By Bryan Koenig ( October 25, 2024, 5:19 PM EDT) — United Kingdom antitrust authorities triggered a formal investigation Friday into Synopsys Inc.’s $35 billion acquisition of Ansys Inc., satisfied that the transaction has enough ties to the country to merit greater scrutiny…. Law360 is on it, so you are, too. A Law360 subscription puts you at the center of fast-moving legal issues, trends and developments so you can act with speed and confidence. Over 200 articles are published daily across more than 60 topics, industries, practice areas and jurisdictions. A Law360 subscription includes features such as Daily newsletters Expert analysis Mobile app Advanced search Judge information Real-time alerts 450K+ searchable archived articles And more! Experience Law360 today with a free 7-day trial. source

With 2025 budget cycles well underway, B2B sales and marketing leaders are braced for another rough go at it. Forrester’s Budget Planning Survey, 2024, found that only 35% of B2B marketing leaders and 33% of B2B sales leaders expect budgetary increases of 5% or higher. This means that, after factoring for inflation, the overwhelming majority of organizations will only be able to support new go-to-market investments by scaling back current areas of investment. For leaders of marketing and sales operations, doggedly tight budgets will require ruthless introspection as you identify areas for savings and pointedly work through how to best redeploy that investment. To make smart choices, we must acknowledge key business challenges likely to weigh on marketing and sales teams in 2025: Processes designed around company needs, not customer value, are taking a toll. Whether it’s systems of measurement that don’t account for customer value or processes that fail to help customers attain it, the ways that B2B organizations allocate their resources often have a negative impact on the customer. An AI explosion is stretching legacy technology and data to a breaking point. A large majority of B2B decision-makers are at minimum exploring the use of AI in go-to-market processes. But applying AI as an accelerator to customer needs that aren’t understood and turbocharging outreach to buyers on the basis of subpar data are recipes for buyer dissatisfaction — signs are that most organizations are not ready. A perpetual break/fix mode is inhibiting meaningful change. Go-to-market operations teams continue to devote more time to duct-taping fatally flawed approaches than designing better ways to work. As long as this goes on, organizational challenges revolving around the application of insights and optimization of revenue-related processes will never be addressed, while operational resources getting overwhelmed by the crisis of the day will continue to be the norm. Given these realities, here are just a few of the investment choices that we believe go-to-market operations teams should start with in 2025: Double down on customer data unification and hygiene. A deeper, more connected understanding of your buyers and customers is crucial. Organizations need to invest in solutions that unify data, support hygiene and enrichment, and perform ID resolution if they’re to gain a fuller view of the customer and optimize value-producing engagement. Squeeze out duplicative capabilities in best-of-breed solutions. B2B revenue tech stacks have grown unwieldy. Sprawling collections of point solutions are absorbing financial resources and adding complexity to customer-facing processes. It’s time for B2B organizations to pare some of those best-in-breed solutions holding great, but underutilized, promises — especially where broad platform providers that are already deployed are presenting “good enough” solutions. Expand deployment of conversation intelligence technologies. According to Forrester’s Buyers’ Journey Survey, 2023, nearly half the purchasing interactions that buyers value are personal, and personal interactions most frequently take the form of conversations between humans. These interactions are rich sources of insights into the needs of buyers and customers. With AI-driven advances promising to unlock meaning from these interactions, investments in conversational intelligence are poised to drive better outcomes for buyers and sellers alike. Quit trying to scale chaos. Go-to-market operations teams frequently fall into the trap of focusing on low-priority operational tasks, random tactical requests, and continuous firefighting. At the heart of this activity lies a series of outdated processes never designed around customer need. Revenue operations leaders must stop investing their time in attempting to mitigate chaos and prioritize one or two high-priority processes for mapping and improvement. Navigating tight budgets shouldn’t mean sacrificing go-to-market excellence. Operations teams can use a series of smart investments, well-placed experiments, and targeted cuts to power your organization’s growth and create lasting customer value. Forrester clients can read more of our recommendations in our Budget Planning Guide 2025: Revenue Operations. Forrester clients who’d like to hear more about these recommendations and what else sales, marketing, and revenue operations teams can do to ensure that their 2025 plans are successful, please join us on November 18 for a client webinar. source

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Non-English game developers may soon be looking toward AI as a means to shorten localization times. In an interview with 4Gamer (translated by Siliconera) at Tokyo Game Show, Nihon Falcom president Toshihiro Kondo posited the idea of using artificial intelligence to more quickly localize games developed in the Japanese language. Kondo took the stage after a demonstration of ELLA, software created for the purpose of localizing a game’s text in multiple languages, using it in a hypothetical instance for Nihon Falcom’s Legend of Heroes: Kai no Kiseki, another Falcom game known for immense scripts. Kondo stated that he believed this process of AI translation would speed up translating games into multiple languages, though he thought that a human still needed to make a final pass on the script before it gets applied to the games. He also acknowledged that there’s cultural pushback to using AI in game development and that it could cost jobs. He also added that even Falcom staff in non-localization divisions, such as designers and artists, push back against using AI. There is a fear from artists that their illustrations will be used for AI learning that they do not consent to. Kondo is hoping these objections can be solved in the future, as he believes that localization AI will be a benefit. Nihon Falcom, as Kondo notes, does indeed take a lot of time between Japanese-language releases and localizations. The upcoming Ys X: Nordics released in Japan over one year ago but will only release in America in late October. On the other hand, the release of Ys VIII in 2018 required localization company NISA to formally apologize and redo the entire game’s script due to a messy and fast translation, so acting in the name of expediency has proven negative for Falcom games in the past. Still, localization through AI has been feeling inevitable for the translation industry for some time, so perhaps Kondo is thinking ahead of the curve. source

Business and IT leaders agree that improving the “digital employee experience” (DEX) results in better productivity and workplace morale. But recent research by Ivanti reveals an important reason why many organizations fail to achieve those benefits: rank-and-file IT workers lack the funding and the operational know-how to get it done. They don’t prioritize DEX for others because the organization hasn’t prioritized improving DEX for the IT team. There are enormous benefits in improving digital employee experience, and DEX remains an area that executive leaders are optimistic about. But there is a disconnect when it comes to its practical application across IT teams. IT professionals remain extremely skeptical, in part because they are being left out of the benefits of DEX. This has led to problematic perceptions: almost two-thirds (60%) of IT professionals in the Ivanti survey believing “Digital employee experience is a buzzword with no practical application at my organization.” Clearly IT leaders need to do more for teams to realize the full benefits of DEX. DEX best practices, metrics, and tools are missing Nearly seven in ten (69%) leadership-level employees call DEX an essential or high priority in Ivanti’s 2024 Digital Experience Report: A CIO Call to Action, up from 61% a year ago. Yet the same report confirmed that DEX best practices are still not widely implemented in and by the IT team. Barely half of the Ivanti respondents say IT automates cybersecurity configurations, monitors application performance, or remotely checks for operating system updates. While less than half say they are monitoring device performance, or automating tasks. This indicates few IT teams are systematically investing in DEX tools and practices to monitor the spectrum of user interactions and respond automatically to emerging problems before they disrupt employee productivity and satisfaction. Without these practices and tools, IT workers themselves struggle to cope with their coworkers’ “tech friction.” IT workers are over-burdened with the volume of DEX issues and hamstrung by manual resolution processes. Most of all, IT workers are “flying blind” because they lack detailed data about the real DEX issues plaguing themselves and the organization at large. Lack of DEX data undermines improvement goals This lack of data creates a major blind spot, says Daren Goeson, SVP of Product Management at Ivanti. “Accurate DEX data illuminate what are the real technology challenges that the organization is facing,” he says. “And the data enable IT to get at the root cause of the DEX issues.” Most IT organizations lack metrics for DEX. These include digital experience scores (only 48% do this), device/user analytics (42%) and speed of ticket resolution (39%). Without metrics, IT workers can’t discover the scope, scale, and severity of DEX issues. They can’t prioritize DEX problems or measure progress toward DEX goals. Ivanti’s research shows the extent and costs of these chronic, endemic DEX problems and the toll they take: Office workers have to cope with an average of four technology-related issues every day, such as poor application or device performance, slow networks, and many more. 60% of office workers report frustration with their tech tools. 55% of them say negative experiences with workplace technology impact their mood and morale. A higher percentage of executive leaders than other information workers report experiencing sub-optimal DEX. To improve digital employee experience, start with IT employees “IT leaders can use the IT organization as a test bed to prove the effectiveness of proactively managing DEX,” says Goeson. Managed, measured DEX will ease IT’s workload and make staff more productive. How IT leaders can improve DEX for IT professionals: Ensure IT staff have the updated tools they need to work anywhere. Nearly one-quarter (23%) of IT workers say that their current toolset is not as effective in off-site work. Establish DEX metrics and equip IT with the DEX management processes and tools to monitor, collect, analyze, and present this data. Deploy automation processes and accurate knowledge bases to speed up help desk response and resolution. Leverage AI and machine learning capabilities – through endpoint management and service desk automation platforms – to detect data “signals” such as performance trends and thresholds before they become full-blown problems. And to automate routine tasks, such as installing a new patch or remediating slowed app performance. Prioritize automating help desk responses to trouble ticket requests by using self-service portals, AI/machine learning capabilities for routing and analyzing online and telephone ticket requests. The bottom line IT leaders can demonstrate the impact of managed, measured DEX for the enterprise. But that means starting by optimizing DEX for the IT organization. For more information, see Ivanti’s 2024 Digital Employee Experience Report: A CIO Call to Action. source

Asset-intensive industries like manufacturing and transportation quickly feel the pain when energy prices rise, raw materials are harder to access, or borrowing money for capital projects becomes more expensive. They were hit by all of those and more in 2024, forcing leaders to focus even more than usual on managing costs and improving efficiency. In the mobility sector, the seemingly inevitable transition from fossil fuels to electrification slowed in many countries, as a combination of declining subsidies, high up-front costs, patchy infrastructure, and looming tariffs made buyers pause. We don’t anticipate any dramatic improvement in the global macroeconomic situation in 2025, but we see plenty of opportunity for leaders across manufacturing and mobility to use technology to adapt to the tricky environment in which they and their customers find themselves. For 2025, we predict that: Over 25% of big last-mile service and delivery fleets in Europe will be electric. It’s hard to miss frequent headlines about a dramatic fall in sales of electric vehicles during 2024, especially in Germany and some other European countries. There’s a lot to unpack about the short- and longer-term trends at play, but this wobble in the car market masks a good news story in the electrification of larger fleets of small vans. One-third of DPD’s last-mile fleet in the UK is fully electric, rising to 90% in cities like London. UK energy company British Gas aims to electrify its entire van fleet in 2025. Amazon operates more than 1,000 electric vans in Germany (and over 15,000 in the US). Across the continent, parcel delivery firms, utility companies, and local governments operating large fleets of small vans over relatively short distances see electrification as an opportunity to manage costs while lowering carbon emissions. Less than 5% of the robots entering factories and warehouses will walk. Investors, analysts, journalists, bloggers, and random sci-fi fans just love geeking out about robots that walk, but the compelling use cases for their legs are less common — or obvious — than most of these individuals believe. ANYbotics and Boston Dynamics offer four-legged robotic dogs for inspection, safety, and mapping use cases; Agility Robotics’ bipedal robots can be seen in some Amazon warehouses; and Boston Dynamics, Figure, and Tesla have all tested their humanoid robots in automotive plants. These robots have a wow factor, but they may not have the best form factor for addressing industry’s dull, dirty, and dangerous tasks. We should all focus more on the task we’re trying to complete and less on how cool the robots look. A major carmaker will make significant cuts to its digital team. The automotive sector is struggling to cope with electrification, fast-moving new entrants to the market, and the rise of the “software-defined vehicle,” which more tightly integrates hardware and software within the car. Established carmakers invested billions of dollars in building digital practices that were meant to help transform 20th-century excellence in physical engineering into 21st-century excellence in digital engineering. On balance, it’s not going particularly well. General Motors announced plans to cut 1,000 employees from its software and services division this year, and its competitors are likely to follow suit. Cars are becoming more connected and more digital, and they’re able to add new features with over-the-air updates. Ecosystems underpin the future of mobility, and today’s carmakers must adapt to a future in which they might not create — or even control — the digital experiences within their cars. Read our full Predictions 2025: Smart Manufacturing And Mobility report to get more detail about each of these predictions, plus two more. Forrester clients can join a webinar on January 8 or set up a Forrester guidance session to discuss these predictions or plan out your 2025 smart manufacturing and mobility strategies. If you aren’t yet a client, you can download one of our complimentary Predictions guides, which cover our top predictions for 2025 across a variety of areas. Get additional complimentary resources, including webinars, on the Predictions 2025 hub. source

In 2020, Google identified that more than 70% of its Chrome browser’s severe security bugs were in fact caused by memory safety issues. “That is,” the Chrome team said, “mistakes with pointers in the C or C++ languages which cause memory to be misinterpreted.” In 2022, the NSA weighed in on memory safety with Neal Ziring, its cybersecurity technical director saying that “Memory management issues have been exploited for decades and are still entirely too common today. We have to consistently use memory safe languages and other protections when developing software to eliminate these weaknesses from malicious cyber actors.” That wasn’t the end of the matter, however. Memory safe programming languages have continued to be under an intense spotlight. In February of this year, the US White House Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD) issued a report advising that all programmers should move to memory-safe programming languages. The 💜 of EU tech The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol’ founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It’s free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now! 5 jobs to discover this week Cybersecurity Coordinator France M/F, MBDA France, Le Plessis-Robinson Data Scientist (F/H), Novencia, Lyon Software Architect, GDV Dienstleistungs-GmbH, Hamburg Software Developer, InTraffic, Utrecht Software Architect, Capgemini, Eindhoven The report pointed out that the burden of cybersecurity threat protection is currently placed on end users, and that, “efforts must be made to proactively eliminate entire categories of software vulnerabilities.” The report elaborated further, saying that, “Experts have identified a few programming languages that both lack traits associated with memory safety and also have high proliferation across critical systems, such as C and C++.” Memory safety matters now more than ever, because so much more of what we do happens online. The pandemic accelerated the rapid adoption of ecommerce, online payments, and digital advertising, according to the World Economic Forum. As a result there are a lot more potential vulnerabilities to exploit. Stack Overflow points out that some of the biggest vulnerability events of the past were memory-safety issues. These include 2014’s Heartbleed, which affected OpenSSL software allowing bad actors to steal X.509 certificates, usernames and passwords, instant messages, and emails. In 2017, the WannaCry ransomware attack garnered massive attention as it spread globally, infecting more than 230,000 computers. A new Consumer Security and Financial Crime Report from Revolut points to Meta platforms as the biggest source of all scams (62%) globally during the first half of 2024. Revolut identified that Facebook had fraud volumes (39%) which were more than double that of WhatsApp (18%). Making C++ safe Memory safe languages do exist and include Rust, Go, Java, Swift, and Python. C++ is under particular scrutiny because of the amount of critical code that has been written in it. Given the context, it isn’t so surprising that the C++ community has reacted, announcing the Safe C++ Extensions proposal in September of this year. ​​The work is being done via the C++ Alliance, and its president and executive director Vinnie Falco said that this was, “a revolutionary proposal that adds memory safety features to the C++ programming language.” Falco added that: “the need for safe code has never been more pressing. With the increasing importance of software security and reliability, developers are facing mounting pressure to adopt safer coding practices. The Safe C++ Extensions aim to address this critical need by introducing novel features that prevent common memory-related errors.” So will this fix the issue? Some critics are skeptical, and the developer from the C++ Alliance, Sean Baxter points out that: “There’s only one popular systems level/non-garbage collected language that provides rigorous memory safety. That’s the Rust language. Although they play in the same space, C++ and Rust have different designs with limited interop capability, making incremental migration from C++ to Rust a painstaking process.” A number of actions are suggested to ensure performant C++ code, including prohibiting developers from writing operations that might result in lifetime safety, type safety, or thread safety undefined behaviors. Additionally, there are other challenges, with Baxter pointing out that, “Although they play in the same space, C++ and Rust have different designs with limited interop capability, making incremental migration from C++ to Rust a painstaking process.” Moving code to memory safe status will be painstaking and time-consuming, but the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is seeking to bridge this gap using AI. It is developing a programmatic code conversion vehicle called TRACTOR (Translating All C TO Rust). It says that, “the goal is to achieve the same quality and style that a skilled Rust developer would produce, thereby eliminating the entire class of memory safety security vulnerabilities present in C programs.” Ready to find your next software role? Check out The Next Web Job Board source

A majority of registered voters (62%) say they will or already have cast their ballot in person in the 2024 general election, with 38% planning to vote on Election Day and 24% planning to vote at an early voting location (or already having done so). Meanwhile, 28% of voters say that they expect to cast their vote by absentee or mail-in ballot (or already have). Trump supporters are more likely than Harris supporters to plan to vote in person, while Harris supporters are more than twice as likely as Trump supporters to plan to vote by mail. 74% of Trump supporters say they’ll vote in person, including 48% who say they will do so on Election Day (26% say they will vote early in person). By contrast, 52% of Harris supporters say they plan to vote in person (29% on Election Day, 23% early). 39% of Harris supporters expect to vote absentee or by mail, while just 17% of Trump supporters expect to use this method. These differences in vote method largely echo patterns seen in both the 2020 presidential election and the 2022 midterm election. Overall, the share of voters who intend to use each method of voting is only modestly different from the 2022 midterm election. But voters are substantially less likely to say they are planning to vote by mail than they were at this time in the 2020 campaign (when 39% of voters expected to vote that way) amid concerns about the coronavirus pandemic. How easy will it be to vote this year? About eight-in-ten voters (81%) expect it to be easy for them to vote in this year’s election, including 43% who say it will be very easy and 38% who say it will be somewhat easy. About two-in-ten (19%) say they expect it to be difficult to vote this year. These perceptions are roughly on par with the 2022 and 2018 elections. In 2020, about a third of voters (35%) expected that voting would be difficult that year. Today, large majorities of both Republican (83%) and Democratic (80%) candidate supporters say voting will be easy for them in November. How demographic groups view voting Across demographic groups, registered voters generally expect voting to be easy this year, with relatively modest differences in these views. Race and ethnicity Seven-in-ten Black voters say voting will be at least somewhat easy this year, compared with 75% of Hispanic voters, 82% of Asian voters and 84% of White voters. White voters are particularly likely to say it will be very easy to vote (47%). By comparison, 35% of Hispanic voters, 31% of Black voters and 29% of Asian voters say voting will be very easy. Age Voters under 30 are less likely than those in other age groups to say voting this year will be very easy: 31% say this, compared with 47% of voters 50 and older and 41% of those 30 to 49. Education Across education levels, large majorities of voters expect voting in November to be easy. Voters with a college degree, however, are more likely than those without one to expect voting to be very easy. About half of voters with at least a four-year college degree (48%) say voting will be very easy, compared with 39% of those with some college or less education. source

AI’s promise of transforming underwriting, claims, and CX remains untapped, a fraction of insurers will harness its full potential by 2025. source

Best for merchandise planning: Creatio Best for customer segmentation: Pipedrive Best for omnichannel communication: Bitrix24 Best for task management: HubSpot Best for inventory management: Zoho CRM Best for managing customer support: Zendesk Retail CRM solutions can be generalized or industry-specific CRM software that help businesses manage retail sales operations, both online and in person. These tools are meant to streamline the buyer’s experience by simplifying the ordering process, storing customer information, automating tasks, and tracking individual and team performance. A retail CRM is different from a POS system. A POS is the hardware and software that completes transactions and stores inventory information. A CRM for retail can deploy marketing and lead generation campaigns, track purchase history, and all internal and external communication. A POS tool may come with some CRM features, but most retail businesses have both a CRM and POS that can integrate together. 1 monday CRM Employees per Company Size Micro (0-49), Small (50-249), Medium (250-999), Large (1,000-4,999), Enterprise (5,000+) Any Company Size Any Company Size Features Calendar, Collaboration Tools, Contact Management, and more 2 HubSpot CRM Employees per Company Size Micro (0-49), Small (50-249), Medium (250-999), Large (1,000-4,999), Enterprise (5,000+) Micro (0-49 Employees), Medium (250-999 Employees), Large (1,000-4,999 Employees), Small (50-249 Employees) Micro, Medium, Large, Small 3 Zoho CRM Employees per Company Size Micro (0-49), Small (50-249), Medium (250-999), Large (1,000-4,999), Enterprise (5,000+) Any Company Size Any Company Size Features Calendar, Collaboration Tools, Contact Management, and more Top retail CRM software comparison The main features and functionalities to look for in a retail CRM should focus on store operations and customer service. Retail CRM software should offer robust integrations, individual, team, or location performance tracking, and a series of automations for inventory alerts and marketing. And since retail generally has a high customer retention rate, these providers would also ideally offer targeted marketing. Star rating Free plan Starting paid price Automations Integrations Performance tracking Creatio N/A No $15 per user per month* Yes 400+ Yes Pipedrive 4.4 No $14 per user per month* Yes 350+ Limited Bitrix24 4.1 Yes Free starting price Yes 500+ Limited HubSpot 4 Yes Free starting price Yes 1,500+ Yes Zoho CRM 4.3 Yes Free starting price Yes 900+ Yes Zendesk N/A No $19 per agent per month* Yes 2,000+ Limited *Price when billed annually, not including tax. Creatio: Best for merchandise planning Image: Creatio Creatio offers a variety of merchandise management features for retail businesses to track suppliers, planning, price optimization, product launch campaigns, and merchandise performance monitoring. With the merchandise planning tools, businesses can use data to formulate plans across all channels, regions, and stores. It also generates predictions about future market positions by using historical data and AI tools. Why I chose Creatio Creatio is a generalized CRM but can be adapted into a number of different industries like retail, banking, media and advertising, credit unions, and more. Creatio helps businesses create processes that manage end-to-end sales operations. Creatio users can customize automations and workflows without any coding knowledge or technical expertise. While Creatio is a powerful CRM thanks to its automations and process-building capabilities, if you want a similar tool with more advanced AI-powered features, I recommend HubSpot or Zoho CRM. If you’re interested in more, read the full Creatio review. Pricing Sales Product: $15 per user per month. It offers a sales management platform. Marketing Product: $15 per user per month. It offers a multichannel marketing platform. Service Product: $15 per user per month. It includes an intelligent and full cycle service management platform. Growth Platform: $25 per user per month. It includes basic automations for small to midsize businesses. Enterprise Platform: $55 per user per month. It offers a full sales automation platform for corporate or enterprise needs. Unlimited Platform: $85 per user per month. It allows users to deliver unlimited automations for advanced enterprise organizations. Features Procurement tracking: Build custom procurement processes that automate requisitions, supplier onboarding, and invoice processing. Sales forecasting: View reporting dashboards that show projected wins and performance to help with strategizing, predictions, or inspections. Sales monitoring: Monitor orders and customer metrics to identify best-selling products or categories plus the store’s financial KPIs. Sample Creatio product and sales report. Image: Creatio Pros and cons Pros Cons 14-day free trial. Offers integrations through API connections. Allows for advanced customizations. Users report a platform learning curve. Atypical CRM pricing structure. Users report a limited functioning mobile app. Pipedrive: Best for customer segmentation Image: Pipedrive Identifying a target audience is essential for the success of a retail business, which is why Pipedrive enables users to segment customers using custom variables. After a lead is identified either online or in person, Pipedrive’s workflow and marketing automation feature simplifies repetitive tasks like prospecting and lead qualification. Pipedrive can remind users to schedule personalized messages and follow up with buyers who have triggered automations. Why I chose Pipedrive Pipedrive is an operational CRM that prioritizes helping businesses create workflows catered to their unique operations. Users can easily automate routine work, collect and relay important data to the CRM, and keep customers engaged with automatic follow-ups. Additionally, Pipedrive can be integrated with tools like Slack, Google Drive, and Mailchimp. Sales information can be synced from the CRM to a POS and then to accounting software to launch email marketing campaigns. Pipedrive’s paid plans are competitively priced, but if you’re more interested in a free plan first, I recommend HubSpot or Zoho CRM for their forever free tier plus additional AI functionality. Check out our full Pipedrive review for more details. Pricing Essential: $14 per user per month, billed annually, or $24 per user when billed monthly. Advanced: $34 per user per month, billed annually, or $44 per user when billed monthly. Professional: $49 per user per month, billed annually, or $64 per user when billed monthly. Power: $64 per user per month, billed annually, or $79 per user when billed monthly. Enterprise: $99 per user per month, billed annually, or $129 per user when billed monthly. Features Goal tracking:

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Enterprises are beginning to deploy AI agents. However, if organizations plan to deploy agentic ecosystems at scale and improve employee acceptance, they might consider treating AI agents as tools working in the background to avoid intimidating employees who think they have to know how to use these tools.  Dorit Zilbershot, vice president of AI and Innovation at ServiceNow, told VentureBeat that employees don’t have to know if teams of AI agents are working in the background.   “There’s so much AI around us that we’re not even aware, and that’s how we are thinking about AI agents in ServiceNow,” Zilbershot said. “It should just work. As an employee, I shouldn’t care if AI agents are in the background.” Zilbershot said employees become “managers” of AI agents in that they just need to do their regular work. The agents are automatically triggered to finish tasks.  Enterprises have begun embracing AI agents and exploring how to deploy them at scale, even as generative AI deployment in enterprises has fallen slightly. Zilbershot said ServiceNow’s generative AI platform, Now Assist, is the company’s “fastest-growing product to date.” Now Assist launched a library of AI agents for customers in September.  AI agents could ideally automate many workflows. This could include sales or product roadmaps, where one agent can encode customer information, another categorizes it and yet another informs an employee of a change in status. Zilbershot said agents don’t replace human employees, they take some busy work away, so the only time humans have to pay attention to an agent is if there’s an agent who’s supposed to interact with them. ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott told VentureBeat in a separate interview that generative AI, particularly applications around agents, “has grown beyond our expectations.” “We’ve mastered the flow of work and governance, and we’re building agents solving unique problems,” McDermott said. “AI will be in every product we have.” As AI agents grow in popularity, Zilbershot said enterprises need to understand what makes agents work for their organization and employees.  Agents and not assistants Beyond AI agents quietly working in the background, Zilbershot said it’s essential for organizations to understand that agents are not assistants. If not, they risk setting an expectation to users that they will need to learn how to prompt agents instead of letting them work for them autonomously.  “I think we’re doing a little bit of a disservice to our customers when agents function more as assistants, but we don’t change the name,” Zilbershot said. “It just creates a wrong perception in the market and how people approach working with agents.”  Zilbershot added AI agents work best when there are other agents they can interact with, so to handle the expected sprawl of agents, orchestrator agents must be deployed to manage all the agents. ServiceNow ships an orchestrator agent with its Now Assist platform.  Other companies have begun offering enterprises access to use orchestrator agents and build custom AI agents. Crew AI launched an agentic platform this month, while Asana released an agent creator specifically for workflows.  Partnership with Nvidia To expand on its agentic ecosystem, ServiceNow announced it will begin building off-the-shelf AI agents using Nvidia’s NIM Agent Blueprint.  Zilbershot said using the NIM Agent Blueprint helps ServiceNow build more agents at the volume they feel is needed to make agents more efficient. “We’re expanding our ecosystem since there can be a limit to how much we can build on our own; we want to have a strong partnership with companies like NVIDIA to build native AI agents within the ServiceNow platform,” she said.  The first agent ServiceNow will build with Nvidia is a Vulnerability Analysis for Container Security AI Agent. The agent will automate vulnerability analysis and will be available on ServiceNow’s agent platform in 2025.  Zilbershot said the work with Nvidia will be just the first of many possible partnerships ServiceNow will enter into to expand AI agents.  source