Salesforce vs. ServiceNow: Agentic AI Triggers New Competition

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, ServiceNow’s push into CRM meets
Salesforce’s expansion into ITSM (IT Service Management), powered
by agentic AI.


Highlights


00:14 — While I'm focusing here on Salesforce
and ServiceNow, and some changes each is making to get into
markets dominated by the other, the larger point here is about
how agentic AI is triggering new competition and new approaches.
Today, I'm going to share about five repercussions with you.


01:15 — On Salesforce's Q2 earnings call, Marc
Benioff said, “Hey, we're going to get into IT Service
Management.” Salesforce is changing from being an apps company to
a data company. It just so happens that ServiceNow and CEO
Bill McDermott have been making it very plain that they intend to
move aggressively into the CRM business, which has been
Salesforce’s prime area.


02:34 — So, I'm going to mention big
implications. One, these companies are looking for new hunting
grounds — new areas to help customers do more and to allow these
vendors to make more money. Agentic AI is also blasting out
boundaries, because agentic AI, I think, optimally works on an
end-to-end basis.


03:36 — Benioff, on the earnings call, said Data
Cloud and agentic AI — Agentforce — are "at the heart of our
company strategy", not their applications. Which leads into this:
I don't think, as Satya Nadella said, “apps are dying,” or “SaaS
is dying,” but I do think that agentic AI is going to change
profoundly what apps do, how they work, and how customers can
extract value from them.


04:44 — We are seeing agentic AI knock down a
lot of boundaries. You're going to have more wide-ranging tools
that let [customers] see all of their data, be able to develop
end-to-end processes that are more effective, more successful,
and give them better insights — and, mostly, better business
outcomes.


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