Why does ServiceNow have the right to win for the use case of being a skin on top of HR, over competitors such as Salesforce, Microsoft or anyone else?

Enterprises already had a ServiceNow relationship within the ITO function, so in a way they had an inroad into the enterprise. Their product was also ready from a workflow capability perspective. It is no different than building the business because you leverage workflow capability, process orchestration and integration with ERPs. They already had the CMDB setup with the hierarchy and org structure, which is all replicated so you can also leverage that for HR workflows. Those are the reasons why they have the right to win in this space, compared to a pure play. In my previous life, I implemented a pure play workflow engine but it is a technology layer and nothing else. Everything for you to hook on and connect to would be 100% custom.

I know it's still evolving but do you see it more as a tailwind or a head wind?

I consider that an opportunity. Another way to answer your question is if I have a million incremental dollars on R&D, should I build commercial workflows to try win in this space, or choose to win in the observability space? There is no doubt in my mind that every dollar they have should be put in this space instead of changing their focus and trying to be everything to everyone.