C1Secure Unveils SmartAI Ops to Master AI Economics on ServiceNow

LAS VEGAS, NV – May 06, 2026 – As enterprises pour billions into artificial intelligence, the crucial questions of cost, value, and risk are becoming urgent. Answering that call, C1Secure today launched SmartAI Ops at the ServiceNow Knowledge 2026 conference. The new offering is a native workspace application designed to work alongside ServiceNow's AI Control Tower, providing a real-time operational and economic lens on AI deployments.

The announcement was made as C1Secure was also honored as the ServiceNow 2026 AMS Breakthrough Transformation Partner of the Year, a recognition that underscores the company's deep integration within the ServiceNow ecosystem. SmartAI Ops aims to move organizations beyond simply governing AI to actively understanding and optimizing its financial and productivity impact.

Beyond Governance to Economic Reality

For years, enterprises have struggled to translate AI experimentation into measurable business value. Studies have consistently shown a gap between AI investment and tangible ROI, with many initiatives failing to scale or deliver expected returns. A primary culprit is the lack of visibility; AI spend often accumulates across disparate systems, making it nearly impossible for leaders to have an evidence-based conversation about its value.

ServiceNow's AI Control Tower was introduced to solve the first part of the puzzle: governance. It provides a centralized platform to establish policies, trust boundaries, and security frameworks for AI agents, a critical function for scaling AI responsibly, especially in regulated industries. It sets the rules of the road for AI.

However, C1Secure's SmartAI Ops is built on the premise that rules are not enough. The new tool addresses the operational questions that immediately follow governance: What did the AI actually do? What did it cost per interaction? Are developers and end-users adopting the tools and becoming more productive? Where are the hidden risks, such as failing connectors or budget overruns, forming?

By providing a dedicated operational companion to AI Control Tower, C1Secure is offering a complete AI governance and operations stack within ServiceNow. While Control Tower defines the policies, SmartAI Ops illuminates what is happening under those policies in real time, providing the financial and performance data that CIOs and CFOs need to justify and manage their AI investments effectively.

Navigating the 'Agentic AI Moment'

The launch of SmartAI Ops is timed to coincide with what ServiceNow is calling its 'agentic AI moment.' At Knowledge 2026, ServiceNow heavily promoted its vision for a future where autonomous AI agents perform complex, multi-step tasks. With advancements like the 'Build Agent' and 'Fluent' natural language interface, ServiceNow is empowering AI to do more than just answer questions; it's enabling AI to take action.

This evolution, however, introduces new complexities. As AI agents begin to invoke a wide array of tools and services via technologies like the Model Context Protocol (MCP), the underlying activity can become a 'black box' for platform owners. Each action has a cost, a performance signature, and a potential point of failure. Without observability, this growing agent activity could lead to spiraling costs and unforeseen operational risks.

SmartAI Ops is engineered specifically for this new reality. It provides native observability into MCP server activity, tracking tool invocation trends and identifying high-error sources. This capability transforms agentic AI from a potential governance liability into a measurable and manageable operational asset. For regulated enterprises in finance, healthcare, and other sectors served by C1Secure, this level of detailed observability is not just a best practice—it is a core requirement for scaling AI safely.

A Deeper Look at SmartAI Ops

To deliver this comprehensive visibility, SmartAI Ops is organized across five distinct workspaces built natively within ServiceNow, ensuring a seamless user experience for platform owners.

• Overview: An executive command center provides a high-level dashboard of key metrics, including total AI spend, the number of active developers and users, cost breakdowns by AI system, and productivity session volumes.

• Economics: This workspace offers detailed cost attribution, allowing organizations to see exactly which AI systems and models are driving spend. Its proactive insights are designed to flag potential budget overages before they become a problem.

• Developer & User Productivity: Two separate workspaces are dedicated to measuring the human impact of AI. The Developer Productivity dashboard tracks AI tool adoption, session volumes, and request rates, arming platform owners with data to prove ROI. The User Productivity workspace provides similar visibility into end-user interactions, showing trends in usage and cost per active user.

• MCP & Tools: As agentic AI scales, this dedicated workspace becomes crucial. It tracks MCP server activity, invocation trends, and error sources, delivering the native observability needed to manage autonomous AI workflows.

• Alerts: An operational alerting layer surfaces issues by severity, from stale and failed connectors to anomalous system behavior, enabling operations teams to resolve problems proactively before they impact governed workflows.

"AI Control Tower is one of the most important enterprise software innovations of our generation," said Tom Thomson, CEO of C1Secure, in the company's announcement. "What our customers tell us is that alongside those rules and rails, they need complementary visibility into what AI is costing them, whether their teams are getting real value, and where risks are forming before they become problems. SmartAI Ops delivers exactly that."

The Power of Partnership in the AI Ecosystem

C1Secure's recognition as the ServiceNow 2026 AMS Breakthrough Transformation Partner of the Year highlights a critical trend in the enterprise software market: the power of a symbiotic ecosystem. Platforms like ServiceNow provide the foundation, but specialized partners like C1Secure build the targeted solutions that address specific, high-stakes customer needs.

The award honors partners who redefine work by delivering significant improvements in productivity and business outcomes. C1Secure's focus on AI-driven compliance, security, and risk intelligence for regulated industries has positioned it as a key enabler for enterprises looking to adopt AI safely.

With SmartAI Ops, the company deepens this role, enhancing the core value of the ServiceNow AI platform. By providing a solution that is built natively on ServiceNow and designed to complement its flagship AI governance product, C1Secure is helping customers maximize their existing platform investments. This approach demonstrates how a strong partner ecosystem accelerates innovation, filling crucial gaps and making the entire platform more powerful for every customer. SmartAI Ops is available now directly from C1Secure and is expected to be listed on the ServiceNow App Store soon.