Next month, ServiceNow will bring its flagship World Forum to London – an event that has grown dramatically over the past five years and is shaping up to be the US software firm’s largest UK showcase yet.
“The World Forum event that we have in London is our big event. It’s our big showcase,” explains ServiceNow’s group VP & general manager UK & Ireland, Damian Stirrett. “We had 5000 people there last year. We’re going to grow that by 40% this year.
“Five years ago, we had 500 people at that event; I think that demonstrates the rate at which the company is going.”
It will be no surprise to anyone that this year’s Forum will focus heavily on agentic AI – the company’s vision for workflow-driven, autonomous operations.
“It’s going to be all about agentic AI as you would imagine,” says Stirrett. “We’ve got incredible speakers. We will have tracks by workflow; we will have tracks by industry. We will have an executive circle as well. And we’ll have a full day just for partners.”
A Bold UK Investment
The London showcase comes at a time when ServiceNow is doubling down on its UK market. Last year, the company announced a £1.15 billion investment package.
“We made a huge commitment to the UK around three areas,” says Stirrett. “One was expanding our employee base because we are going to grow in the UK and Ireland, and we’re committed to doing that. We have 1,000 employees in the UK. We will grow that.
“We’re also looking to move into new office space. And I think probably the most important thing: our UK data centers will be AI-enabled. We’re putting NVIDIA GPUs in there with local processing for LLMs, so we’ll be able to provide and deliver the AI into public services.”
The last part is significant, given the government’s bid to build a UK AI powerhouse, launching the AI Opportunities Action Plan – a strategic roadmap designed to accelerate AI adoption, enhance infrastructure, and support talent development.
Just a few weeks ago, the government announced it was trialling its own AI agents, selling the idea that Brits could potentially have their own AI agent “to help them deal with everything from life admin, to getting personalized guidance to pick careers, find work and more.”
This focus on AI infrastructure places the UK at the heart of ServiceNow’s global platform strategy. The ability to process AI locally, in UK data centers, is designed not just for enterprise clients, but also for highly regulated industries – especially the public sector.
Public Sector: A Material Part of the Business
The public sector already plays a critical role in ServiceNow’s UK and Ireland operations. “It’s about a quarter to a third of my business,” says Stirrett. To underline that commitment, the company recently appointed Aaron Neil, formerly of Oracle, as its new public sector lead.
The ambition is clear: go deeper into helping government modernise services. Stirrett points to the widespread use of legacy systems across the public sector – around 28% of central government organisations’ technology estates are classified as legacy, with around 10-70% across police forces and around 10-50% across NHS trusts, by the government’s own numbers. At the same time, the government’s technology landscape is highly fragmented and duplicative, creating inefficiencies across and within organisations.
For ServiceNow, this is where its platform has a significant role to play, says Stirrett.
“We bring together AI and data and workflow into one single platform with one single data model… We believe we have the platform that connects all disparate systems, could connect all departments in any business or any organisation across IT, HR, supply chain, finance, procurement.”
Tackling NHS Challenges with AI
ServiceNow has been working closely with the NHS, where the opportunities – and challenges – are vast.
Stirrett outlined five areas of potential impact of automation on the NHS:
- Harnessing AI for efficiencies: Driving automation first, then layering on agentic AI to enable predictive healthcare and reduce GP waiting times.
- Improving staff experience: Stirrett says ServiceNow can help reduce NHS staff onboarding time, noting: “We think our platform can free up at least 70% capacity there.”
- Integrating corporate services: ServiceNow research indicates there is £1.6 billion in savings to be made annually by the NHS by consolidating HR, legal, IT, and security functions.
- Streamlining the patient journey: Cutting down on missed appointments and enabling AI-assisted triage.
- Strengthening cybersecurity: Through AI-powered control towers capable of proactive threat monitoring and remediation.
The Strategic Role of Partners
If the public sector is the demand side of ServiceNow’s UK growth story, partners are the delivery engine. “We have well over 250 partners in the UK, of every category – reseller partners, managed service partners. We partner with all the big global systems integrators, all the advisories as well,” says Stirrett.
The importance of hyperscalers to ServiceNow has also grown. “We are getting much more strategic with the hyperscalers and have been for the last year and a half,” says Stirrett. “All our technology is integrated into Google, Microsoft and AWS. We have what we call an AI-to-AI, so our agents work with their agents. We can manage and govern their agents.”
Partners also play a crucial role in adoption. “They no longer see us as just IT service management. They can see the power of the platform driving business transformation. They like our AI energetic AI story. They like our data story. Partners are absolutely key to us.”
Final Thoughts
From its investment in AI-ready data centers to the upcoming London World Forum, ServiceNow is clearly making the UK a proving ground for its agentic AI ambitions.
As the London Forum approaches, one thing is clear: the conversation won’t just be about technology. It will be about the future of public services, the importance of collaboration, and the role of AI in reshaping how the UK works.