From 'AI platform' to 'AI control tower' - ServiceNow's Veza acquisition reveals identity governance as critical bottleneck for enterprise AI

ServiceNow has today announced that it intends to acquire Veza, a leader in identity security - in a move that signals the vendor's ambitions to further control and govern AI deployments in the enterprise. One only has to look at how ServiceNow is describing itself in its press materials for this announcement, compared to other releases this year. It calls itself "the AI control tower for business reinvention," rather than the "AI platform for business transformation" language it has used previously. The shift is subtle but significant - control, not enablement, is the emphasis.

Acquiring Veza's Access Graph technology also highlights a technical challenge buyers are facing in ensuring their AI deployments are both successful and secure. As enterprises move from AI pilots to production, identity and access management has become the governance issue preventing autonomous agents from operating at scale. Without granular visibility into who and what can access ...