Agentic AI goes beyond single-purpose chatbots and turns teams of AI agents into collaborative problem-solving business partners.
ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott opened the company’s Q4 2024 earnings call last week with a main theme of “ServiceNow’s leadership position in the seismic shift to agentic AI.” He cited 150% quarter-over-quarter growth in ServiceNow’s Pro Plus AI as a sign of where agentic AI is heading.
“It doesn't matter to ServiceNow who builds the models,” explained McDermott, “With the precipitous drop in LLM compute costs, there is much more capital allocation available for the business impact layer.”
Agentic AI was a key theme in ServiceNow’s Sales and Partner Kickoff last month, with major presentations and multiple workstreams all driving energy around NOW’s growing AI investment. Watchful eyes might have even noticed many of this year’s ServiceNow Customer Summits, like the one coming up in Charlotte this month, have been renamed to focus on AI’s rise in the Enterprise.
AI’s role in business transformation has been a major topic in recent years, and agentic AI is the latest focus. But with all the buzz already surrounding AI, is this attention warranted?
What exactly is agentic AI?
From 10,000 feet, agentic AI automates decision-making and problem-solving, continuously learning with minimal human intervention. Like all AI models, agentic AI learns from data and experience using patterns and probable outcomes in decision-making and evaluating outcomes.
But, where agentic AI sets itself apart is in how it deploys separate AI agents in discreet scenarios, learning independently, and proactively making decisions while performing highly specific tasks so people can focus on more complex challenges.
For example, Rachel Cameron, Head of Transformational Programmes at Rolls‑Royce, said, “By integrating ServiceNow AI Agents, we are streamlining operations, reducing manual effort, and enabling faster data‑driven decision‑making. AI‑powered automation is helping us deflect service desk tickets, optimize workflows, and provide intelligent insights—allowing our teams to focus on high‑value activities while ensuring our operations remain efficient, secure, and future‑ready."
But that’s just the beginning. Over the next six to 12 months, expect to see agentic AI driving significant transformation in how enterprises analyze data, automate process workflows, improve employee productivity, and predict a host of different outcomes across the business chain (from pre-solving customer support tickets to re-routing supply chain incidents).
In the business world, agentic AI is an emerging space with IDC’s FutureScape: Worldwide IT Industry 2025 Predictions forecasting that 50% of organizations will use enterprise AI agents in 2025.
ServiceNow’s ‘AI agent control tower’
The biggest differentiator embedded in ServiceNow’s agentic AI rollout is its new AI Agent Orchestrator serving as an AI agent control tower and its AI Agent Studio for creating customized agents.
“In a future with millions of AI agents acting as your new digital workforce, ServiceNow serves as the AI agent control tower, bringing order to chaos,” said Amit Zavery, president, Chief Product Officer, and Chief Operating Officer at ServiceNow, in a statement. He added, “Agentic AI without unification creates more complexity within an enterprise.
The ability of ServiceNow AI Agents to work together on tasks that draw from multiple systems and departments truly stands out. With a single location to orchestrate agents and prevent sprawl, our AI agents collaborate like active participants at work, acting as true extensions of their human counterparts.”
In the Q4 earnings call, McDermott pointed out companies will be experimenting with agents from multiple vendors and that the ServiceNow platform handles orchestration and governance.
“Nobody wants a new cloud mess where every department is out buying agents and nobody understands what the agents are doing,” stated McDermott. “Our AI Agent Orchestrator eliminates sprawl, managing teams of AI agents to tackle the most complex enterprise processes.”
The fuel, as always, is data
ServiceNow’s strength in agentic AI comes from its vast history of workflow executions, providing AI agents with extensive data to learn from. Its platform enables seamless access to enterprise-wide data, ensuring AI agents have the necessary information to operate effectively. ServiceNow’s platform addresses consolidating data sources with its Workflow Data Fabric which connects and activates both structured and unstructured enterprise data from any location.
“Agentic AI is going to come into its own at some point this year, and ServiceNow is leading the charge,” said Rick Wright, CEO of CoreX, in a recent CRN article. “Not only is their agent technology good, but their secret sauce, I think, is the orchestration. We have all of these workflows, especially as we get into the space that we're in—financial close, order to cash, supply chain exception handling—there’s just a myriad of use cases that just jump off the page.”
He added, “Building agents to go drive those and driving those through a workflow, to me, is a game changer, so we are incredibly excited about where ServiceNow is taking this technology.”
There are already thousands of AI agents on the ServiceNow platform. AI Agent Orchestrator and AI Agent Studio will become available in March at no additional cost for Pro Plus and Enterprise Plus customers.