IBM and ServiceNow announced a multi-year collaboration on June 11, 2026, to integrate IBM's data and automation software with the ServiceNow AI Platform. The partnership targets two major bottlenecks for enterprise AI: modernizing legacy application layers and making enterprise data ready for artificial intelligence at scale.
Modernizing legacy systems and data governance
Decades of interconnected legacy systems often prevent organizations from adopting new AI tools quickly. Instead of replacing these aging systems, the joint effort will scan and refactor them using IBM Bob, Enterprise Application runtime (Java), and IBM watsonx.data. This approach allows enterprises to update existing applications for the AI era without building from scratch.
The collaboration also extends the ServiceNow Workflow Data Fabric with IBM watsonx.data to improve enterprise data governance. By incorporating tools for data quality, observability, and master data management, mutual customers can maintain AI-ready data across their workflows. This integration supports professionals focused on AI for Operations who need reliable data pipelines to run automated processes.
Autonomous infrastructure operations
A third pillar of the partnership focuses on autonomous IT operations. The companies plan to integrate Red Hat Ansible, IBM Bob, Instana, HashiCorp Terraform, and HashiCorp Vault directly into ServiceNow IT workflows. This setup is designed to detect, remediate, and resolve infrastructure issues before they disrupt business functions.
"Most enterprises have the ambition to deploy agentic AI, but lack the foundation to run it at scale," said John Aisien, general manager and senior vice president of central product management at ServiceNow. "IBM brings the tooling to modernize the systems and extend ServiceNow's data capabilities; ServiceNow provides the platform to put that data to work across every workflow in the business."
"AI adoption at scale requires more than access to models," said Raj Datta, general manager of ISV and AI partnerships at IBM. "It requires rethinking the systems, data and governance that support them."
Why this matters for operations professionals
Operations teams frequently manage the friction between outdated legacy software and the demand for new AI capabilities. These joint solutions, expected in the second half of 2026, will give operations leaders a standardized method to modernize infrastructure and govern data without halting current business processes. Teams managing AI for IT & Development can expect clearer workflows for detecting and resolving system issues autonomously, reducing manual firefighting.
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