Context Engine, Autonomous Data Analytics, and Workflow Data Fabric give enterprises the live, governed data that autonomous AI needs to act

LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 6, 2026-- Knowledge 2026 – Today, at ServiceNow’s annual customer and partner event, Knowledge 2026, ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW), the AI control tower for business reinvention, launched new data capabilities that put autonomous AI to work on live, governed enterprise intelligence. The announcement helps resolve the data fragmentation siloed across systems that has held enterprise AI back, and delivers the live intelligence, execution, and agent governance that autonomous AI requires.

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Most enterprise AI fails not because the models are flawed, but because the data is fragmented across disconnected systems and ungoverned at the exact points where AI agents need to act, producing shallow intelligence that recommends rather than executes. ServiceNow's Context Engine and Autonomous Data Analytics change the equation by drawing from the full breadth of enterprise signals (including assets, workflows, people, policies, operational history), and applying a semantic layer that integrates CMDB, workflow data, analytics insights, and third-party systems to ground every AI decision in real-time operational context. As Context Engine learns continuously from system activity, that intelligence compounds with every workflow, making AI more accurate the more it runs.

“The enterprises winning the AI race are bringing trusted, contextual data directly into the workflows that run the business, giving teams and AI the insights to act with confidence,” said Gaurav Rewari, executive vice president and general manager, Data and Analytics Products at ServiceNow. “That’s what ServiceNow is: the platform where insight meets every workflow, every transaction, every decision, and each one compounds the intelligence that drives the next.”

Intelligence for the AI era

Context Engine provides the deep context and governance that enterprise AI requires. It maps every person, role, asset, service, and policy across a business in real time, giving AI the institutional business context that only comes from being embedded in how a business actually operates. To feed the Context Engine with trusted business logic, ServiceNow is announcing a new vision for Autonomous Data Analytics. Fueled by the innovation from recently acquired Pyramid Analytics, any person or AI agent can query the entire enterprise data estate in plain language and receive secure, contextual insights immediately.

Dozens of disconnected systems, catalogued inconsistently or not at all, and governed through processes designed for human analysts rather than AI agents, contribute to AI that can offer advice but can’t provide workflow resolution. ServiceNow is addressing this with three interconnected capabilities that connect data discovery, governance, and autonomous action without ever leaving the platform where work gets done.

Autonomous Data Governance continuously monitors the data estate and automatically flags quality violations, helping enforce security and privacy policies in real time so the data feeding AI workflows always meets defined standards without manual intervention. And Workflow Data Fabric with ServiceNow Otto makes it all accessible to any user through a natural language experience that guides curated, governed data asset creation step by step.

ServiceNow Data Catalog gives organizations end-to-end visibility across their entire data estate through automated discovery, lineage tracking, and a shared business glossary. That foundation integrates with existing data catalogs across the enterprise, so organizations can gain faster discovery, deeper context, and broader adoption without replacing what they already have. The result is a single, governed review of the entire data estate, wherever that data lives.

Real-time execution for faster, more accurate agentic AI

As agentic workloads demand real-time access, long-term retention, and analytical flexibility, ServiceNow is expanding RaptorDB Pro, the high-performance database native to the ServiceNow AI Platform.

Live Perform extends analytical processing to meet the scale of agentic workloads, building on the performance and scalability gains that have driven RaptorDB Pro adoption over the past several quarters. The architectural breakthrough underlying all three capabilities is RaptorDB Pro’s engine: the same database handles both operational and analytical workloads simultaneously, delivering real-time insights with no performance trade-offs and no separate infrastructure. Live Connect capabilities give Pyramid Analytics and other analytics providers in the Workflow Data Network direct access to live ServiceNow operational data without pipelines, data copies, or latency. Live Archive lets historical and live data be queried together from cost-optimized storage, so long-term compliance and real-time performance no longer compete. RaptorDB Pro also adds native support for multi-modal processing of graph and time-series data, powering complex context modeling and new use cases across manufacturing, healthcare, and critical infrastructure.

Workflow Data Fabric extends this execution layer across the entire enterprise data estate, giving organizations the flexibility to choose best-of-breed data management partners without vendor lock-in. Through the Workflow Data Network, ServiceNow is extending its ecosystem to include partners across Data Quality, Data Observability, and Data Security and Privacy, enabling these solutions to push rich contextual intelligence directly into workflows, surfacing data quality and observability health indicators, sensitive data classifications, and governance policies at the exact point where they become actionable. The new Workflow Data Network Partner Passport makes procurement seamless: customers use existing Data Fabric credits to activate and consume select partner solutions from qualified partners, starting with IBM and Boomi, consolidating data, AI, and workflows under a single commercial agreement.

Agent governance across any agent and any data

A new governance gap is opening as agentic AI adoption accelerates: AI agents are connecting to external services, MCP servers, and data sources with no central oversight, no approval workflow, and no audit trail. Enterprises that rigorously govern how employees access sensitive systems are, in many cases, applying no equivalent controls to the agents now acting on their behalf.

The ServiceNow MCP Registry is a private enterprise Model Context Protocol registry. Built on the open-source MCP Registry API and governed through ServiceNow'sAI Control Tower, the registry gives developers a trusted, internal catalog of approved MCP Servers. Agents discover and connect only to what has been vetted, enforced at the point of access.

GitHub, Box, and Zoom are early MCP Registry partners. Where public registries serve community discoverability, the ServiceNow MCP Registry serves enterprise control. This is a meaningful distinction when agents have broad system access and consequential decisions to make and allows enterprises to hold their agents to the same standard they hold their employees. MCP Registry complements the new ServiceNow AI Gateway, also announced today, which provides real-time controls for agentic workloads, with governance, observability, and security for full visibility across any third-party AI system.

What customers say about ServiceNow data capabilities

PayPal

"This wasn't simply a database migration; it was a foundational step in enabling confident, performance-oriented scale and winning back the trust and investment of our business partners,” said Matthew Kritzer, principal platform architect at PayPal. “As a company that moves more than a trillion of dollars in payment volume annually, the ServiceNow AI Platform must be as fast and resilient as the business itself. Today, we're running Case Management, Cloud Discovery, SecOps, and Now Assist at a scale we once only imagined. Database tasks are twice as fast, and our longest-running operations are five times faster. ServiceNow has become a key part of our enterprise AI and Automation strategy."

Zespri

“For us, the value of the ServiceNow Platform and its AI capabilities is about how people work, not replacing core business systems,” said Tim Lloyd, head of digital operations at Zespri. “It is the digital workflow layer across our ERP and operational platforms—and with Workflow Data Fabric, we can connect and act on data across those systems in real time, helping employees collaborate, automate tasks, and resolve issues faster. That focus on employee experience and execution efficiency is delivering real operational benefits across our global business."

Availability

• Workflow Data Fabric with ServiceNow Otto: Available now.
• ServiceNow Data Catalog: Available now.
• Autonomous Data Governance (Observability, Quality, and Privacy): expected second half 2026
• RaptorDB Pro – Live Connect (SQL API): Available now.
• RaptorDB Pro – Live Archive: Now available with RaptorDB Pro.
• RaptorDB Pro – Live Perform: Now available.
• ServiceNow MCP Registry: Now available via Innovation Lab; A2A Agent Card support expected by year end.
• Workflow Data Network – Partner Passport: Expected second half 2026.

About ServiceNow

ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW) is the AI control tower for business reinvention. The ServiceNow AI Platform integrates with any cloud, any model, and any data source to orchestrate how work flows across the enterprise. By unifying legacy systems, departmental tools, cloud applications, and AI agents, ServiceNow provides a single pane of glass that connects intelligence to execution across every corner of business. With more than 100 billion workflows running on the platform each year, ServiceNow helps organizations turn fragmented operations into coordinated, autonomous workflows that deliver measurable results. Learn how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people at www.servicenow.com.

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Source: ServiceNow