Atlassian And ServiceNow: The Dominant AI-Enabled IT Management Platforms Lean Into Context Graphs

2026-05-01 · Source: Featured Blogs - Forrester · Field: Technology & Digital — Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Cloud Computing & IT Infrastructure, Data Science & Analytics · Depth: Advanced, medium

Summary

ServiceNow and Atlassian are establishing context graphs as the central architectural component of their IT management platforms, moving beyond traditional IT boundaries into enterprise service management. ServiceNow's Context Engine integrates its Service Graph, Knowledge Graph, Armis cyber asset graph, and Veza access graph, processing 85 billion workflows and 7 trillion transactions annually. Atlassian's Teamwork Graph, with over 100 billion objects and connections, powers Rovo's AI experiences. Both companies are expanding their data management capabilities through acquisitions like Secoda (Atlassian) and Traceloop (ServiceNow), aiming to provide a unified intelligence substrate for AI agents. This convergence highlights that durable enterprise AI value is created higher in the stack, focusing on semantics, ontology, and operational data, rather than solely on models and GPUs.

Key takeaway

For CTOs and VPs of Engineering evaluating AI platform strategies, recognize that the battle for enterprise AI value is shifting to context graphs and the underlying operational data. Your observability budgets will likely increase due to the mandatory tracing of agentic workloads. Prioritize investments in data quality, semantic mapping, and governance to ensure AI agents produce reliable, accurate results and avoid confident, plausible-sounding nonsense.

Key insights

Enterprise AI value is shifting from models to context graphs, driven by platforms that organize operational data.

Principles

• Operational data is critical for AI agent reasoning.
• Context graphs are the new center of gravity for IT management platforms.

Method

Vendors are integrating disparate data sources (CMDBs, knowledge graphs, asset graphs, access graphs) into unified context engines to support AI agents and enterprise service management.

In practice

• Implement OpenTelemetry-style instrumentation for agent decision traces.
• Prioritize data quality and governance to prevent AI hallucinations.

Topics

• Atlassian
• ServiceNow
• Context Graphs
• IT Management Platforms
• Agent Decision Traces

Best for: CTO, VP of Engineering/Data, AI Product Manager, Director of AI/ML, AI Architect, Consultant

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Editorial summary, takeaway, and curation by AIssential. Original article published by Featured Blogs - Forrester.