From a new Avaya CEO to ServiceNow crowning itself as “the fastest-growing major enterprise cybersecurity company,” here are extracts from this week’s most popular news stories.
Avaya Names New CEO – Can He Keep Up with Agentic AI?
Avaya has named Jeff Clarke as its new CEO, with Patrick Dennis moving into the Executive Chair role after less than two years at the helm.
Despite the size and prestige of the vendor, Clarke will have a difficult balancing act to manage straight out of the gate.
The vendor has spent the past couple of years persuading large enterprises they do not need to rip out existing infrastructure to modernize customer service. Now, it must prove that this lower-risk, hybrid route can keep pace as the CX market races toward agentic AI.
That is why Zeus Kerravala, Founder and Principal Analyst at ZK Research, sees the appointment as a potentially reassuring but defensive move:
“Appointing an executive with deep legacy tech roots signals a pivot toward balance-sheet management, margin preservation, and customer retention.
“While Clarke’s operational discipline will reassure risk-averse enterprise clients, it positions Avaya defensively.”
The question is whether Avaya can turn that defensiveness into an advantage, or whether it will give cloud-native competitors more time to pull away (Read more…).
ServiceNow Moves to Lock Down Enterprise AI Agents With Autonomous Security Portfolio
ServiceNow, which is billing itself as “the fastest-growing major enterprise cybersecurity company,” is bringing identity, exposure management and incident response into a unified security offering as enterprises give AI agents greater access to business systems and data.
The vendor is expanding its cybersecurity portfolio with six groups of security capabilities designed to help enterprises manage the risks created by increasingly autonomous AI systems.
The announcement comes as enterprises move AI agents from information retrieval and assistance toward tasks that involve accessing applications, modifying data and triggering business processes. This is creating a security challenge that traditional controls were not designed to address.
An AI agent can have its own credentials, access multiple applications, consume untrusted information and make decisions about what action to take. If compromised or poorly governed, that agent could provide an attacker with a route into systems that previously required a human user to access.
Cybersecurity experts are warning that enterprises need stronger approaches to identifying, authorizing and blocking AI agents as they gain access to diverse datasets, tools and applications.
NiCE Wins Big CX AI Deals, But Enterprise Adoption Takes Time
NiCE has plenty to celebrate after its second-quarter earnings call, but the vendor also revealed the work customers must do before AI can deliver at scale.
The company secured its largest-ever CXone and Cognigy deal, a nine-digit total contract value agreement with HM Revenue & Customs. It also landed another eight-digit annual contract value win with one of the largest healthcare organizations in the US.
But behind the landmark deals and upbeat AI adoption figures, NiCE also offered a more grounded assessment of where enterprise customer experience AI is today.
Customers are buying in, but they are not necessarily ready to scale straight away, as Scott Russell, CEO of NiCE, explained:
“Customers are taking a measured approach as they prepare their data, the governance, [and] the operating models before they scale AI across all the use cases.”
This detail is particularly significant for contact center leaders. The industry’s agentic AI conversation is increasingly focused on deployments, not pilots. Yet NiCE’s call suggests that getting from a signed contract to a fully operational AI-enabled CX operation remains a slower, more complicated process (Read more…).
HubSpot Customer Agent Resolves 72% of Support Tickets Without Human Escalation
HubSpot prove its AI agents are successfully moving into live customer-service workflows, with the company pitching its CRM as the control layer for deployment.
Its Customer Agent results, rapid Data Agent uptake, and broader agent activity suggest businesses are beginning to embed AI across the customer journey.
For CX leaders, the priority is to pursue this integration without losing sight of reliability, governance and proof that automation improves the customer outcome.
Yamini Rangan, CEO of HubSpot, said businesses are seeking a unified, governed approach to AI as they deploy agents across customer-facing services.
“Customers don’t want a chaotic agent sprawl,” she said.
“They want a controlled, cohesive way to build demand, win deals, and delight their customers.”
