“With our technology, AI can only access and analyze data if our customers have opted in,” says Nicole Reineke, distinguished product manager, AI strategy at N-Able. “If you haven’t opted in, we won’t make any changes. This is our baseline for ensuring data privacy and customer trust.”
N-Able has created four pillars of AI with strict data privacy protocols to provide guidance for MSPs who are building their own AI frameworks.
The company’s latest MSP Horizons Report shows that more than 75 percent of MSPs are currently using AI across a variety of business functions, including marketing, human resources, customer service, and code generation.
The Burlington, Massachusetts-based software vendor has outlined its four key pillars to help MSPs develop their own AI strategy.
“With our technology, AI can only access and analyze data if our customers have opted in,” Nicole Reineke, distinguished product manager for AI strategy at N-Able, told CRN. “If you haven’t opted in, we won’t make any changes to it. This is our baseline for ensuring data privacy and customer trust.”
The four pillars include data ethics and privacy; transparency and disclosure; AI impact on processes; and vendor and partner expectations.
Data ethics and privacy advise MSPs to establish protocols for data anonymity and security. Transparency and disclosure involves clear communication with customers about how AI is used in services, including detailed AI decision-making processes. The impact of AI on processes places an obligation on MSPs to evaluate which processes should remain human-led to maintain the quality of customer interactions and decision-making. Vendor and partner expectations involve setting clear performance, ethical, and compliance standards for AI vendors.
“I’m a firm believer in keeping humans in the loop,” said Reinecke (pictured). “AI should enhance human decision-making, not replace it. While some tasks can be automated, we make sure critical decisions still involve human review.”
N-Able is also considering potential future risks associated with AI.
“A major concern is how quickly bad actors can exploit vulnerabilities,” he said. “AI’s ability to quickly detect and exploit vulnerabilities poses a major threat and we must remain vigilant against such risks.”
Brent Yax, partner at N-Able, said theyâve been receiving a lot of questions from clients recently about data protection, security and transparency, so N-Ableâs framework aligns with the questions MSPs are getting from clients.
“Providing our customers with clear guidelines on AI is essential, especially as they explore new technologies like ChatGPT and other generative AI tools,” Yax, CEO of Troy, Michigan-based MSP Awecomm, told CRN. “Many customers are diving into AI without fully understanding what’s involved.”
A common problem they face is the use of AI tools to prepare meeting notes.
“Customers are often unaware that their data is not secure, which can be a major risk if meetings involve sensitive information,” he said.
He also said N-ABLE’s reference material is “timely and necessary”.
âThis helps us guide clients through the basics of AI, ensuring they have a solid understanding and appropriate security measures in place before fully committing,â he added. âCustomers are eager to adopt AI technologies, but there is a great need for education on data security and privacy. Providing them with basic knowledge will help them make informed decisions and avoid potential pitfalls.â
“We prioritize partners at every turn, because we can’t succeed without you,” said Erica Volini, ServiceNow Channel Leader.
Big changes to who qualifies as an Elite Partner, increasing the percentage of partner-sourced net-new annual contract value for ServiceNow Now Assist artificial intelligence tools, and a leadership team that’s entirely focused on partners are just some of the messages ServiceNow wants to send to partners in the AI ââera.
Erica Volini, channel head for the Santa Clara, California-based IT automation vendor, told CRN that ServiceNow is increasing investments in its partners, tripling the number of incentives from 2024 to 2025 in terms of dollars and time, and encouraging partners to make the most of the new resources.
“I don’t want to let a single dollar slip away,” said Volini, whose official title is senior vice president of global partnerships. [RELATED: ServiceNow CEO McDermott To Partners: âTell Us What You Needâ]
ServiceNow has nearly 2,200 channel partners worldwide, According To the 2024 Channel Heads of CRN.
John Reynolds is senior vice president of global alliances, innovation and corporate development at Thirdera (part of Cognizant), an Elite partner of ServiceNow, based in Broomfield, Colorado. Number 8 In an interview with CRN â included in CRNâs 2024 Solution Provider 500 â he told CRN that he likes the work Volini and his team are doing to add more value to Eliteâs positioning.
“She’s not trying to minimize or limit opportunities,” Reynolds said. “The marketing investment that’s being made in partners … is being seen and felt. It’s clear and we’re really making it work.”
Sales Plays, Demos, Co-Captains
Jennifer Oades, vice president of partner experience at ServiceNow, told CRN that the vendor’s methods for increasing partner-sourced net-new annual contract value from 2 percent to 20 percent include two end-to-end sales, with more expected “in the coming months.”
âThere will be a gradual, steady increase in investment,â said Oades, who wants it to reach about 20 percent by the end of the year.
The average partner-sourced annual contract value for the ServiceNow platform is about 20 percent, up from about 8 percent two years ago. During Volini’s event with partners at ServiceNow headquarters this week, he said the vendor accepted blame for the disparity with Now Assist GenAI products, saying, “We haven’t given you the resources you need to move at the speed of this new market.”
“You haven’t got enough data, enough reach, enough stories, enough demos, enough things to capture this moment,” he said. “Today that changes.”
Partners can take advantage of five hours of Now Assist for Creator training and earn three AI credentials. Now Assist for Creator has been responsible for nearly half of all Now Assist sales so far last year. Odes called the offering a “quick win” for partners looking to sell customers on an AI offering. Now Assist for IT Service Management has been the No. 2 seller in the Now Assist suite, followed by Now Assist for Human Resources.
The second end-to-end sales play is four hours of training with three AI credentials for Now Assist for customer service management â reducing time from double-digit hours of training for other offerings, he said. Now Assist for CSMs is “the entry point to more targeted customer solutions.”
Oades said the vendor is also working to simplify and improve the demo experience for partners. ServiceNow is giving partners two instances instead of one, adding support for partner questions and getting demos ready in just a few minutes. He said the vendor is working on more automation for the experience.
Oades also detailed a new dedicated partner support role at ServiceNow called “co-captain.” He said the vendor has regional co-captains who can provide NowAssist support for partners, responding to tickets within 24 hours.
ServiceNow has also created an âAI Navigatorâ section of its Partner Success Center where partners can find answers to implementation and sales questions, as well as a dedicated partner events page to find Now Assist and other events. It plans to share monthly product highlights and best practices for partners starting with an event on Sept. 25.
The vendor is also adding Now Assist to its Deployment Success Incentive program for partners so they can earn credits from now through the end of the year and receive GenAI Customer Value Awards in the 2025 Partner Program awards program scheduled in February. ServiceNow is also allowing partners to achieve product line accomplishments faster so they can more quickly receive validated practices in the ServiceNow Partner Finder, making it easier for customers to search.
“We expect to have Now Assist’s verified practices available in Partner Finder in the fourth quarter,” he added.
ServiceNow invests in partners
Volini and his team presented to a range of leaders from the vendor’s marketing, product, sales and other business functions during ServiceNow’s Global Partner Ecosystem Summit, held at its headquarters on Tuesday, showing that partners are important to the company starting at the top.
ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott told a room of partners that he doesn’t want “silly little things like profits and coverage” to get in the way of the vendor and its partners taking advantage of the growing market around artificial intelligence and removing silos from enterprise software.
“Just tell us what you need,” McDermott said. “Let’s approve it. Let’s put the trust to work. It’s all good. And let’s move on to development.”
Some of the ServiceNow executives who shared early insights about the AI ââmarket with partners include Sarabdeep Narang, ServiceNow vice president and global head of generative AI go-to-market, who recommended avoiding proof-of-concept and proof-of-value and focusing on customized demos of AI offerings to accelerate the sales cycle.
ServiceNow CMO Colin Fleming told partners about its efforts to simplify the brand and increase awareness, including an ad campaign with actor Idris Elba. And Michael Park, senior vice president and global head of AI, created different personas for the people who use AI within the company and how to work with different companies based on whether they are ready to adopt AI or are still in the early stages of the process.
“This isn’t the old ERP of 20 years ago where once you bought it, it took three or four years to implement,” Park said. “We’re seeing average times to deployment shorten in an unprecedented way.”
program segment transition
Volini told partners to prepare for the segment transition on December 31, where ServiceNow wants to add more value to Elite Partner status. Larger partners will be more likely to receive Elite status after the transition, while smaller partners will still be able to differentiate themselves by earning specialization.
“This concept of specialization, it’s not a generic term,” he said. “It was designed specifically for smaller partners. Not exclusively, but specifically. They may never reach the criteria to get into the elite without significant growth, and that’s OK. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be front and center on Partner Finder.”
He said the change in elite status occurred because elite partners felt they were not different enough from other partners.
“It was almost unfair to our elite partners,” Volini said. “We want it to mean something. But it’s not the only thing that matters. … No matter how big or small they are, they’re special in our ecosystem and they can stand out in our ecosystem. And that’s something we can offer that I don’t know that a lot of technology companies can offer because we have such a huge portfolio of different partners.”
Volini also said that attention should be paid to improving ServiceNow’s store to turn it into a full-fledged marketplace with a lead generation and recommendation engine.
Speaking to partners this week, he said they are already growing their expertise across ServiceNow products, with 4,000 new Now Assist certifications completed; 5,000 new Pro certifications across the ecosystem in the past 12 months; and 35 new products created by partners using GenAI in the past year.
âWe prioritize partners at every turn, because without you, we cannot succeed,â he said.
CRN details six recent significant executive resignations and appointments at Google Cloud, including the resignation of Googleâs Kubernetes chief and the appointment of a former Microsoft corporate vice president.
from the departure of Google Cloud’s Kubernetes and Serverless General Manager hiring Of Microsoft’s Google Cloud’s roster of top executives continues to change, according to a former corporate vice president.
The $41 billion cloud giant based in Mountain View, California, is competing with the world’s biggest tech companies to acquire top talent. For example, Google Cloud recently managed to hire one of these. Amazon Web Services’ AI and the All-Star Authority of Machine Learning.
However, many Google Cloud executives have exited the company to take up top roles at competitors such as AI cloud provider Corweave.
CRN analyzes three major new executive appointments and three recent top hires employee departure There are some features on Google Cloud that you should know about.
exit
Chen Goldberg Former Google Cloud Position: GM and VP, Kubernetes and Serverless New Position: Senior Vice President of Engineering, QorVive
Chen Goldberg was the general manager and vice president of Google Cloud’s Kubernetes and Serverless business for the past three years. She was a senior director and vice president of engineering at Google since 2016.
“Together we’ve built on important projects like Kubernetes, GKE, and Serverless, driving tremendous progress in our customers’ digital transformation and making a lasting impact on the cloud-native industry,” Goldberg said in a recent post announcing his resignation on LinkedIn, which garnered more than 275 comments. “It’s been an honor to contribute to Google Cloud’s journey, build a culture focused on customer empathy, and leverage everyone’s unique talents and insights.” [Related: AWS, Microsoft And Googleâs Cloud Ranking By Region]
Goldberg joined Qorweave a few weeks ago as its new Senior Vice President of Engineering.
“I’ve seen Corweave grow rapidly over the past year â years ahead of the competition,” he said. “I’m extremely excited to join this talented team as we accelerate Corweave’s world-class product development and offerings.”
Prior to joining Google Cloud, Goldberg was the Director of Engineering for HPE’s Software Business. Click to read about five other executive changes at Google Cloud.
hire
Vittorio Sanvito New position: COO EMEA Former position: AWS Managing Director EMEA
Vittorio Sanvito joined Google Cloud this month as chief operating officer for the company’s entire EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region.
Sanvito will drive Google Cloud’s go-to-market execution strategy for all EMEA sales. He will lead Google’s strategy and operations team, the deal processing office (DPO), and the office of the EMEA Cloud president.
Prior to joining Google Cloud, Sanvito was the Managing Director of AWS’s EMEA Consulting Partner Organization. He was responsible for recruiting, on-boarding, certifications, and building sustainable AWS practices with partners to meet customer needs.
He joined AWS in 2018 as COO of EMEA.
Sanvitoâs IT career includes more than 20 years at HPE in top executive positions across the EMEA region.
exit
Sachin Jain Former Google Cloud Position: Vice President, Google Cloud New Position: Chief Offerings Officer, Qorweave
Sachin Jain has spent the last several years as the company’s vice president, leading capacity planning and optimization for all Google Cloud services worldwide.
Jain said his Google team was responsible for business metrics around customer experience, inventory, infrastructure costs and efficiency. From 2020 to 2024, he also led the overall data center capacity planning and supply chain engineering system for parent company Alphabet, he said on LinkedIn.
Last month, he joined Corweave as its new chief operating officer (COO).
âThe opportunity to join one of the best players in AI cloud today is incredibly exciting,â Jain said in a recent LinkedIn post. âI look forward to working with the entire team as we look to leverage Corweaveâs industry-leading position and reach the next level.â
Prior to Google Cloud, Jain spent 18 years in top executive positions at Amazon.
hire
saurabh tiwari New Position: GM and VP, Google Cloud AI Former position: Corporate vice president, Microsoft
Google Cloud has appointed Saurabh Tewari, an 11-year Microsoft veteran and top Copilot executive, as its new general manager and vice president for Google Cloud’s AI business.
Tiwari was previously corporate vice president at Microsoft, where he led a team of software engineers, product managers, and scientists to help build the Microsoft Copilot AI experience. According to his LinkedIn profile, his leadership around Copilot influenced various business units, including Microsoft 365, Windows Copilot, Bing, and others.
In his new role at Google Cloud, Tiwari is responsible for the Cloud AI business unit, which includes Vertex AI, Kaggle, Collab, and AI Studio. In addition, he is leading a partnership with Google DeepMind to bring Gemini and Gemma innovations to Google developers.
exit
Baskar Sreedharan Former position: Vice president of engineering, Google Cloud New status:Vice President of AI & ML Services and Infrastructure, AWS
Google Cloud’s Baskar Sridharan recently left his position to become AWS’s new vice president of artificial intelligence and machine learning services and infrastructure.
Sridharan now plays a key role in leading AWS’s AI and generative AI strategy, which includes Amazon SageMaker and Amazon Bedrock, core data services, and ML infrastructure for developing deep learning frameworks and engines.
Sridharan spent over five years at Google Cloud, most recently as vice president of engineering for Google Cloud Platform. He managed the engineering team for Google Compute Infrastructure as well as several product management teams within Google Cloud.
Prior to Google, Sridharan spent over 15 years in top engineering roles at Microsoft. He left Microsoft in 2018 as partner director of software engineering for Microsoft’s Azure Data Lake and Cosmos business units.
hire
Stephen Tenney New position: VP of Product, Google Cloud Former position: Head of Product, Meta
In July, Google Cloud hired former Meta product leader Stephen Tenney as vice president of product. He is tasked with helping lead Google’s identity and engagement business.
From 2014 to 2023, Tenney led product management for Messenger and Instagram at social media giant Meta. He led the product vision and innovation for Messenger which became highly popular during his tenure at Meta.
He spent eight years at Microsoft as a Principal Program Manager, where he was responsible for moving Skype for Business Server from on-premises to Microsoft Office 365.
Tenne joins Google Cloud after serving as chief product officer at dating app maker Hinge for a year.
The glitch, which occurred on Thursday morning, left some AT&T users unable to access Microsoft 365 and Azure services.
AT&T said that “connections are working normally” as of Thursday morning Eastern time, following reports that Microsoft 365 and Azure services were unavailable to AT&T users during the morning hours.
Microsoft has also confirmed that the issues that are causing this problem are: Outages The issue has been fixed for AT&T users. In a statement to CRN, Microsoft said, “A third-party Internet service provider incident that impacted the ability of a subset of their customers to access our services is now fully resolved.” [Related: The 10 Biggest Cloud Outages Of 2024 (So Far)]
In a post on X, Microsoft indicated the outage was caused by an unspecified “change” in the managed environment of a third-party Internet service provider, identified elsewhere as AT&T.
For about 90 minutes Thursday morning, EDT, “customers using AT&T to connect to Microsoft services experienced issues accessing our services,” Microsoft said on its Azure status Page,
Thursday, 10:45 a.m. EDT time, Microsoft 365 X account exposure that the outage has been resolved.
“We have monitored our systems and confirmed the impact has been remedied,” Microsoft said in the post.
Similarly, Microsoft’s Azure Status Account is also available on X. Posted “We can confirm that the issue affecting connectivity to Microsoft services is now mitigated.”
In a statement to CRN on Thursday, AT&T said that “we experienced some disruptions connecting to some Microsoft services on our network.”
“The issue has been resolved and connections are functioning normally,” the company said.
Microsoft earlier reported that the disruption had left some users unable to access Azure and Microsoft 365 services since Thursday morning (EDT).
Reports of outages on Downdetector.com began just before 8 a.m. Eastern time on Thursday, and reports on the site increased over the next hour.
The incident follows a major outage in late July that affected services including Microsoft 365 and Azure.
In that case, the outage was initially caused by a DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack, although the outage was controlled. got spoiled The company revealed that this was due to an “error” in Microsoft’s response efforts.
The tech giant said, ‘We are investigating an issue where users may be unable to access several Microsoft 365 services.’
Microsoft reported an outage that left some users unable to access Azure and Microsoft 365 services since Thursday morning (EDT).
Microsoft 365 X Accounts revealed the outage Thursday at 8:38 a.m. EDT. “We’re investigating an issue where users may be unable to access a number of Microsoft 365 services,” Microsoft said. Post, [Related: The 10 Biggest Cloud Outages Of 2024 (So Far)]
The account posted again at 9:42 a.m. (Eastern Time), saying “We are reviewing network telemetry and recent changes to our networking infrastructure.”
“Additionally, we are working with third-party ISPs to understand the underlying cause,” Microsoft said on X.
A separate Microsoft account on X indicated that the issues were also affecting Azure, and pointed to AT&T as the affected network.
The Azure support account said, “We’re investigating customer reports of a possible issue connecting to Microsoft services from the AT&T network.” Posted, Bloomberg Too Report The issue affects AT&T users. CRN has contacted Microsoft for comment.
Reports of outages on Downdetector.com began just before 8 a.m. Eastern time on Thursday, and reports on the site increased over the next hour.
The incident follows a major outage in late July that affected services including Microsoft 365 and Azure.
In that case, the outage was initially caused by a DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack, although the outage was controlled. got spoiled The company revealed that this was due to an “error” in Microsoft’s response efforts.
“Throughout fiscal 2025, we are committed to disciplined cost management… We anticipate that these actions will result in a continued reduction in our overall headcount,” the company said in a quarterly trade filing with the SEC.
Layoffs are an ongoing part of the business at Dell Technologies and more cuts are expected before the end of the year as it seeks more “disciplined cost management” to prepare for the future.
The Round Rock, Texas-based tech giant said in a regulatory filing that in the first half of this fiscal year, ended August 2, it had paid severance costs of $400 million. It said the dollar figure is similar to the workforce reduction costs it paid during the full year of last year, when it eliminated 13,000 jobs across two layoff announcements in February 2023 and August 2023.
âThroughout fiscal 2025, we are committed to disciplined cost management in coordination with our ongoing business transformation initiatives and will continue to take certain measures to reduce costs, including the limitation of external hiring, staff restructuring and other actions to align our investments with our strategic priorities and customer needs,â the company said in a 10-Q filing this week. âWe expect these actions will result in a continued reduction in our total headcount.â [RELATED: Dell Technologies Infrastructure Sales Hit Record, AI Server Revenue Surges 80 Percent]
Dell’s position as a leader in selling the high-end servers needed to power generative AI workloads has resulted in its most valuable compute stack business growing rapidly.
Dell made the cut to investors, saying its revenue will grow 10 percent to $98.5 billion by year’s end.
The majority of this revenue growth will come through its Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG) division, which sells high-end server and storage products to enterprises and hyperscalers globally. Dell expects revenue to grow 30 percent by the end of the year.
The company has already touted a massive nine-figure server deal with ServiceNow, and the company’s founder, chairman and CEO Michael Dell showed off boxes of Dell servers on LinkedIn that will power Grok for xAI, the AI ââstartup founded by Elon Musk. Dell anticipates that PC sales will remain steady among its client devices.
However, in May, Wall Street objected to the negligible margins that Dell earned on these sales. At the time, Dell’s chief operating officer was Jeff Clarke. said its competitors are raising the cost of winning deals, but Dell is willing to take less per sale in the future to make up for the associated expenses.
Wall Street didn’t like what it heard on the call.
Dell’s value declined by $65.15 billion over the next two monthsâroughly a billion a dayâas its market capitalization fell more than 50 percent from $127.32 billion on May 29 to $62.17 billion on August 7. Dell announced that week layoffs as well as restructuring its workforce around AI. During its most recent earnings call in late August, Clark touted the company’s improved margins achieved through cost discipline. The company’s stock price has surged since then, rising above $100.
Dell traded at $108 yesterday afternoon, and its market capitalization rose to $77 billion, representing an increase in value of about $15 billion.
Dell has not disclosed how many jobs it has cut so far this year. In response to CRN’s question about employee numbers on Wednesday, Dell said it would provide employee count information in its next annual report, due in early 2025.
“Through a series of ongoing actions and restructuring of our go-to-market teams, we are becoming a smaller company. We are combining teams and prioritizing investing across the company,” Dell Technologies told CRN in response to a question about the ongoing layoffs. “We are continually evolving our business so that we are prepared to deliver the best innovation, value and service to our customers and partners.”
Dell is aiming to cut its sales team as it relies more on channel partners to drive revenue for its market-leading infrastructure and PC products. Last year — along with cutting thousands of sales jobs — Dell introduced Partner First for Storage, which gives Dell’s own sellers more cash for closing storage deals through channel partners.
With the new market-entry strategy, Dell direct sellers are calling on Dell reseller partners when it comes to extending deals, renewing deals and securing new storage deals.
As the global market share leader for external RAID, high-end RAID, mid-range RAID, converged storage, HCI storage, purpose-built back-up appliances, and all-flash array RAID storage, according to July data from IDC, it’s a massive book of business that Dell is welcoming partners into.
Partners told CRN they advise any Dell salespeople affected by the layoffs to begin looking for a new job among Dell’s channel partners.
‘Let’s get it cleared,’ ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott told a room of partners. âLet’s put trust to work. It’s all good. And let’s go for growth.â
ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott told a room of partners that he doesnât âwant silly little stuff like comp and coverageâ getting in the way of the vendor and its partners capitalizing on a growing market around artificial intelligence and removing silos from enterprise software.
âJust tell us what you need,â McDemott said during the vendorâs Global Partner Ecosystem Summit (GPES) held at its Santa Clara, Calif., headquarters Tuesday. âLet’s get it cleared. Let’s put trust to work. It’s all good. And let’s go for growth.â
The former SAP CEO told partners that his âbiggest frustration is the marketâs waiting for us. And even though we’re doing well, I know the markets are waiting for us, and I can’t get to all of it.â
âI think of opportunities in India,â he said. âI think of opportunities in Malaysia and Vietnam and Southeast Asia in general. What can we do in Latin America? We’re really doing great in the United States and in EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa). But we could be doing a lot more. ⌠And we can’t get there without you.â [RELATED: ServiceNow Partner Summit, Xanadu Release: The Biggest AI News]
ServiceNow Partners
McDermottâs appearance at GPES coincided with the Xanadu release of the Now Platform, adding more AI capabilities to ServiceNowâs wares.
ServiceNow has about 2,200 channel partners worldwide, according to CRNâs 2024 Channel Chiefs. About 100 ServiceNow partners were scheduled to attend the GPES, according to the IT management and automation tools vendor.
Jason Wojahn, CEO of Broomfield, Colo.-based ServiceNow partner Thirderaâpart of Cognizant, No. 8 on CRNâs 2024 Solution Provider 500âtold CRN in an interview that he likes to see ServiceNow increasing the pace of AI releases.
âI’ve been in this ecosystem now 16 years,â Wojahn said. âIt used to be four releases a year back in the early days. ⌠But now the paradigm is different. And there is this notion ofâthese incremental releases need to come in line. You need to have a very agile solution in an effort to keep up with the pace and the rate of your most innovative customers. Those early adopters are the ones that are going to need the fuel. And two releases a year is not sufficient for that. So I love what they’re doing from an AI perspective.â
Along with praising the work of ServiceNow partners and touting his companyâs investment in AI and AI agentsâcalling AI âthe elixirâ for new growth for customersâMcDermott pledged to provide partners with more education and training and have a closer relationship when bringing new products to market.
âWe need your imagination,â he said to partners in the room. âWe need your skills. We need your talents. And we need your dreams. And we need to build plans with you.â
Hereâs more of what McDermott had to say.
ServiceNowâs Xanadu Release
Today was yet another milestone step towards being the defining enterprise software company of the 21st century. It’s so cool.
It was 5 million hours of engineering power, 350 distinctly different generative AI applications across several industries. ⌠What you as partners really need to consider with ServiceNow being the defining enterprise software company of the 21st century is what it can do for your business. And the AI revolution is totally real.
And the truth is, and you probably hear a lot of this when you’re out on your meetings, a lot of the customers out there are pretty confused because everyone goes in with their AI wrap.
And there’s more pretenders than real quality platforms out there with real innovation that can help these customers take the cost out, improve the productivity and reinvent the business model so they can do magical things to grow again.
I mean, the world needs to grow again. And if you think about an $11 trillion economic impact to the global economy, businesses will spend half a trillion (dollars) in the next three years to get ($)11 trillion. So I still think that’s a pretty, pretty good deal.
Partner Focus
We’re hungry. And we’re really humble. And we’re extremely loyal to our friends. And the people that are in this room are the tops of the top. And I really want you to do great with ServiceNow to make your business so exciting and so powerful and so successful so you create enormous job satisfaction for the workers that you have now. You can hire new ones. You can expand the boundaries of your coverage models. And you can grow with us.
And I just want to conclude that answer by saying the baseline to everything in ServiceNow is innovation. And Xanadu was yet another example of that.
And I think the business models of some of the market participants that have been out there for a half a century are so exhausted that your pipelines and your top lines are not going to grow with them like they once did.
And I think if you can immerse yourself in this platform and really get after it with us, I think you’re just going to have an unbelievable future ⌠(weâre) going to double the size of the company in the next couple of years after we just doubled the size of the company in the previous couple of years. So let’s go. Let’s put a flag in the ground.
Talking To Customers
The No. 1 thing I try to do is put everything in terminology that resonates with the customer. And I swear my team works me so hard. That’s why I love them so much. But every day, every day, I’m talking to a lot of different CEOs.
And it’s not like I will talk to just anybody. I’ll talk to everybody. But that’s how it works in the enterprise. If you can control the corner office, you can control the strategy. And then everything takes the right shape. But here’s what I’m talking to them about.
For more than a half a century in the enterprise, it has become a very confusing place. You had the era of, you know, Microsoft and the desktop. You had the era of the ERP (enterprise resource planning) companies and theâheavy, very expensive, hard to implement and good for businessâsystems. All good.
And then as you got into the year 2000 and mobile business and cloud, you got into a lot of point solutions. And there was a point solution for every problem. And now there (are) thousands of dim lights in these enterprises.
And the decision makers that I talk to, they don’t just want to make the employee happier. They also want to make the employee much more productive. So they want to get much more output for the same number of people.
And they are definitely willing to also reinvest some of that back into the technology if you can show them howânot only did you save them money, improve productivity, but you helped them grow again. And I think that the elixir for âgrow againâ is AI.
AI Agents
Today, we talked a lot about the AI agents. This is an interesting concept. We have a major, major release today. AI agents are a big part of the talk track.
And these AI agents are going to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. And you don’t even have to give a 401(K). No vacations. Just work. Grind them.
And so they’re going to pop up all over the place doing use cases and tasks. And every industry will have different ones. But, for example, if you’re a telecommunications company, you care a lot about your network uptime. And why do you need a human being to predictively maintain a network?
And why would you need a human being if you can clearly see that the modem is down? Isn’t it kind of dull if the agent can’t just order the modem, have it shipped and have a new one installed?
And isn’t it kind of dull that if you have a direct-to-consumer dream, and you’re in another country and you want to access America, and you know you can ship the product, but then you could actually charge double the priceâdouble the price on the service agreementâif you can arbitrage the labor using AI and predictively and proactively maintain and fix most of the problems before a human even needs to get involved.
But when they do, they’re highly optimized and the margin profile of your company completely changes. This is what I mean by putting AI to work for people and putting AI to work for better business outcomes.
CEOs, Boards All-In On AI
And if you can take the conversation to that level, these CEOs are all in. And their boards are leaning on them. All these boards are leaning on the CEO because they know they are going to look smart.
They get paid well. They get stock plans. They have got to come for a quarterly meeting. And they’re all asking the CEO the same thing. âWhat are you doing about AI?â And they all want to have something useful to say beside just case summarization and copilot.
They want to say, âCopilot, a Teams orientation, a full integration back into Now Assist. We have the desktop covered. We have our digital Teams meeting covered. And then we can take an automatic action without people even getting involved in the process. And that’s driving something.
So I think you have to break down these use cases, industrialize the story, talk about how it impacts different personas. And you all need to bet on the companies that you think are going to be the winners.
Old Tech âAngersâ Decision Makers
And I’m serious, the old stuff ain’t selling. In fact, it angers them (business decision makers).
Because all the stuff they hear is, âHey, man. My people are just unhappy with tech. They have got to go in and out of 17 different applications on average a day. The user experience is bad. I can’t get clarity across my company with a single-minded vision.â
And so this clean pane of glass that resides above the mess that integrates with it all and that is generating enormous energy around the AI revolution today brought RaptorDB to market. And RaptorDB is the world’s fastest, best analytics database in the world. It’s better. It’s cheaper. It’s faster. And it scales like no one else. And that’s innovation.
And I’m serious. The application of a great platform, continuous innovation and always new surprises to drive outcomes, I think, is the winning formula.
Scaling Through Partners
I don’t think anybody in this room would disagree that ServiceNow is really leaning in(to partnerships). And I remember coming here a little over five years ago, and I would walk into these conference rooms and meetings with different partners. Love them all, by the way. And they would come in and say ⌠âWe can build a $100 million business case. I’m sure of it.â
And I’m like, âMe too, dog. But you’re missing some zeros.â ⌠We have to think differently. You have to see things differently before you can do things differently.
And we as a company really evolved and pivoted fast from, âWe’ll take care of it all.â Because we have got to scale. And we have only 25,000 people. Some of your companies have closer to a million than 25,000. So we want you to do extremely well. Erica (Volini, ServiceNow senior vice president of global partnerships) is doing a fantastic job. Her team is amazing.
We just had an off site in Montana. ⌠Part of the meeting was about, what else can we give the partners? How can we make the partners happier? How can we give the partners an even better share of the enterprise?
And the reason I told you about RaptorDB as an example isâwhy not turn the partner channel loose on that one if you can give the customer something that’s better, cheaper and faster.
And then just think about a workflow data platform that can go into any data source, any system of record, any data lake or any hyperscaler as it relates to that workflow and how you’re automating the way work flows, you’re also wanting to get the data to complete the various transactions in the flow of work.
We are now going to go for a renaissance in workflow data and how on the ServiceNow platform, you can do things that no other company in the world can do. And I think that just puts our partners in a pole position to create another green shoot of growth. So I really want you to do great. I really want to give you more and more of the franchise.
I don’t want silly little stuff like comp and coverage and âhow do we knowâ and this and that to stand in the way. Just tell us what you need. Let’s get it cleared. Let’s put trust to work. It’s all good. And let’s go for growth.
International, Market Growth Through Partners
My biggest frustration is the marketâs waiting for us.
And even though we’re doing well, I know the markets are waiting for us, and I can’t get to all of it. I think of opportunities in India. I think of opportunities in Malaysia and Vietnam and Southeast Asia in general.
What can we do in Latin America? We’re really doing great in the United States and in EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa). But we could be doing a lot more.
If you look at our federal business and our state and local (business) in the U.S., it’s the envy of the world. Why don’t we do more of that in every other governmentâwhether it’s at a federal, state and local level? So I’m just constantly swirling on all that. And we can’t get there without you.
Net New ACV A Key Metric
My drug of choice is net new ACV (annual contract value). Absolutely addicted. I thought about going into kind of a program for this, but it’s too late for me now.
So we need your help. We need your help. We have to educate you and your teams on everything we’re doing. We should simulate a one-company model. And you should be really, really with us every step of the way when we bring in new product to market. We’re going to industry together. We’re going to personas together.
We’re interested in a new business model, perhaps even a joint venture. We need your imagination. We need your skills. We need your talents. And we need your dreams. And we need to build plans with you.
And what we’re interested in is driving NNACV. Because when we get a customer, they always stay with us. And we have the highest retention rate of any cloud company of all time.
So if we get a customer and you have the highest retention rate of all timeâmeaning your upsells and your cross-sells and your ongoing business are going to be stunningâbecause we’re an end-to-end platform. End-to-end AI platform for business transformation.
And most any other partner in software you can work withâthey’re all good, the big ones, they’re all good. But they have their silos. And I think the world is not as interested in silo buying as it used to be because the world works across silos in teams.
They used to call this business processes in the â90s. There was a guy named Michael Hammer (author and founder of consulting firm Hammer and Co.) that talked about business process reengineering back then. I think we’re into an AI business engineering economy.
How do we put AI to work on platforms that matter, that solve real business issues or capitalize on real business opportunities? And there are many.
So I would say, help us drive NNACV. Help us stay on a quarterly, predictable growth trajectory where we always deliver the goods. Because the more goods we deliver, the more we innovate, the more we reinvest and the more we grow. And that’s only going to be prosperity for everybody in this room. So we shouldn’t ever keep it a secret. NNACV is our lifeblood. And we want you to have just about everything else. And that’s a good deal because that’s perfect with your business model.
Altera CEO Sandra Rivera has denied reports that Intel is planning to sell its programmable chip business entirely. She said, ‘We are working on this plan, which is not the sale of Altera, but it is a plan to sell a stake in the business, which has always been our plan, which we have been talking about for the last year, and the plan is to do an IPO in 2026.’
Altera’s CEO said on Tuesday that Intel’s plans to sell a stake in its Altera programmable chip business and for an initial public offering of the unit by 2026 “have not changed.”
Sandra Rivera, head of Intel’s FPGA chip business, made the comments in an exclusive interview with CRN in response to a question about a Reuters report last week. [Related: Intel Plans 35 Percent Cut In Costs For Sales And Marketing Group]
Citing unnamed sources, Reuters reported Report Intel plans to talk about a possible sale of businesses that are not core to its strategy, including Altera, at its board of directors meeting in mid-September. The semiconductor giant is looking to make massive spending cuts in response to its deteriorating financial situation.
But Rivera denied that Intel plans to sell Altera outright, saying “there’s a lot of potential in it.” [âŚ] What is written is not true and is not from someone who really knows what is going on.â
“We are working on a plan, which is not to sell Altera, but it is to sell a stake in the business, which has always been our plan, which we have been talking about for the last one year, and have talked about bringing an IPO in 2026. That is the plan,” he said.
While Altera began operating independently from Intel earlier this year, the business is still “separating” itself from a lot of the general and administrative functions under its parent company, but according to Rivera (pictured), it is “actually ahead of schedule” in this regard, with a January 1, 2025 deadline to end such actions.
“We’re still on track to help Intel sell a stake in the business. And so we’re working with the bankers to prepare and do all the work needed to do that,” he said. “And the team is very focused on our long-term goal, our ultimate goal, which is to be number one in the industry. And the IPO is an important and fun exciting milestone in that journey.”
History of Altera under Intel
Acquired by Intel for $16.7 billion In 2015altera design FPGAAn abbreviation for field-programmable gate arrays, which contain semiconductor chips that can be reprogrammed for a variety of reasons, including advanced functionality, unlike standard CPUs and ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits).
After being integrated into Intel, the Altera name was dropped, and it became known as the Programmable Solutions Group.
Then, about a year ago, Intel announced the The Programmable Solutions Group is planned to be split into an independent, wholly owned company. The parent company appointed Rivera, a 23-year veteran of Intel who reports directly to Gelsinger and was then the general manager of the Data Center and AI Group, as the company’s CEO.
In an October 2023 announcement, Intel said it intended to conduct an IPO for the Programmable Solutions Group and explore opportunities to sell stakes in the business to private investors over the ânext two to three years,â with Intel planning to retain a majority stake in the stand-alone company.
As originally conceived, the separation of the FPGA business is meant to serve two purposes: provide Intel with additional liquidity to invest in CEO Pat Gelsinger’s costly comeback plan and expand the FPGA company’s business opportunities.
In February of this year, the FPGA company revealed that it Reviving the Altera brand and pursue an expanding market opportunity for FPGAs that exceeds $55 billion, including products designed for a broad range of applications in âcommunications, cloud, data center, embedded, industrial, automotive and [military-aerospace] market segments.”
Rivera vows single-minded focus on broad FPGA opportunity
In his interview with CRN, Rivera said that by becoming an independent company once again, Altera would focus “solely on the FPGA business, top to bottom, from cloud to edge”, and called it “the only large company left in the world” with that position.
According to Rivera, this is because FPGA rivals Xilinx acquired by AMD in 2022 while other competitors focus on the “lower-end or certain parts of the market.”
“We see this as a huge opportunity for us, but more so to serve customers who are eager for this type of company,” he said.
Rivera said Altera is also doubling down on the channel, with 80 percent of volume and more than 50 percent of demand generation coming through partners.
“I’m very excited about the investments we’re making, but they’re also investing in a portfolio that they can rely on, that is high margin for them, and there’s a very strong demand for these types of products,” he said.
AWS is investing $10.5 billion in the UK over the next five years to expand its data centres in the region, aiming to enable AI solutions for British businesses.
Amazon Web Services continues its vast expansion Cloud Infrastructure The company has unveiled a $10.5 billion investment in UK data centres, and announced big AI plans for the region.
The $105 billion Seattle-based cloud computing The giant company said on Wednesday that the new investment is important for Britain’s economic future. the ai era,
âWe are proud to announce our plans to invest ÂŁ8 billion ($10.5 billion) in the digital and IT sector. AI infrastructure “We will help meet the growing needs of our customers and partners over the next five years and support the transformation of the UK’s digital economy,” Tanuja Randari, AWS vice president and managing director for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), said in a statement. [Related: AWS CEO âBullishâ On Homemade Chip Future: âWe Can Optimize Like Crazyâ]
AWS invests billions of dollars each year to expand its data centers, enter new markets, or enhance capabilities in existing regions. AWS Data Center It has thousands of servers, storage, networking, data security, and power infrastructure that enables its cloud services and AI solutions.
âThe next few years could be the most crucial for the UKâs digital and economic future, as organisations of all sizes across the country rapidly adopt technologies such as cloud computing and AI to help accelerate innovation, increase productivity and compete on the global stage,â Randree said.
Parent company working at amazon Approximately 75,000 people in the UK, including data centre teams and AWS employees.
AWS estimates that its new investment will contribute around $18.3 billion to the UK’s total GDP between 2024 and 2028.
AWS investment ‘marks the start of economic revival’ in UK
AWS launched its first AWS region in the UK in late 2016.
Over the past several years, the company has continued to expand its UK region to include three availability zones, two wavelength zones, two edge locations, and a regional edge cache.
AWS has invested nearly $4 billion in the UK since 2020, bringing its total investment in the region over the past four years to more than $14.5 billion.
British Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves, the government’s chief financial minister, said in a statement that the $10.5 billion investment from AWS “represents the start of an economic revival and shows the UK remains a great place to do business.”
The company’s biggest customers in the UK include AstraZeneca, Cancer Research UK, Deliveroo, easyJet, Genomics England, Monzo, NatWest Group, UK Biobank and Zilch.
AWS Earnings Results
For the company’s most recent second-quarter 2024 fiscal earnings, AWS generated sales of $26.3 billion.
A 19 percent increase in sales year-over-year pushed AWS’s annual run rate to a record $105.2 billion. AWS’s operating income during the second quarter was $9.3 billion.
AWS is the world’s largest cloud company, with a 32 percent share of the cloud infrastructure services market, followed by Microsoft with 23 percent and Google Cloud with 12 percent.
In an Oracle CloudWorld keynote address, Oracle’s founder and CTO touted the company’s new alliance with Amazon Web Services as the start of an “open multi-cloud era.”
Oracle’s next-generation network security technology, which leverages AI and biometric authentication to thwart cyber threats, is now available in the Oracle Cloud, Oracle founder, chairman and CTO Larry Ellison told Oracle CloudWorld attendees in a keynote address Tuesday.
Ellison broke the news of the availability of Oracle Gen2 Cloud Network + zPR software during a wide-ranging section of his keynote in which he described how AI technology is being used to improve data, application, and network security and will transform todayâs password-centric user identity security practices.
Ellison spent part of his more than hour-long keynote address touting the planâs benefits. New partnership with Amazon Web ServicesUnveiled Monday, the framework through which Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Oracle Database and other technologies will be integrated with AWS systems — and even embedded in them. [Related: As Oracle Inks Partnerships With OpenAI, Google Cloud, CTO Ellison Says âWe Should Be Interconnected To Everybodyâ]
“If we’re going to do a really good job of protecting our networks, protecting our computer systems and preventing data theft, preventing identity theft, all of these things, we need to use the most advanced technologies to protect ourselves. And these advanced technologies are artificial intelligence,” Ellison said.
Oracle has been talking about its planned use of ZPR (Zero Trust Packet Routing), a new standard for network and data security, since Oracle CloudWorld in September 2023. On Tuesday, Ellison said Oracle Gen2 Cloud Network + ZPR software is now available as part of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).
ZPR technology was developed by Applied Inventions. Ellison explained that ZPR essentially separates network configuration from network security and uses autonomous robots to perform packet inspection and authorize data paths in the network, allowing only permitted users to access specific services.
The system also uses AI-powered code generation techniques in the software to enforce ZPR rules, while AI-based biometric user identification tools also play a role in it.
Ellison predicted that biometric databases would revolutionize identity security for everything from IT systems to credit cards and eventually replace passwords. “The idea that we use passwords is a ridiculous idea. It’s obsolete. It’s very dangerous,” he said.
Oracle’s founder said that about a year from now, biometrics will replace the use of passwords at Oracle. He said, “That option is going to disappear inside Oracle.”
Ellison said AI-based automated capabilities within Oracle Autonomous Database will “improve data security by getting rid of human errors that allow people to steal your data.” He said that in 2025 Oracle will require that all Oracle applications running on older versions of the company’s database be migrated to Oracle Autonomous Database.
And Ellison said the AI-powered code generators in Oracle APEX, the company’s low-code application development platform, improve application security by reducing the number of security vulnerabilities introduced into applications by human developers. “We don’t generate security vulnerabilities,” Ellison said of APEX. “You’re more productive and you’re more secure.”
“All of these AI technologies give us a chance to win the cyber war,” Ellison said. “If you’re worried about cybercriminals and you think they pose a threat, wait until you see the capabilities of nation states that can shut down utilities, entire utilities, at an inopportune moment. We need to make sure that our digital systems, our digital infrastructure, are far more secure than they are today. And we have the technology to do that.”
The development of cloud computing
Ellison spent the first half of his keynote talking about the new Oracle-AWS alliance and how it ushers in a new “open, multi-cloud era.”
The Oracle executive said the advent of cloud computing created islands of cloud platforms and cloud applications that don’t work well together. But Ellison said the industry is “entering a new phase” in cloud computing.
He said, “Now, as we have entered the cloud era, we are entering a new phase where services on different clouds work together. Clouds are becoming open. They are no longer walled gardens. Customers will have choices and will be able to use multiple clouds simultaneously.”
Under the partnership with AWS, Oracle technologies, including Oracle OCI, Oracle 23ai Database and Oracle Exadata systems, will run within AWS data centers, beginning later this year at an AWS facility in Virginia. This will allow customers’ applications to take advantage of services from multiple clouds.
AWS CEO Matt Garman joined Ellison on stage and talked about the benefits of this relationship. The CEO said many customers run workloads on the AWS platform because of its “security and scalability,” but they also want to use their Oracle databases and applications. He also saw the Oracle-AWS alliance as helping customers move toward cloud computing.
“Customers are very excited about being able to bring all of this together,” Garman said. “It also speeds up that migration. A lot of customers want to move to the cloud and the more we can make it easier for them to use the components and applications that they love, and that they use as part of their operating environment, and make it easier to migrate without changing them, the faster many of these customers can go on a modernization journey and get out of their own data centers.”
Katz highlights key customers
Earlier in the day, Oracle CEO Safra Catz in her keynote address highlighted some of the innovative ways a number of major customers are using Oracleâs software and services, including the companyâs AI services.
MGM Resorts International CEO Bill Hornbuckle took the stage with Katz to say his company is using AI to personalize and customize automated responses when people call for resort reservations. “We’re pushing AI more and more to take on that responsibility,” he said.
Cloudflare co-founder and COO Michelle Zatlin said her company is using the AI ââcapabilities within OCI to help customers efficiently connect across multi-cloud environments and make the best use of available services.