451 IT Insider: A roundup for IT decision-makers (August)

Introduction

Agentic AI introduces complexity into identity management, especially with the rise of nonhuman identities such as machine identities and service accounts, requiring better strategies to ensure security and principle adherence. Generative AI lowers the skills barrier for data analytics, enabling broader participation through features including summaries, natural language queries and visualizations, thus transforming data-driven decision-making. These technological advancements, along with the emerging influence of the metaverse, are reshaping digital interactions and offering organizations new opportunities for operational optimization and strategic evolution.

The Take

Agentic AI is adding complexity to the field of identity management, particularly with the proliferation of nonhuman identities (NHIs) such as machine identities and service accounts. As these NHIs increasingly outnumber human identities, there is a pressing need for improved identity management strategies to maintain security and adhere to principles such as least privilege. This challenge is compounded by the rise of agentic process automation, which demands cohesive platforms that facilitate cross-agent collaboration and domain-specific intelligence.

Generative AI plays a pivotal role in this landscape by lowering the skills barrier to data analytics. It enables more individuals to participate in data-driven decision-making through features such as auto-generated narrative summaries, natural language queries and automated visualizations. These advancements in generative AI are enhancing data analytics and driving the evolution of agentic process automation, offering businesses significant opportunities to optimize operations and improve strategic planning. As organizations navigate these technological shifts, they must also prepare for the transformative impact of the metaverse, which is reshaping digital interaction and engagement.

AI in focus: AI agent identities

Agentic AI complicates an already complicated picture around NHIs. NHIs — such as machine identities, service accounts and application credentials — have always been a distinctive part of identity management, where approaches focus on persistent credentials for human users rather than emphasizing ephemeral access for machine users. Some reports indicate that NHIs outnumber human identities by a ratio of 50-to-1. Managing the sprawl of these identities, including permissions that maintain the principle of least privilege and knowing who owns what, has long been a challenge for security teams.

However, NHIs are a vital component of automation strategies. Some key challenges include a lack of visibility into activity and related difficulties in auditing, over-permissioning and application security, such as secrets management. The deployment of agentic AI, especially agents acting on behalf of users, promises to make an already complex issue even more complicated. In fact, agent behavior blurs the line between human users and NHIs. Two-fifths (41%) of enterprises already use third-party security tools to help manage NHIs, 18% are running proof-of-concept projects, and another 15% plan to implement them within the next six months.

Figure 1: Implementation status of third-party security tools for managing non-human identities (%)

Key trend: Analytics platforms market to exceed $41B in 2029

Data-driven decision-making is the primary outcome driving the growth of analytics platforms. Indeed, 50% of respondents to 451 Research's Voice of the Enterprise: Data & Analytics, Generative AI 2024 survey said their organization uses analytics tools/platforms to help inform most of their strategic decisions. However, many organizations wish to increase this adoption rate to maximize the benefits of collecting and analyzing their valuable data assets. These benefits include improved operational efficiency, increased competitiveness, faster time to market with new products, and better customer satisfaction, and they function as additional drivers of analytics platform growth.

451 Research's latest market sizing and forecast update highlights the size, competitive dynamics and expected growth for the data science and analytics market, as well as its two components: data science platforms and analytics platforms. We expect the analytics platforms market to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 7.4% to reach over $41 billion in 2029. Our market forecast is generated from a bottom-up analysis of 65 vendors.

Figure 2: Analytics platforms global revenue ($M)

Generative AI-driven functionality is framed as the latest enabler of self-service analytics, owing to its potential to reduce the skills barrier to data analysis for individuals with few data and analytics skills. Auto-generated narrative summaries to assist this audience with understanding and contextualizing insights, natural language queries to enable users to question and explore data without SQL skills, and automated visualizations to graphically depict analysis are increasingly available in analytics platforms to help with do-it-yourself analytics. Recommendations on preparing or analyzing data are another example of this functionality.

"One of the things that we're doing is, AI can scan sets of data. And what used to be a couple of analysts sitting in a room for weeks mapping data, like if you're doing big electronic health record [EHR] systems … now we use AI to get that 99% right out the gate, and then we just have to manage the exceptions."

Source: Education respondent, 451 Research Voice of the Customer in-depth interview, June 2025.

Embedded analytics is another growth driver for the analytics platform market. This represents another self-service analysis approach to assist with data-driven decision-making, designed to be familiar to business decision-makers because it delivers data and insight within the apps these individuals already use. Product managers and data teams increasingly use analytics platforms to create embedded analytics for business decision-makers and customers, offering an alternative to spending time learning their offerings for time-poor businesspeople.

Emerging tech: Metaverse and agentic process automation

Comparing survey results year over year portrays a warming market for the consumer metaverse: A relatively steady rate of respondents making transactions, a slightly more positive outlook on the presence of display ads, and significant amelioration of concerns around payments, security and privacy. These factors set the stage for continued user and revenue growth for top metaverse-leaning operations, such as Minecraft, Roblox and Fortnite. However, it may be harder for smaller, emerging players to break through. The percentage of adults who reported using metaverse apps or experiences grew by 8 percentage points to nearly 56% in S&P Global Market Intelligence's 2025 Worldwide Consumer Metaverse Survey compared with the survey fielded a year ago — an increase that underlines the growing role virtual spaces are playing in our day-to-day lives.

Figure 3: Used or experienced any metaverse apps or services (%)

The results suggest that further metaverse growth may depend on shifting the core content and marketing message away from a games-first approach and toward emphasizing the multimedia potential of the format, something that Epic Games is reportedly attempting with its Disney integration. Platform holders, publishers and creators are well-positioned to seek out new users as concerns around the metaverse appear to be eroding. Respondents in 2025 were noticeably less concerned about each of the potential pressure points we asked about compared to 2024.

CTOs should track consumer adoption of the metaverse as it signifies a transformative digital interaction and engagement shift that directly impacts their technology strategies. As more consumers engage with virtual environments, CTOs must adapt their infrastructure, data security measures, and user experience designs to meet evolving consumer behaviors. Understanding this trend allows IT to help businesses remain competitive, innovate product development, and explore new revenue generation opportunities. By staying informed about the metaverse, CTOs can align their organizations with emerging technologies and consumer expectations, ensuring they effectively leverage this digital frontier for business growth.

Amid a market shifting from generalized AI hype to targeted process automation

The agentic process automation market is maturing rapidly, driven by real enterprise demand for systems that can think, act and adapt. The past 12 months have seen significant advances in agent orchestration, enterprise integration, trust frameworks and usability. As vendors compete to offer full life-cycle support for autonomous agents — from design to deployment to optimization — buyers increasingly seek cohesive, secure platforms that align with business goals, not just technical potential. The next adoption phase will likely focus on cross-agent collaboration, domain-specific intelligence and agent performance governance — the pillars upon which true enterprise-grade agentic automation will be built.

Figure 4: Intelligent automation platforms segment share (%)

"[Our top executive] is very pro-AI, so you are allowed to submit requisitions for AI tools that you'd like to use. But there are no official workflows as yet within the organization. Everybody is just playing around with it on their own .… Some engineers are building their own tooling to make their own workflows faster … and some guys are building some core AI solutions."

Source: Financial services respondent, 451 Research Voice of the Customer in-depth interview, July 2025.

S&P Global Market Intelligence 451 Research's Intelligent Automation Platforms Market Monitor & Forecast report estimates that the market for intelligent automation platforms (unified platforms equipped with capabilities that can include business and robotic process automation, process discovery, intelligent document processing and emerging agentic process automation) has surpassed $26 billion in revenue as of 2024, with projections indicating it will exceed $62 billion by 2029, reflecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.1%. This growth is particularly evident in the agentic process automation segment, which is forecast to grow at an impressive CAGR of 62.7%.

M&A In Focus: Verint and Workday

Thoma Bravo takes Verint private for $1.9B, plans to combine it with Calabrio

Customer experience is a fragmented market composed of incumbents with extensive portfolios and a long tail of emerging AI-enabled startups across various categories — including advertising technology, marketing technology, sales, digital experience and commerce, and customer service. This signals a sector that is ripe for consolidation. Verint and Calabrio have sought to accelerate their respective AI roadmaps via strategic M&A. Bringing them together is a logical next step, likely driven by Verint's broad market footprint. The combined entity could be a strong competitor against industry heavyweights Cisco Systems Inc. and NICE Ltd. Moreover, the deal could spur further consolidation, with incumbents looking to remain relevant by building on their existing market share.

Workday strengthens standing in AI-driven front-line recruitment space with Paradox buy
Workday Inc.'s purchase of Paradox signals its intention to fortify the capabilities of its agentic AI for automating HR processes, particularly in talent acquisition and recruiting. Paradox's sophisticated AI assistant, Olivia, boasts an impressive track record of improved hiring efficiency metrics and enhanced candidate experiences, especially in high-volume, front line hiring. This strong performance and the company's billion-dollar post-money valuation likely compelled Workday to pursue Paradox over similar vendors in the burgeoning AI recruiter automation space.

Notable companies

Platformr.Cloud Inc. (dba Platformr) automates AWS CloudOps with a cloud management platform, centralizes AWS cloud operations and organizational governance (AWS Organization, AWS Control Tower, AWS Landing Zone, Security Hub), configures and deploys well-architected workloads (continuous integration/delivery pipelines, disaster recovery, development environments, etc.) and provides observability (monitoring and management across cost, security, reliability and performance with supported compliances).

EightFold AI Inc.'s Talent Intelligence Platform stands out for its deep-learning foundation that powers high-precision talent matching, career path prediction and skills inference across the talent life cycle. Its AI Recruiter Agent and Digital Twin-activated agents automate workflows and simulate workforce decisions, enhancing speed-to-hire and strategic planning.

Alteryx Inc. is not a newcomer to data preparation, data wrangling or data engineering, but has expanded its scope over the years via multiple acquisitions. Now catering to data engineering and analyst functions, Alteryx is attempting to streamline the packaging and adoption of relevant cloud-based features via Alteryx One. As businesses become more motivated to curate and deliver data for AI use cases, Alteryx is positioning Alteryx One as a unified platform for automated analytics and AI-ready data — a "clearinghouse" for enterprise data products.

Emplifi Inc. offers three distinct tools in a single platform: Social Marketing, Social Commerce and Social Customer Care, and an integrated offshoot for Service & Agent Case Management. In early 2025, Emplifi launched Emplifi Fuel, a generative AI tool designed to enhance customer engagement across its product suite. While still early in rollout, Fuel represents the company's broader effort to unify its platform and improve automation, content generation and service response across social marketing and care workflows.

ProsperOps Inc. provides a single, automated FinOps mechanism that includes autonomous discount management (i.e., automated rate optimization) and autonomous resource management (workload optimization). The toolset was initially driven by the ProsperOps Scheduler, and the vendor is now looking to extend it to enable opportunistic optimization that can adapt to opportunities presented by rate and workload optimization against multicloud deployments.

Simbian Inc. offers five AI agents, each tied to specific security use cases: AI SOC for the security operations center; AI Threat Hunt; AI VRM for vulnerability and risk management; AI CTEM for continuous threat and exposure management; and AI GRC for governance, risk and compliance tasks. The AI SOC agent and AI GRC Agent are generally available, and the others are in various stages of development and testing. The vendor's agents are designed to be fully autonomous systems built on top of LLMs and other security systems — ingesting signals, synthesizing insights, reasoning and making decisions in real time.

LightBend Inc. (dba Akka) is building out an enterprise agentic AI system development environment for all use cases. The company notes that over 50 customers are using it for AI development, with its largest clients having 20-plus agents. While most agentic approaches are focused on rapid prototyping, Model Context Protocol and Agent2Agent, Akka identifies a need to simplify the delivery of enterprise-scale, production-ready systems; orchestration of multiple agents with complex event processing; and integration with other transactional IT systems.

LambdaTest Inc. supports enterprise software testing and quality assurance with a unified test engineering cloud platform that automates and accelerates testing processes by deploying generative AI agents to write tests and perform other tasks. The platform supports an array of software frameworks, languages, tools and APIs and several types of tests, from unit to performance testing.

Seclore Inc.'s platform addresses four functions: protect, monitor, discover and classify. These controls have recently been extended for AI and GenAI use cases to ensure that data is appropriately deployed when working with AI- and GenAI-enabled tools. Customers can control and create policies that can be copied or pasted into a public LLM and monitor activity and attempts over time. Furthermore, Seclore-protected files cannot be indexed by enterprise GenAI tooling such as Copilot and Microsoft 365 by default.

WellSaid Labs Inc. has two main offerings: Studio and API. Studio is a cloud-based platform that allows users to generate and edit voice content using a library of several hundred voice styles. The platform includes controls for adjusting pitch, speed, emphasis, pauses and pronunciation. Users can build a custom pronunciation library to support consistent pronunciation of technical or branded terms. Studio also includes collaboration tools such as Workspaces and version control commenting, helping teams produce consistent and controlled outputs.

What to watch

As we look to the future, the convergence of agentic AI, process automation and generative AI is set to redefine the technological landscape. Organizations must remain vigilant and adaptive, embracing these innovations to drive efficiency and strategic growth. The evolving role of nonhuman identities and the complexities they introduce will require robust identity management solutions. Meanwhile, the transformative potential of the metaverse looms, promising to alter digital interaction and engagement further. By staying informed and proactive, businesses can position themselves at the forefront of these emerging technologies, ready to harness their full potential for competitive advantage.

These developments will play a crucial role in shaping the future of enterprise technology, offering new opportunities and challenges for businesses worldwide. S&P Global Market Intelligence 451 Research provides essential insight into the pace and extent of digital transformation across the global technology landscape. 451 Research offers differentiated insight and data on adoption, innovation and disruption across the technology markets, backed by a global team of industry experts. As the enterprise technology landscape evolves, several key trends emerge. Keeping an eye on these developments will be essential for organizations aiming to navigate the complexities of digital transformation successfully.