Xanadu was our biggest AI release yet. It was quite the show, but we saved some of the most exciting numbers for the November curtain call.
The November store release brings two Now Assist skills to shore up your technology data foundations--Now Assist for Configuration Management Database (CMDB) and Now Assist for Service Graph Connectors (SGC). These two features, and a raft of other new enhancements give you personalized, conversational guidance to help you achieve deeper visibility, more straightforward implementation, and smarter integrations. Here's how:
Remember when smartphones first replaced traditional cameras in our lives?
It wasn't just about adding a camera to a phone – it was about transforming how we capture, understand, and share our world. What started as basic photo capability evolved into computational photography, AI-powered scene optimization, and instant sharing capabilities that changed how we think about visual information.
Enterprise IT is experiencing a similar transformational moment. Just as smartphones evolved from simple communication devices into intelligent visual computing platforms, the CMDB is evolving from a basic technology database into an AI-powered system of intelligent record and action. The November release heralds our initial contributions to this pivotal shift – where your CMDB doesn't just store configuration data, it helps you understand it, enriches it with context, and makes it immediately actionable.
Let's explore some of the new features that set new standards in Configuration Management: Now Assist for Configuration Management Database (CMDB), Now Assist for Service Graph Connectors (SGC), enhancements to Service Graph Connector Central, new Service Graph Connectors, and API Insights.
Now Assist for CMDB
Just as computational photography helps anyone capture professional-quality images by understanding scene context and adjusting settings automatically, Now Assist for CMDB transforms raw, cloudy configuration data into crisp, clear, actionable insights through AI-powered analysis.
Key Benefits:
- Intelligent CI Summaries: Like the background smartphone algorithms that automatically identify and enhance important subjects in any photo, Now Assist highlights relevant CI context and relationships. This gives agents, operators, and stakeholders a focused view of any change, incident, or application from a detailed but clear operational perspective. Enterprises need no longer rely on guesswork and tribal knowledge. A 360 view of the full technical and business context is available on every CI.
- Smart Duplicate Detection: Similar to how phones detect and suggest combining similar photos, Now Assist identifies and helps resolve duplicate CIs while preventing future occurrences. This includes the ability to leverage existing duplicate efforts and templates.
- Guided Problem Resolution: Now Assist for CMDB is trained on a knowledge base of best practice. That's better than a smartphone camera. It's like having a professional photographer guiding your shot composition. Now Assist guides you conversationally to the root issues that can gum up a CMDB . It can then help you address those issues leveraging the best practice of years of previous implementations.
Requirements:
- Xanadu release
- Now Assist Admin Console
- Now Assist for CMDB Skill
- CMDB Workspace [In product]
- Any Technical Workflow Plus Subscription, including ITSM Pro Plus and ITOM/TSOM Pro Plus as well as ITSM Enterprise Plus and AIOps/TSOM Enterprise Plus
Now Assist for Service Graph Connectors
No accounting of the the success of the smartphone camera can omit the value it has brought to other applications. It's not just about capturing snapshots anymore; we use our cameras now to scan QR codes, video chat with our doctors and even navigate the world in front of us. Service Graph Connectors provide a certified fast lane to a valuable CMDB, but the CMDB's real vaue is how it makes agents faster, operators smarter, and security more robust.
Now Assist for Service Graph connectors takes the guesswork out of setting up and running the kind of critical data integrations that undergird successful IT projects. And it builds directly from the same assists and licensing you use in those other technology workflows.
Key Features:
- AI-Enhanced Implementation: Like Now Assist for CMDB, Now Assist for SGC is trained on a body of best practices, so it knows how to make integrations work right the first time.
- Streamlined Integrations: Now Assist works with over 65 certified connectors to make integrations smoother and more reliable, letting you focus on outcomes, not processes.
- Real-Time Monitoring and Error Management: Now Assist brings clarity to complex integrations, leveraging high-level guidance backed by detailed views of customer import sets and error reports, ensuring everyone can trust the data driving your most important IT workflows.
Requirements:
- Xanadu release
- Now Assist Admin Console
- Now Assist for SGC Skill
- Service Graph Connector Central (Recommended)
- Any Technical Workflow Plus Subscription, including ITSM Pro Plus and ITOM/TSOM Pro Plus as well as ITSM Enterprise Plus and AIOps/TSOM Enterprise Plus
Service Graph Connector Central
The November release brings further enhancements to the Service Graph Connector Central, now generally available and compatible with ten of our most popular connectors.
Think of Service Graph Connector Central as a single interface for all your phone's cloud photo libraries. You may work with several but you need a central place where can manage existing connections, add new ones and otherwise sync, organize, view and share photos across applications. Just as photo libraries automatically organize images by people, places, and events, Service Graph Connectors seamlessly integrate and organize your infrastructure data across use cases and external systems. SGC Central is the single interface to rule them all.
Key Benefits:
- Unified Management Experience: One intelligent interface to help monitor, troubleshoot, and explore all connector operations
- Knowledge Integration: Draw upon the experience of countless proven solutions and years of best practices in implementing and maintaining your own connections
- Expanding Ecosystem: Newly certified connectors are added to the SGC Central interface every release to address more use cases.
SGC Central is being released ready-to-go with many of our most popular Service Graph Connectors including SCCM, Intune, AWS, Azure, Infoblox, Kong, API Azure, API AWS, Tanium, AppD, Apigee and JAMF.
Requirements:
- Washington DC release or later
- Service Graph Connector Central Application
New Service Graph Connectors:
- Wiz™: Streamline your security awareness and responses with a new certified connector for Wiz™. Bring the intelligence you have built in Wiz™ straight onto your ServiceNow platform and cut months out of security projects.
- Kong: Bring API information to populate your CMDB from a Kong Gateway. Then use API Insights to gain visibility, control, and insights into how the APIs fit in your overall technology blueprint.
New Service Graph Connectors require ITOM Visibility and enough subscription units (SU) to manage them. To discuss details and licensing levels talk to your account team.
API Insights (Controlled Release)
If Service Graph Connectors are your photo library, think of API Insights as a kind of professional editing suite – providing deep visibility into APIs and how they connect to related technology elements typically hosted across multiple cloud providers. API Insights normalizes these elements and surfaces them through the CMDB in several core IT functions like changes, incidents, and service operations. Just as professional editing tools help perfect your images, API Insights helps you understand and then perfect the key connections that enable your technology to provide critical services.
We'd like to thank our design partners. With their partnership, we have learned the most relevant use cases and we are nearly ready for general availability. Watch the API Insights Community Space to learn more, including when these features will be generally available, most likely the first half of 2025.
Key Benefits:
- visibility and normalization: view APIs across cloud providers like AWS, Azure, GCP and management tools including Kong and Apigee. Quickly take in how APIs are related to other cloud and technology elements.
- Add APIs to workflow: incorporate specific APIs into workflow such as access requests.
- seamless integration across platform workspace and workflows : Access all insights within your familiar CMDB environment. Put APIs at the fingertips of your support and operations staff. Master API data via the Unified Map, CMDB 360, and related tools. Apply API CIs to existing workflow in Service Operations, catalog requests and Security Operations.
Requirements:
- The API Insights Application Limited availability
- Participation in special control group
The reimagining of CMDB in Xanadu and the November release mirrors how smartphones transformed photography – it's not just about adding features, it's about fundamentally changing how we interact with and understand our digital environment. Just as computational photography made professional-quality images accessible to everyone, these updates make professional-grade IT operations intelligence accessible to every organization.
The future of IT operations isn't just about storing configuration data – it's about making that data come alive with intelligence and context. Just as we can't imagine going back to basic point-and-shoot cameras, once you experience this new generation of CMDB, you won't want to go back either.
Welcome to configuration management that's as intuitive as your smartphone's camera, but powerful enough to drive enterprise transformation. Welcome to the CMDB for AI transformation.
