Glean vs ServiceNow Otto (formerly Now Assist)

Cross-app knowledge or a system of action?

For governance, separate reading company knowledge from acting on a request. Glean's Enterprise Flex documentation describes search and assistance across enterprise sources, with applicable agents and APIs using FlexCredits. ServiceNow describes Otto executing requests through platform skills, policies and workflows. Both may belong in an architecture without sharing the same primary duty or authority.

If employees struggle to locate reliable answers across multiple applications, start by evaluating Glean’s connected knowledge experience. If the bottleneck is resolving a service request with governed state changes, evaluate Otto within the existing ServiceNow workflow. Do not treat a successful search response as equivalent to an approved case update. The outcome and the boundary of authority are different.

Source permissions and connector scope

Check the exact plan, access path and approval boundary

For Glean, inventory the sources to be connected, the identity mappings and the permissions that should govern retrieval. Test using an employee account with deliberately restricted access and confirm that sensitive content remains unavailable. The documentation lists indexing connectors, federated search, live query connectors and tools; those access paths should be understood individually rather than grouped under a vague claim of universal governance.

For ServiceNow, identify the underlying records, knowledge bases and roles used by the chosen skill or workflow. Test the entire handoff from an employee question to a service-team action. A visible chat front end in Teams or Slack is not proof that all back-end permissions and approvals are correct. Validate those controls with the administrators who own the source systems.

Governance scope and external AI

ServiceNow’s tier documentation includes AI Control Tower in Foundation, Advanced and Prime for ServiceNow AI assets. It explicitly says full management of external AI assets needs the separate AI Control Tower for Enterprise AI license. Ask which external systems will be discovered, observed and governed under the actual agreement. Inventory visibility alone should not be confused with full management rights.

Glean’s Enterprise Flex page describes Glean Protect as underlying permissions enforcement, data protection and governance. It lists Protect+ separately with site-wide annual licensing, along with a separately licensed premium-support offering. Map each required security function to the quoted package. A platform feature catalog is not a guarantee that every extra control is included in the base seat.

Compare the cost model without invented prices

Glean describes per-user, per-month seats plus pooled FlexCredits, with more advanced capabilities consuming credits according to its rate card. Usage can vary with complexity, tools and models; a single prompt is not a fixed-cost unit across every scenario. The documentation also notes that learned-memory billing starts on 7 November 2026, while saved memories remain included. Confirm the current terms with the account team before forecasting usage.

ServiceNow does not state a universal Otto price or usage quantity in the tier overview. Request the product tier, usage definitions, allowance, overage treatment and external-governance licenses. For an honest comparison, quote the same number of users, sources and workflows over the same term. Separate the platform subscriptions already owned from the incremental cost of the proposed AI deployment.

Pilot a governed answer and a governed action

Use two acceptance tracks. The answer track checks whether a person receives accurate, source-grounded information they are permitted to see. The action track checks whether a requested update is allowed, correctly executed and auditable. Include missing information, contradictory knowledge and a request that should be refused. Use safe test content and document the expected result before running the test.

Ask the security owner to review logs, retention, administrator access and the emergency disable path. Ask the service owner to review escalation and unresolved requests. We have not run these pilots and do not declare an accuracy winner. The documentation-based recommendation is to choose the starting platform by the job, then verify the contractual governance scope and real access behavior before rollout.