Automation Anywhere vs ServiceNow (2026)

Agents and bots do the work inside the customer's systems. The platform combines goal-based AI agents, RPA, APIs and human expertise, connects to ERPs and CRMs through pre-built connectors and open APIs, and runs agentic AI over existing RPA and BPM systems to handle exceptions and unstructured data.

AI Agent Studio agents orchestrate across bots, APIs, documents and other agents in real time, each with assigned tool access, and the Control Room reference includes a Device API and work item queue endpoints. Automation Anywhere does not say which ERPs and CRMs are covered and gives no connector list.

Sourceautomationanywhere.com/products/agentic-process-automation-system, /products/ai-agent-studio; readread 2026-09-17

Agents act through tools added in the guided setup, such as catalog items, and reach outside systems as an MCP client through Action Fabric, which ServiceNow describes as MCP server, MCP client and A2A together, with A2A used to orchestrate multiple systems and processes.

Sourceservicenow.com/platform/action-fabric.htmlread 2026-09-18

The platform orchestrates goal-based AI agents, RPA, APIs and human expertise in one unified platform. Its goal-driven AI agents plan, execute and self-heal without manual direction, and agentic AI sits over existing RPA and BPM to handle exceptions and unstructured data that traditional bots cannot.

In AI Agent Studio, agents handle reasoning and human in the loop steps and orchestrate across bots, APIs, documents and other agents in real time, and customers place agents within end-to-end workflows using drag-and-drop tools with AI-powered next action suggestions. The Mozart Orchestrator and Automation Workspace are the named orchestration products. Agent steps are composed with deterministic bots and APIs in one workflow, and self healing covers retries. How branching and versioning work is not described.

Sourceautomationanywhere.com/products/agentic-process-automation-system, /products/ai-agent-studio; readread 2026-09-17

The Autonomous Workforce deploys AI specialists that do whole jobs and orchestrate teams of AI agents to deliver outcomes from start to finish. Action Fabric uses the A2A protocol for complex multi agent workflows across systems and processes.

Sourceservicenow.com/products/ai-agents.htmlread 2026-09-18

Event triggers can be added and linked to a Bot Runner, and a Trigger API can also create and delete them, with trigger types including email, file and window triggers. Control Room Bot Scheduler API endpoints (/v2/schedule/automations) and an Automations API create, update, delete and return details on scheduled automations. Through Automation Co-Pilot, people can also start multi step agentic workflows in natural language inside their existing apps.

Sourcedocs.automationanywhere.com event triggers, Trigger API, Control Room APIs (index copies); automationanywhere.com/products/agentic-process-automation-system; readread 2026-09-17

In the guided setup, an administrator adds triggers that run the AI agent automatically when certain conditions are met, so the agent starts when an event occurs rather than only in chat. Agents also work conversationally through the ServiceNow Otto panel and Virtual Agent.

Sourceraw.githubusercontent.com/servicenow/servicenowdocs/australia/markdown/intelligent-experiences/add-trigger-aia.mdread 2026-09-18

AI agents are built on a foundational model chosen for the use case and grounded in the customer's company data, which customers connect alongside their choice of LLM. The platform also ships Document Automation and Process Discovery products that work over customer content. Automation Anywhere describes no index, graph or embeddings layer that persists and stays queryable over the customer's knowledge.

Sourceautomationanywhere.com/products/ai-agent-studio; readread 2026-09-17

When an AI agent is set up, tools and the customer's own information are added to it, including Knowledge Graphs that give the agent the relationships between real world entities to improve its outputs, for example a Knowledge Graph added to an approval agent. New knowledge is added this way, without retraining the model.

Sourceraw.githubusercontent.com/servicenow/servicenowdocs/australia/markdown/intelligent-experiences/add-tool-aia.mdread 2026-09-18

Public pages for AI Agent Studio, the platform and the Trust Center describe prompts, tools, roles and templates but no agent memory, session state or learned context, and the product documentation does not confirm whether agents keep memory.

Sourcedocs.automationanywhere.com (client-rendered); automationanywhere.com/products/ai-agent-studio; triedread 2026-09-17

AI agents keep a long term memory of user specific facts and preferences. When an agent runs, an LLM checks the interaction for facts that match the agent's configured memory categories and stores them as semantic memory records in the AI Agent Memories table, scoped to the user and category and kept apart from business data.

Categories such as software preferences, workplace context and communication style are defined globally and mapped to individual agents, and agents can also learn from the outcomes of past executions. Administrators decide whether agents may retain user information, apply it in conversations or learn from past runs, and the stored facts can be viewed by user and agent. How long memories are kept, and how one user's memories are deleted, is not stated.

Sourceservicenow.com/docs long term memory categories and set up long term memoryread 2026-10-25

In AI Agent Studio, goal driven agents powered by the Process Reasoning Engine handle reasoning and human-in-the-loop steps and orchestrate across bots, APIs, documents and other agents in real time. Customers plug AI agents into workflows with 100% oversight, and built-in governance and guardrails are meant to keep AI actions clear, safe and accountable. The platform orchestrates human expertise alongside agents and bots in one workflow, and AI Governance is a named product. Where a checkpoint is configured, and whether autonomy varies by risk, is not described.

Sourceautomationanywhere.com/products/ai-agent-studio, /products/agentic-process-automation-system; readread 2026-09-17

Each tool an AI agent uses can be set to run in supervised execution mode, chosen as the execution mode when the tool is added in the guided setup, so a person oversees the tool's actions and the potential impact of an agent not executing as expected is contained, while other tools run autonomously. The mode is set per tool, so low risk and high risk actions can run under different levels of autonomy, and AI Agent Studio also sets guardrails on each agent.

Sourceraw.githubusercontent.com/servicenow/servicenowdocs/australia/markdown/intelligent-experiences/add-tool-aia.mdread 2026-09-18

Automation Anywhere holds SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 and GDPR certifications, and its Trust Center lists ISO 27001, SOC, HIPAA compliance, HITRUST certification, ISO 9001, ISO 42001, ISO 22301 and Cyber Essentials, with vendor penetration test, Veracode and Black Duck reports available on request.

Access is protected by RBAC (role based access control), end to end encryption and comprehensive audit trails, with security embedded at the infrastructure, data and agent levels. AI Agent Studio gives each agent a specific role, goal and tool access and limits models to an approved list, so access is controlled at user, tool and model level. The Trust Center lists SOC without a type, and the platform page supplies Type II.

Sourceautomationanywhere.com/products/agentic-process-automation-system, /trust-center; readread 2026-09-17

ServiceNow's Trust and Compliance Center lists FedRAMP authorization for its Government Community Cloud. Platform controls include SAML 2.0 single sign on, including SSO across multiple providers, role based multi factor authentication and access control, and agents run as dedicated service accounts with scoped roles.

Sourceservicenow.com/company/trust.htmlread 2026-09-18

AI Agent Studio lets customers monitor every move agents make, includes Monitor and audit as a step in how it works, and shows what goes in and comes out of the AI models, with built in governance and guardrails meant to keep AI actions clear, safe and accountable. Security includes comprehensive audit trails at the agent level, and the Control Room documentation includes an Audit API to retrieve audit log data, plus audit event and export topics. Automation Anywhere describes this monitoring only in marketing terms and does not show run level detail.

Sourceautomationanywhere.com/products/ai-agent-studio, /products/agentic-process-automation-system; docs.automationanywhere.com Audit API (index copy); readread 2026-09-17

Agent runs are recorded as sessions, traces and spans kept for analysis, and the customer sets the retention. Session, trace and span data is kept for 30 days by default, and a system administrator can shorten the window or stop retaining trace data for data minimization requirements, and choose whether the data stays available for analysis. AI agents using desktop actions also report each action they take back to the user in the ServiceNow Otto panel.

Sourceraw.githubusercontent.com/servicenow/servicenowdocs/australia/markdown/intelligent-experiences/mon-ai-configure-trace-retention.mdread 2026-09-18

The platform is sold as a cloud service, through a Cloud Service product and a free Cloud Community Edition, with no published hosting region, residency statement or option to run in the customer's environment. A Deployment Models topic exists in the documentation, but cloud regions and private cloud or on premises options for Automation 360 are not confirmed.

Sourcedocs.automationanywhere.com Deployment models (client-rendered); automationanywhere.com home and product pages; triedread 2026-09-17

ServiceNow offers a separate environment for regulated customers, the Government Community Cloud with FedRAMP, alongside its standard cloud, and customers that need a government authorized boundary run there.

Sourceservicenow.com/company/trust.htmlread 2026-09-18

Solutions are offered by industry, covering financial services, healthcare, life sciences and manufacturing, and by function, covering customer service, finance and accounting, human resources, IT and service operations, and each is adopted as a separate engagement.

AI Agent Studio includes a Templatize build step that saves prompts as templates for future use, agents can be customized from templates or the customer's own prompts, and prompts and agents are shared across automation teams.

The Aisera branded solutions in the menu come from the acquired company, and whether the solutions or the Bot Store include adoptable prebuilt agents is not described.

Sourceautomationanywhere.com home Solutions menu, /products/ai-agent-studio; readread 2026-09-17

Buyers deploy out of the box AI agents or build their own, and ServiceNow names ready made agents across domains, such as change request planning, change template suggestion, supplier approval, asset evaluation and post incident review agents.

Sourceservicenow.com/products/ai-agents.htmlread 2026-09-18

In AI Agent Studio, the customer chooses an AI model for each agent from an approved list, connects it to company data and can test different models to see which fits best. Custom AI models and integrations with third-party AI platforms are supported, and the Control Room API reference includes an AI Agent Studio API for defining and connecting custom model connections. The providers are not named.

Sourceautomationanywhere.com/products/ai-agent-studio; docs.automationanywhere.com Control Room APIs (index copy); readread 2026-09-17

An administrator chooses the model provider for AI agents. In AI Agent Studio settings, the model provider tab leads to AI Admin Hub, where the default provider is selected from Now LLM Service, AWS Claude, Azure OpenAI and Google Gemini, and models can be tested in the skill kit before switching. ServiceNow notes that agents should be retested after the global model changes, and that in some regions using a different provider requires consent.

Sourceraw.githubusercontent.com/servicenow/servicenowdocs/australia/markdown/intelligent-experiences/select-aia-llm.mdread 2026-09-18

The versioned Control Room API reference lists endpoint modules including an Authentication API, Audit API, Device API, Automations (Bot Scheduler) API, Trigger API, Policy Management API, an AI Agent Studio API for defining and connecting custom model connections, and an API Task Execution API that generates an execution URL and token to start an API-task execution through an API endpoint. The platform integrates through pre-built connectors and open APIs, and a free Community Edition is offered to developers. No MCP support is described, and a Package SDK appears in release notes.

Sourcedocs.automationanywhere.com Control Room APIs (index copy); automationanywhere.com/products/agentic-process-automation-system; readread 2026-09-17

Action Fabric lets any AI agent, including Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini, execute governed ServiceNow actions headlessly through MCP, A2A and traditional protocols. The MCP Server Console is a central control plane for exposing ServiceNow resources to external AI agents with native governance, and ServiceNow can also act as a secondary agent over A2A.

Sourceservicenow.com/platform/action-fabric.htmlread 2026-09-18

AI Agent Studio's build steps are Select and connect, Tune and test, Templatize, Plug in to workflows, and Monitor and audit. In Tune and test, builders adjust prompts to meet their exact requirements and test for accuracy, and in Select and connect they test different models to see which is the best fit, all before an agent goes into a workflow. The AI Governance product sits alongside. Whether results are scored and kept is not described.

Sourceautomationanywhere.com/products/ai-agent-studio; readread 2026-09-17

Agentic evaluations run AI agents and agentic workflows against defined datasets to verify quality before deployment. Each run scores performance, identifies issues and suggests optimizations, with custom metrics added through a parser tool and a results page for analysis.

Sourceraw.githubusercontent.com/servicenow/servicenowdocs/australia/markdown/intelligent-experiences/agentic-evals.mdread 2026-09-18

Automation Anywhere controls real application interfaces through Robotic Process Automation, a product line that includes RPA Software, Automation Workspace and Automation 360. The platform combines goal-based AI agents, RPA, APIs and human expertise, with agentic AI running over existing RPA and BPM systems to handle exceptions and unstructured data that traditional bots cannot. Software robots do the screen level work inside the same process. How the robots operate interfaces, and how often they break when an interface changes, is not described.

Sourceautomationanywhere.com/products/agentic-process-automation-system, home product menu; docs.automationanywhere.com (client-rendered); readread 2026-09-17

With AI Desktop Actions, an agent triggered from the ServiceNow Otto panel performs tasks on an external website or web application, opening the site in a separate browser tab, carrying out the steps and reporting its actions back in the panel, through the ServiceNow Web Automation Chrome extension connected to the instance. Adaptive desktop actions handle interactions beyond custom UI, including triple-click, double-click, right-click, native prompts, dialogues and alerts, administrators configure the allowed websites, and the agent runs as a dedicated service account.

Sourceraw.githubusercontent.com/servicenow/servicenowdocs/australia/markdown/intelligent-experiences/na-ai-wa-access-using-nap.mdread 2026-09-18