Since launching two years ago, Serval has positioned itself as an “AI-native” alternative to incumbent IT service management (ITSM) software vendors, promising to simplify the automation of helpdesk workflows.
Serval’s ITSM platform includes a workflow builder that uses a natural language interface to build code-based workflows. While vendors such as Freshworks and ServiceNow also have workflow automation tools in their products, Serval claims its approach makes automating a recurring task quicker than completing it manually, resulting in more tickets resolved automatically.
Serval — whose customers now include Spotify, Fox, and Live Nation — has received significant venture funding from Sequoia and others, and was most recently valued at around $1 billion.
With its latest product update, Catalyst — made generally available last week — Serval promises to take on more of the work needed to build and deploy workflow automations. That includes analyzing ticket histories and other data to identify processes to automate, then configuring settings and connecting integrations to help put those automations into production.
Catalyst also lets admins create long-running background agents that detect problems using historical tickets and other data, proposing fixes before employees even run into an issue, according to Serval. Use case examples include identifying security vulnerabilities, reclaiming unused software licenses, and repairing failed workflows.
Computerworld spoke to Serval CEO and co-founder Jake Stauch about the company’s approach to IT automation and how Serval believes it can differentiate from established ITSM vendors.
The following transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.
What are the biggest challenges IT teams face when resolving employee requests? “Traditional ITSM tools are built to track tickets; Serval is built to resolve requests. These tools do a very good job of saying that you have work to do, but that doesn’t do anything for the employee. The problem with employee support is really around automation: somebody has to go and build all the automations employees need.
“Historically, automations have been built in ITSMs as an afterthought, with drag-and-drop workflow builders. You build out these giant flow diagrams; they take months to build and then someone has to maintain them. But what happens when the business process changes, or you’ve got a new approval step for password resets? You’re doing surgery on all these different workflows.
“Where we differentiate is making automation easier. We think that the best way to build automations is not a drag-and-drop workflow builder, but letting AI do what it does best, which is to write code. Our code generation agent builds workflows for large enterprises to automate not just simple help desk requests, such as password resets, but longer employee journeys, including onboarding and offboarding, job changes, and reporting requirements.”
What are the main components of the Serval platform? And how does Catalyst fit in? “You can think of the system as two agents, though obviously it’s more complicated than this.
“There’s a help desk agent for employees. An employee can say, ‘I’m locked out of my computer,’ ‘What’s our Wi-Fi password?’ or ‘My laptop stopped working,’ in Slack and Teams, over the phone, or via email — and the agent resolves it right there.
“We have a separate agent, called Catalyst, that builds those automations. Admins talk to Catalyst, which can build any automation, like password reset workflows, onboarding, offboarding, reporting. Then it helps deploy them either for the help desk agent to resolve employee requests, or for others on the team to use. It even builds background agents that do investigations, pull data from different systems, and come back with reports and propose new workflows.
“The old Workflow Builder was more limited, in that it translated your prompt into code and created a code-based workflow. You could say, ‘I want a workflow that resets a Microsoft Entra password,’ and it could build that.
“With Catalyst, you can say, ‘Build a bunch of password-reset workflows for all the different [identity providers] that we have,’ and it’ll build workflows for Okta, Google, and Microsoft, with awareness of what’s already been built.
