ServiceNow acquires FriendlyData to Help People Work Better In Their Own Language

[Martin Barclay]

ServiceNow is acquiring FriendlyData to deliver Natural Language Query (NLQ) to the Now Platform and across our products. FriendlyData, based in San Francisco, is an NLQ interface for enterprise data that enables anyone to enter conversational queries in plain English and get instant results in the form of direct answers or data visualizations in Performance Analytics dashboards and reports.

FriendlyData’s technology uses semantic parsing, grammar engineering, and machine learning capabilities that allow it to power highly intelligent human-like conversations within any enterprise.

FriendlyData's NLQ interface will make it easier for non-technical users to get answers about their work. Our plan is to re-platform their technology and extend the Now Platform’s intelligence capabilities by making NLQ available across all ServiceNow applications in IT, HR, CSM, and Security as well as custom apps and ISV partner apps. This will include an interface that our customers, partners, and developers can use to add natural language conversational queries in their apps for their use cases. 

FriendlyData provides a simple Google-like interface which accepts plain text or voice input and returns data insights in the form of direct answers or data visualizations (tables, charts, graphs). NLQ can be integrated and used in conjunction with the Natural Language Understanding (NLU) technology from the Parlo acquisition. For example, Virtual Agent will be able to determine the intent of a question using Parlo NLU, and decide what to do next, calling on FriendlyData NLQ when the intent is a quantitative data query.

ServiceNow expects FriendlyData technology to be embedded in the Now Platform™ by Orlando release and offered across some of our applications: IT, Security Operations, Customer Service, HR, and Intelligent Apps.

Welcome to the FriendlyData team!