With 25+ years' experience evaluating, comparing, and recommending software, our expert analysis and verified user data combine for a uniquely trustworthy perspective on enterprise software.
NiCE’s 2026 Analyst Summit demonstrated three things: Cognigy is now central to NiCE CXone’s agentic operating model; CX orchestration is leaving the traditional CCaaS category behind; and agentic AI is causing buyer personas to shift from CX leaders to the broader executive team – especially to IT.
Qualtrics is betting that experience data can flag at-risk customers early enough to change the outcome. The full platform arrives in 2027, so the evidence today is a staged demo and one customer story.
As companies deploy more AI agents, they need to know which agents are operating, who is responsible for them, what they can access, and how risky actions are prevented. ManageEngine SecureAI extends the company’s identity governance practices to agents for its existing customers, but its value depends on two controls buyers should test: enforcement outside the gateway and activity records after access is approved.
It has become almost a full-time job to stay current with the glut of news in the AI space. This weekly roundup will get you up to speed on the news and happenings with the big 5 AI vendors in the last week.
Agiloft has launched Astra, a contract AI product for review and redlining in Microsoft Word and analysis across existing agreements. Its free plan supports unlimited users, and Agiloft commits not to use customer contracts to train AI models. Alongside general availability, Agiloft added agents to Ask AI in its CLM to create and update contract records. The launch makes contract AI easy to try; the harder test is whether teams can trust its findings and control the actions that follow.
Infor’s Velocity conference splashed the new motto “Industry Forward” and shifted Infor’s pitch from “buy our AI capabilities” toward “subscribe to continuing operational improvement.”
Infor’s Industry AI strategy combines industry process knowledge, process mining, AI agents, implementation support, and governance to help CloudSuite customers identify and scale high-value use cases. Its differentiation lies in the operational context embedded across industry workflows, data models, and security controls. Buyers should assess whether this depth improves accuracy, reduces implementation effort, and supports repeatable business value.
We keep hearing that enterprise AI spending is up in many organizations, and the results are not remarkable. On April 9, 2026, ServiceNow announced it will no longer sell AI as an add-on, instead restructuring its commercial model to focus on AI and launching new features that let AI agents make organizational decisions without frequent human oversight.
At ZohoDay26, Info-Tech’s John Annand sat down with Ramprakash “Ram” Ramamoorthy (Director of AI Research at Zoho). Over a wide-ranging conversation, John and Ram discussed Zoho’s go-to-market strategy for AI capabilities. This note provides a structured summary of that interview.
It has become almost a full-time job to stay current with the glut of news in the AI space. This weekly roundup will get you up to speed on the news and happenings with the big 5 AI vendors in the last week.
Infor’s Velocity conference splashed the new motto “Industry Forward” and shifted Infor’s pitch from “buy our AI capabilities” toward “subscribe to continuing operational improvement.”
Zoho is repositioning Zoho Analytics from a business intelligence and reporting tool into a “context layer” for agentic AI, which includes native semantic and ontology layers, a multi-agent version of Ask Zia, and built-in governance.
NiCE’s 2026 Analyst Summit demonstrated three things: Cognigy is now central to NiCE CXone’s agentic operating model; CX orchestration is leaving the traditional CCaaS category behind; and agentic AI is causing buyer personas to shift from CX leaders to the broader executive team – especially to IT.
SAP’s announcements at SAP Connect 2026 made the company’s Autonomous CX vision more tangible through expanded Joule assistants, ERP-connected commerce, and order management. While SAP remains behind in the CX market, its opportunity lies in connecting customer engagement with backend operational systems governing pricing, inventory, fulfilment, service, and payments.
At Xperience 2026, Genesys outlined a market-leading roadmap toward shifting its contact center user base to an agentic operating model for customer experience.
Acquia Source brings CMS, DAM, web governance, Drupal hosting, and a new in-platform agentic AI layer into a single command center spanning SaaS and PaaS delivery, with the strategic bet that enterprises moving content operations into the AI era will value governed coordination and marketer-friendly Drupal alongside agentic speed. The architecture is well aligned for organizations already invested in Drupal, with broad MCP availability and bring-your-own-model support sitting on the near-term roadmap.
LighthouseIQ, launched on January 21, 2026, by Lighthouse Global is an AI intelligence platform purpose-built for eDiscovery. Outputs have been accepted by the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission on second-request matters. That is a production threshold most AI vendors in this space have not yet been required to clear.
Big change is at hand for CPQ vendors Conga and PROS, as the former acquired the latter in early 2026. Catering to different markets, the two products will remain distinct within the Conga Advantage platform. Conga intends to provide robust functionality across the commerce chain by rounding out existing CLM, CPQ, and document generation capabilities with strong pricing technology and new AI capabilities.
Zoho is repositioning Zoho Analytics from a business intelligence and reporting tool into a “context layer” for agentic AI, which includes native semantic and ontology layers, a multi-agent version of Ask Zia, and built-in governance.
Teradata’s September announcements reveal a strategy for remaining relevant as enterprise data spreads across cloud platforms: Bring business understanding and analytical capabilities to wherever customers keep their data.
Dreamforce 2026 exploded with a number of significant announcements. Let’s have a look at the three products related to data and BI: Data 360, Tableau, and Informatica.
Infor’s Velocity conference splashed the new motto “Industry Forward” and shifted Infor’s pitch from “buy our AI capabilities” toward “subscribe to continuing operational improvement.”
Infor’s Industry AI strategy combines industry process knowledge, process mining, AI agents, implementation support, and governance to help CloudSuite customers identify and scale high-value use cases. Its differentiation lies in the operational context embedded across industry workflows, data models, and security controls. Buyers should assess whether this depth improves accuracy, reduces implementation effort, and supports repeatable business value.
SAP’s recent acquisition activity should be viewed as building a three-part stack: Dremio for open lakehouse and business context, Reltio for trusted master data, and Prior Labs for AI models purpose-built for structured business data.
Agiloft has launched Astra, a contract AI product for review and redlining in Microsoft Word and analysis across existing agreements. Its free plan supports unlimited users, and Agiloft commits not to use customer contracts to train AI models. Alongside general availability, Agiloft added agents to Ask AI in its CLM to create and update contract records. The launch makes contract AI easy to try; the harder test is whether teams can trust its findings and control the actions that follow.
Contract Logix, now part of LegalSifter, is a mid-market CLM platform that focuses on rapid deployment and operational simplicity, prioritizing usability and cost control over deep customization and advanced AI-driven contract intelligence.
Big change is at hand for CPQ vendors Conga and PROS, as the former acquired the latter in early 2026. Catering to different markets, the two products will remain distinct within the Conga Advantage platform. Conga intends to provide robust functionality across the commerce chain by rounding out existing CLM, CPQ, and document generation capabilities with strong pricing technology and new AI capabilities.
Workday has spent eighteen months acquiring the pieces – Sana Labs, Pipedream, Flowise – and the March 2026 global launch is where they converge. The result is an AI layer embedded directly in the system of record, capable of executing tasks, not just suggesting them. For HR and finance leaders in Workday shops, the embedded execution layer raises the bar for any team still considering a custom build.
In an analyst briefing, Zoho provided updates to Zia's capabilities for finance use cases. Specifically, Zoho emphasized reconciliation, reporting, and proactive insights, with a showcase of its new enterprise billing and spend management products.
UKG, a leader in HR management systems, has introduced their Workforce Operating Platform. This platform unifies human capital management, workforce management, and payroll, coupled with its Bryte AI technology. The Workforce Operating Platform aims to help retail, manufacturing, and healthcare institutions manage complexity while simplifying and streamlining processes for frontline workers.
It has become almost a full-time job to stay current with the glut of news in the AI space. This weekly roundup will get you up to speed on the news and happenings with the big 5 AI vendors in the last week.
It has become almost a full-time job to stay current with the glut of news in the AI space. This weekly roundup will get you up to speed on the news and happenings with the big 5 AI vendors in the last week.
It has become almost a full-time job to stay current with the glut of news in the AI space. This weekly roundup will get you up to speed on the news and happenings with the big 5 AI vendors in the last week.
Legacy modernization keeps landing back on the CIO’s desk. Older platforms cost more to maintain, block access to modern development practices, and depend on specialists who are getting harder to find. AWS Transform is AWS’ answer: a set of AI-assisted tools for assessing, migrating, and modernizing those systems.
At AWS Summit DC 2026, Amazon Web Services unveiled new AI modernization and security automation tools built for federal agencies with classified cloud infrastructure and billions of dollars in credits, with thousands of engineers embedded on top. The pitch is speed.
Agentic AI breaks three assumptions enterprise infrastructure was built on: traffic direction, monitoring visibility, and identity scope. Cisco Live 2026 made the case that the right place to address all three is the network layer, not a security product bolted on top.
As companies deploy more AI agents, they need to know which agents are operating, who is responsible for them, what they can access, and how risky actions are prevented. ManageEngine SecureAI extends the company’s identity governance practices to agents for its existing customers, but its value depends on two controls buyers should test: enforcement outside the gateway and activity records after access is approved.
The following trends reflect themes that emerged from conversations, vendor briefings, and conference sessions at Black Hat 2026, with an emphasis on what they mean for CIOs and security leaders.
A single-agent endpoint platform combining application allowlisting, ringfencing, ZTNA, patch management, and EDR around a default-deny philosophy. Designed for MSPs and enterprises consolidating endpoint controls in preparation for a Mythos-driven threat environment.
Qualtrics is betting that experience data can flag at-risk customers early enough to change the outcome. The full platform arrives in 2027, so the evidence today is a staged demo and one customer story.
Dreamforce 2026 exploded with a number of significant announcements. Let’s have a look at the three products related to data and BI: Data 360, Tableau, and Informatica.
At No-Code Days 2026 in Orlando, Creatio outlined a five-pillar agentic enterprise strategy combining AI-powered agents, unified CRM, industry-specific workflows, scalable architecture, and ecosystem enablement to advance the next phase of enterprise automation.
We keep hearing that enterprise AI spending is up in many organizations, and the results are not remarkable. On April 9, 2026, ServiceNow announced it will no longer sell AI as an add-on, instead restructuring its commercial model to focus on AI and launching new features that let AI agents make organizational decisions without frequent human oversight.
In a world where understanding of the power of AI is still confusing, ServiceNow has excellent messaging on what AI can actually achieve in an enterprise. Through TV ads and ads in the Wall Street Journal, the messaging has been clear: AI can assist and improve efficiency. With their recent announcement (February 2026) of two major launches – Autonomous Workforce and Employee Works – ServiceNow underscores the shift of AI from “answer engines” to “actually finishing the job.” With this announcement their message is clear: the era of AI experiments is over; AI operations at scale have begun. And ServiceNow wants to be the control tower that runs all of it.
ServiceNow exceeds guidance as enterprise AI adoption accelerates growth, margin, and cash flow. Now Assist ACV tops $600M and heads toward a $1B run rate while customers commit at scale.
The following trends reflect themes that emerged from conversations, vendor briefings, and conference sessions at Black Hat 2026, with an emphasis on what they mean for CIOs and security leaders.
We keep hearing that enterprise AI spending is up in many organizations, and the results are not remarkable. On April 9, 2026, ServiceNow announced it will no longer sell AI as an add-on, instead restructuring its commercial model to focus on AI and launching new features that let AI agents make organizational decisions without frequent human oversight.
In a world where understanding of the power of AI is still confusing, ServiceNow has excellent messaging on what AI can actually achieve in an enterprise. Through TV ads and ads in the Wall Street Journal, the messaging has been clear: AI can assist and improve efficiency. With their recent announcement (February 2026) of two major launches – Autonomous Workforce and Employee Works – ServiceNow underscores the shift of AI from “answer engines” to “actually finishing the job.” With this announcement their message is clear: the era of AI experiments is over; AI operations at scale have begun. And ServiceNow wants to be the control tower that runs all of it.
As companies build more AI agents, the challenge is governing them and giving them enough work context to be useful. Asana is betting that its Work Graph can provide that context by connecting agents to goals, ownership, history, approvals, and dependencies. Its StackAI acquisition extends the strategy beyond Asana into other enterprise systems. CIOs should test adoption depth, governance controls, integration maturity, competitive overlap, and measurable value before buying into Asana’s vision.
We keep hearing that enterprise AI spending is up in many organizations, and the results are not remarkable. On April 9, 2026, ServiceNow announced it will no longer sell AI as an add-on, instead restructuring its commercial model to focus on AI and launching new features that let AI agents make organizational decisions without frequent human oversight.
Salesforce is working toward a future where humans, systems, and agents are positioned together to get work done. Within this framework, Salesforce is adding flow-native Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) to their MuleSoft offering. This builds on optical character recognition (OCR) by using AI to classify documents, extract key fields, and route structured data into workflows.
NiCE’s 2026 Analyst Summit demonstrated three things: Cognigy is now central to NiCE CXone’s agentic operating model; CX orchestration is leaving the traditional CCaaS category behind; and agentic AI is causing buyer personas to shift from CX leaders to the broader executive team – especially to IT.
At UNBOUND 2026 (formerly INBOUND), HubSpot presented what it described as its most foundational product release in years. The announcements intend to reposition HubSpot from a collection of marketing, sales, service, data, and commerce applications toward a unified “agentic customer platform” built around three elements:
Dreamforce 2026 shows Salesforce adapting to a post-CRM-interface era in which customer work increasingly begins in conversational environments such as Copilot, Claude, Slack, and Gemini. Salesforce’s response is to separate platform value from interface ownership by making its data, semantics, permissions, actions, and workflows available through AIforce and governed by its emerging Enterprise AI Harness. Buyers should treat much of Salesforce’s announcements as directionally important but still roadmap dependent.
The Infor Analyst Innovation Summit offered a clear view of what operational readiness looks like as agentic AI moves from experimentation into production. The key takeaway was that success depends less on model sophistication than on foundational discipline: shared semantics, documented processes, clean data, and clear delegation and control.
The Cisco AI Summit (Feb. 2026) addressed the accelerating maturity of AI adoption inside enterprises. Leaders across infrastructure, security, design, systems, and geopolitics emphasized that organizations are now moving from exploratory experimentation to a period requiring architectural reinvention, measurable outcomes, and new forms of workforce enablement.
mimik is the first company we've encountered that discusses how to operationalize billions of agents to perform tasks in the physical world, not only within software workflows but also in industrial processes. The company’s core thesis is that the existing cloud-first mobile internet infrastructure is a legacy bottleneck that is unsustainable for the computational, cost, and energy demands of agentic AI. Powered by mimik, DFC-AI seeks to fundamentally reorganize compute distribution by prioritizing the edge.
