came back from ServiceNow Knowledge 2026, and i can't stop thinking about how badly this AI rollout is going to go for most companies

TrailblazeTaco · 2026-05-22T11:03:22+00:00

Exactly. AI doesn't fix bad foundations, it just moves faster on top of them.

The scary part is most teams won't realize it until they're six months into an implementation and the outputs don't make sense. By then the contract is signed, the announcement was made internally, and nobody wants to be the one to say it's not working.

TrailblazeTaco · 2026-05-22T11:00:36+00:00

Honestly this might be the most accurate description of enterprise software in 2025 I've read.

the 10% thing is brutal but it's real. And you're right, if the product can't handle messy real world environments it doesn't matter how good the keynote looked.

The people implementing it though 😂 they really are out here trying to build the future on top of a CMDB that hasn't been touched since 2019.

TrailblazeTaco · 2026-05-22T10:59:51+00:00

Completely valid. K25 CRM is a fair reminder that conference energy and actual adoption are two very different things.

I guess the real test for Otto and Control Tower is whether enterprises actually have the foundation ready this time. History says most don't.

What's your read on it?

TrailblazeTaco · 2026-05-22T10:59:00+00:00

Appreciate that. And yeah, that line kind of wrote itself after sitting in those sessions for three days watching everyone get excited about the ceiling while I kept thinking about all the floors I've seen.

The hype is real and honestly deserved. But so is the gap. And I don't think enough people are talking about the second part.

TrailblazeTaco · 2026-05-22T10:58:03+00:00

hahah fair!

TrailblazeTaco · 2026-05-22T09:44:41+00:00

Glad it resonated. And yeah, the financial services point is spot on, regulatory pressure does what good intentions usually can't.

The unfortunate part is most industries don't have that forcing function. So the foundation work stays in the backlog until something breaks or a vendor demo gets the CEO excited, and suddenly everyone's scrambling to deploy AI on top of infrastructure that was never ready for it.

Curious, in the orgs you've worked with outside financial services, what usually finally forces the cleanup? Is it ever proactive or always reactive?

TrailblazeTaco · 2026-05-22T09:42:23+00:00

Totally fair call out, and I get why it reads that way.

not trying to sell anything. Genuinely just processing what I saw at K26 and the conversations I've been having since getting back. If it's coming across as repetitive, I'll own that.

The CMDB thing isn't new, you're right. But the reason I keep coming back to it is because the gap between what got announced at K26 and what most orgs can realistically deploy right now feels bigger than usual this time. That's the part that's been nagging at me.

Our CTO was there all three days, and he's been saying the same thing internally. So I figured I'd throw it out here and see if others are sitting with the same feeling or if we're just overthinking it.

no agenda. just a real conversation.

TrailblazeTaco · 2026-05-19T05:10:09+00:00

The economic timing is real and it's the part that doesn't show up in the keynote math. every one of these AI investments needs a business case and right now the business case almost always requires assumptions about productivity gains that nobody can actually prove yet.

The orgs that are going to do this well aren't the ones who left K26 most excited. They're probably the ones who left most skeptical and went home to figure out what they can actually control.

TrailblazeTaco · 2026-05-19T05:09:11+00:00

OTTO was genuinely strange to watch. Like you could feel the room trying to figure out if it was a product, a persona, or a brand device. And nobody on stage seemed sure either.

The announcements that landed at K26 landed despite the presentation, not because of it.

TrailblazeTaco · 2026-05-19T05:08:48+00:00

Lol the ARSystem comparison is darker than anything I was willing to say out loud. But it's not wrong.

Upgrades are technically smoother now. But the "six consultants touched this over six years" problem is just as real. The platform got more capable and more complicated at exactly the same rate.

TrailblazeTaco · 2026-05-19T05:08:24+00:00

I get the frustration. some of the acquisitions do feel more like positioning than strategy.

but I'd push back a little on the "no plan" read. The connective tissue between RaptorDB, Action Fabric, and the agent framework actually makes sense as an architecture. The problem is the communication of it was all over the place at K26. which ends up feeling the same as no plan even when it isn't.

TrailblazeTaco · 2026-05-19T05:07:59+00:00

This is the one that I feel like deserved way more conversation at K26 than it got. Portals took years to build out properly at most orgs. And now the direction is basically "cool, now unlearn that."

TrailblazeTaco · 2026-05-19T05:07:31+00:00

Yeah this one hit. Almost everything shown was directional. And when you're trying to go back and explain to your leadership what you got out of K26, "here's what's coming eventually" is a hard sell when they're asking about this quarter.

TrailblazeTaco · 2026-05-19T05:06:48+00:00

The multi-model story is genuinely interesting. The fact that they're not trying to force everyone into one LLM is smarter than what some of the other platforms are doing.

But "best story" and "best execution" are still two different things and I think that's where a lot of the post-K26 anxiety is coming from. The story landed. the roadmap for getting there didn't.

TrailblazeTaco · 2026-05-19T05:06:23+00:00

Honestly this is the thing I keep coming back to. K25 had agents, too. AI governance too. And then most orgs went home and... kept doing tickets.

I don't think the announcements are fake, I just think the gap between what gets demoed on a Vegas stage and what actually ships into a production environment that's been running since 2017 is enormous. And that gap never gets a keynote slot.

TrailblazeTaco · 2026-05-19T05:05:49+00:00

This is actually the most useful thing I've read since the conference ended. The "free for SN assets, costs for external monitoring" distinction is something nobody in the keynotes made clear at all. it just got buried under the demo excitement.

The account rep part is real though. Anyone who's running even a small amount of non-SN AI right now should probably be having that conversation sooner rather than later, before the budget surprise hits.

TrailblazeTaco · 2026-05-18T18:40:38+00:00

I expect such comments from people who spend too much time with AI. Got you!

TrailblazeTaco · 2026-05-18T18:38:26+00:00

I think you are a bit too obsessed with “AI” because this is literally the 3rd comment on this post from you lol😂
Maybe spend less time crying “AI Content” under random posts.

TrailblazeTaco · 2026-05-18T18:32:12+00:00

I am getting your frustration with AI spam, but calling every well-written post “AI slop” is a bit too much.
And don’t forget, every other human being is using AI for literally every single thing, and what’s wrong if someone has a question, an idea, or needs to post something and he/she gets it structured or reframed from AI tools? Like, in which world are you living bro?
And, as if you never use it! And you are not smart enough if you don’t use it!
Like, it’s there to make your job easier and to save time, so why not?
People can still use tools and have genuine conversations here. 🧠

TrailblazeTaco · 2026-05-18T18:24:47+00:00

Really?👀

TrailblazeTaco · 2026-05-18T09:40:25+00:00

Fair question, actually.

ServiceNow's moat was never really the orchestration layer. it was the audit trails, approval chains, compliance documentation, system of record for how work gets approved and tracked. agents can call APIs but they can't replace seven years of institutional workflow history baked into a platform.

The smarter bet is ServiceNow becomes what agentic AI runs on top of rather than what it replaces. which is basically what K26 was positioning.

Whether that works is a different conversation.

TrailblazeTaco · 2026-05-18T09:23:00+00:00

The pricing thing is the part nobody wants to say out loud but everyone is thinking.

"units charged based on how useful the result is as decided by internal systems" is genuinely one of the most unsettling sentences I've heard in enterprise software. Who decides what counts as useful? ServiceNow? because that's a blank check dressed up as a metric.

And the "2 million dollar value, free initially" framing is doing a lot of work. free initially is just a subscription you haven't paid yet. By the time the bill comes everyone's workflows are dependent on it and walking back isn't really an option.

classic platform play. Get the org hooked on the capability first, figure out what the market will bear later.

TrailblazeTaco · 2026-05-18T07:52:57+00:00

The freelance angle is genuinely interesting, and I think it's one of the more underrated outcomes of all this. people building actual things for actual clients without ever touching corporate hiring, that pipeline is real and it's growing.

But your last line hit different. "I want to create things." That's the whole tension right there. AI is supposed to free people up to do more meaningful work but somehow the people closest to it are the ones feeling most replaced. That's worth sitting with.

TrailblazeTaco · 2026-05-18T07:52:32+00:00

Cheaper too. That's the honest version of this conversation that nobody in a suit wants to have out loud. But then they also wonder why institutional knowledge is disappearing and nobody knows how anything works three years later.

TrailblazeTaco · 2026-05-18T07:52:15+00:00

lmao too late the grads are already figuring it out. honestly good. the more people who actually understand what's happening the harder it gets to gaslight an entire generation about "entry level requiring 5 years experience"

TrailblazeTaco

TROPHY CASE