A new kind of digital coworker is emerging, one powered by artificial intelligence and driven by the autonomy of agentic AI.

No longer confined to passive analytics or one-off automations, agentic AI introduces intelligent systems that learn, make decisions and collaborate independently across complex workflows. These agents don’t wait for input; they navigate systems, trigger actions and evolve with context. As this shift unfolds, it’s forcing organizations to rethink everything from how they design processes to how they define trust. The stakes are higher and so is the potential for meaningful, scalable transformation, according to Savannah Peterson (pictured, right), principal analyst at theCUBE Research.

Accenture’s Dave Kanter and ServiceNow’s Dorit Zilbershot talk to theCUBE about the future of AI.

“ServiceNow is on a roll — Knowledge25 comes off the back of an explosive quarter, and we’re excited to share real examples of how they’re putting AI to work for people and eliminating ‘soul-crushing work’ at scale,” Peterson said. “Internally they’re experimenting and adopting AI fervently as they co-innovate with the best companies in the world.”

Peterson spoke with experts from ServiceNow, Accenture and other industry insiders at Knowledge25, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how agentic AI is transforming enterprise automation through trusted systems, cultural adoption and intelligent collaboration. (* Disclosure below.)

Here are three key insights you may have missed from theCUBE’s coverage of Knowledge25:

Insight 1: Trust anchors enterprise adoption of agentic AI.

Enterprises are shifting from piloting AI use cases to building production-grade systems. For Accenture and ServiceNow, the foundation is a shared commitment to trust and transparency. Their co-innovation strategy places trust at the center of every workflow by embedding controls and context-aware safeguards directly into the ServiceNow platform, according to Dave Kanter (pictured, center), senior managing director for Global ServiceNow Business Group lead at Accenture PLC.

Accenture’s Dave Kanter talks with theCUBE about agentic AI.

“Our partnership is so deep, we’re pushing the bounds of the product, co-innovating on AI,” he said. “Then as a customer of ServiceNow, running nearly 2000 workflows across our organization. This just gives our customers confidence. When we lock arms together; we can make amazing things happen.”

With autonomy comes complexity, which is why enterprise-grade agentic AI must include cybersecurity from the start. Accenture’s AI Agent Zero Trust Model for Cyber Resilience is one way the company is operationalizing this vision. It’s also producing tangible outcomes, such as Agent Zero, a workflow that leverages intelligent agents to make decisions across high-stakes environments.

“You’ll hear our team talking about one of their favorite use cases. They call it Agent Zero,” Kanter explained. “As we look at all of this work that’s happening in the world, one of the most important steps when the issue gets brought your way is … ‘Do I have all the information? Have I done my research?’ This use case, which is a complex workflow with decision-making, with intent-based guardrails, we can power that with the agentic AI. The first full-on agents built on the AI studio will be Agent Zero for three or four of our clients, and we expect those to go live in just a matter of days.”

For ServiceNow, it’s not just about predicting what comes next, it’s about taking action. Their AI agents are stepping up to collaborate across silos and drive real outcomes, not just insights, according to Jacqui Canney (pictured, left), chief people and AI enablement officer at ServiceNow Inc.

“Agentic AI now crosses the lines, the silos of organizations so that the agents can work together for the human so that we can get better work done and not just have it served up to us,” she said. “The agents are actually taking actions that we can observe or refine or just say, ‘Great job,’ and move on to something that’s higher, more important.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Jacqui Canney and Dave Kanter:

Insight 2: Collaboration, speed and culture drive AI adoption.

Agentic AI is quickly becoming a critical part of enterprise operations, not just for its technological promise but for the way it redefines collaboration. Companies such as SAP SE are leading the charge with systems such as Agent Zero, which allow intelligent agents to handle entire support workflows without human prompting. By linking these agents together in sequenced tasks, SAP is speeding up service delivery while reducing the burden on human employees, noted Hardy Kuhn, head of service management solutions at SAP.

SAP’s Hardy Kuhn discusses Agent Zero with theCUBE.

“We’ve climbed the next ladder and we’ve experimented and quite successfully experimented with agentic AI,” Kuhn said. “Last time, I was talking about calling large language models, generating text and doing single tasks, and now we’re almost live … with what we call Agent Zero, which is an automatic answer to a customer’s incoming ticket.”

At the same time, Accenture is proving that successful AI adoption hinges on culture as much as code. By introducing basic AI skills across its teams and rolling out low-code tools for developers, the company is creating a foundation where automation can thrive. These steps help employees see agentic AI not as a threat, but as a tool that empowers them to work smarter.

“We started about 18 months ago with some basic skills that we rolled out to our IT agents,” said Tom Bruss, managing director for Accenture ServiceNow Business Group and ServiceNow account lead at Accenture. “At the same time, we also rolled out things like text-to-code and text-to-flow for our developers. We have a lot of demand. We’re working with nearly every corporate function of Accenture. We have over 100 applications built on the platform, and we have a lot of developers trying to keep up with all the backlog from our business.”

What connects these efforts is a shared focus on making AI truly useful for people, not just efficient, but intuitive and freeing. For Accenture, that means showing how automation can elevate the employee experience by handling the routine work no one enjoys, according to Lisette Smyrnios, managing director for global workplace at Accenture.

“[With AI], they can be more front of house and delivering on experience and have them automate … many of those admin-type operational tasks,” she said. “The other focus is the end user and making their lives easier. It’s really focusing in and trying to get there quickly and where we can make the most impact.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Hardy Kuhn:

Insight 3: Trust, data and design drive enterprise automation.

Accenture’s strategy for agentic AI is built on a foundation of trust, data maturity and practical value. In partnership with ServiceNow, the company is designing intelligent systems that don’t just automate, they enhance enterprise workflows with accountability and precision. For these systems to function reliably, the data they rely on must be secure, accurate and ready for autonomous decision-making at scale.

Accenture’s Ellen Currid and Will Coffey speak about secure automation with theCUBE.

“People are very anxious about making sure that their data is secure,” said Will Coffey, senior manager of the ServiceNow Business Group at Accenture Federal Services. “It’s especially important in an AI environment, because when you start bringing that in and you start leveraging new models or agent-to-agent conversations, that data needs to be in a mature place where the outcome is something that’s useful.”

Accenture avoids the trap of automating inefficient or irrelevant processes. Instead, the focus is on scaling what already works, using agentic AI to accelerate results without disrupting value. This intentional approach ensures AI complements human work rather than creating confusion or rework. It’s not about replacing people; it’s about amplifying proven systems with intelligent support, said Ellen Currid, Americas partner development lead for the Accenture ServiceNow Business Group at Accenture.

“We work really hard with our clients to make sure that the business processes and the outcomes that we’re driving from them with the ServiceNow platform are already high value,” she said. “To be able to try and automate that, we’re not automating bad processes; we’re automating good processes that humans don’t necessarily have to be in the loop 100% on.”

That emphasis on automating what already works — rather than reinventing the wheel — underpins the broader vision Accenture and ServiceNow are building together. The two companies are advancing a shared vision of an AI-powered agent workforce, digital systems capable of operating with purpose, adaptability and coordination across complex enterprise environments. Their latest innovations aim to replace brittle integrations with autonomous collaboration, accelerating the shift toward intelligent, low-code workflows at scale.

“We created a distributed intelligence across the enterprise, [wherein] each system kind of brings their own intelligence into the game,” said Dorit Zilbershot, group vice president of product management, AI experiences and innovation at ServiceNow. “[We’re] really moving away from brittle and hard-coded integrations to systems that just know how to operate with one another.”

As ServiceNow advances the technical backbone for intelligent systems, Accenture is shaping how those systems come to life inside organizations, helping to raise the bar for enterprise automation by pairing smart tech with solid infrastructure and purposeful workflows. It’s a strategy designed to earn trust, from both the systems that run the business and the people behind them, according to Accenture’s Bruss.

“The organizations that are going to be the most successful in the 21st century are those that embrace this technology, embrace this copilot, embrace this assist that’s sitting with you to supercharge what you do more, what you do best,” he added.

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Ellen Currid and Will Coffey:

To watch more of theCUBE’s coverage of Knowledge25, here’s our complete event video playlist:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Knowledge25. Neither ServiceNow Inc., the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE