices across 6,000 locations in the United States, with a workforce of 3,400 employees.

Jobe highlighted two primary areas where Trimedx sees significant opportunities with AI:

Jobe emphasized that his organization is taking a careful and measured approach, making sure to add automation where it makes sense in a safe way.

"For us, patient safety is certainly top of mind, and implementing a model that provides a wrong answer can certainly be a life-or-death scenario," Jobe said. "So evaluating all of the risks of implementing this is definitely something we look at all the time."