ServiceNow May Acquire Boomi, A Fortune 500 Company to Sue a B2B Vendor: Forrester 2026 Predictions

Forrester, the global research and advisory firm, closed its 2026 Predictions India event in Bengaluru on December 5. 

The firm outlined a set of forecasts that signal stricter oversight of AI investments, stronger governance expectations, and a shift back to core technology fundamentals.

Among the eight predictions the firm made, it expects global workflow automation giant ServiceNow to acquire Boomi, the integration platform provider.

“We’ve seen the iPaaS [Integration Platform as a Service] market being a prime acquisition target for the last seven years,” said Leslie Joseph, principal analyst at Forrester, in a keynote. He pointed towards how Salesforce made a similar acquisition of MuleSoft in 2018.

“ServiceNow and Boomi have made interesting moves over the last two years — to bring their products, portfolios, and GTMs [go-to-market strategies] closer,” said Joseph, highlighting it wouldn’t be a surprise if the acquisition takes place. 

Joseph said the prediction reflects a broader shift away from an app-centric enterprise architecture toward one in which data, domain logic, and AI capabilities sit outside individual applications and are coordinated through agents and orchestration layers. 

In this model, iPaaS platforms become the control point that connects and governs how work flows across systems and AI agents. 

Because ServiceNow is trying to strengthen its position in these orchestration and governance layers, he said, acquiring Boomi fits the direction of the market, with iPaaS moving to the centre of enterprise architecture.

Currently, ServiceNow and Boomi have a publicly recognised strategic partnership, where the latter offers API management and integration solutions specifically targeting ServiceNow’s platform. 

The predicted acquisition underscores Forrester’s advice for Indian enterprises to rationalise their integration stacks. The firm stated, “As integration platforms become the control plane for AI orchestration, Indian enterprises will need to rationalise overlapping iPaaS and workflow tools.”

Other 2026 Predictions: AI Governance, Technical Debt, Cloud Sovereignty

Another major prediction was that a chief information officer of a Global 1000 company would declare “technical debt bankruptcy,” highlighting that legacy estates consume nearly 60-80% of IT budgets. 

For Indian enterprises with ageing ERP systems, Forrester expects more outsourcing of legacy operations and increased investment in cloud-native platforms.

Another prediction stated that “20% of Indian brands will miss cost targets or lose trust in vendors after overpromising on AI.” This was attributed to the customer service leaders failing to realise the expected cost savings from AI. 

Leaders will face pressure to ‘renegotiate contracts and reimagine stagnant service categories to restore trust and efficiency.’

On a similar note of the misrepresentation of generative AI’s capabilities, Forrester stated in another prediction that it will lead to one Fortune 500 company suing a B2B provider. “As Indian enterprises scale AI-driven marketing and sales, governance lapses will result in misinformation and legal disputes.”

Other predictions include Indian CIOs being drawn in to fix AI deployments launched without adequate governance. Forrester expects a quarter of CIOs to be tasked with bailing out business-led AI projects that were running ahead of technical and risk checks, particularly in sectors such as banking and insurance, where adoption has accelerated.

The firm also said AI and digital sovereignty will drive a double-digit year-over-year growth for the private cloud ecosystem.  

“India’s data localisation laws and the National Quantum Mission will amplify demand for sovereign hybrid cloud architectures,” Forrester stated, adding that enterprises will prioritise private cloud for sensitive workloads and AI model training to mitigate geopolitical risks and ensure compliance with emerging sovereignty mandates.

Forrester also added that Indian organisations will move from AI experimentation to measurable outcomes as regulators and customers demand greater clarity on how AI systems operate. 

It expects enterprises to face rising scrutiny on transparency and impact as AI becomes embedded in core business processes. In customer operations, Forrester predicts that three in ten enterprises will restructure teams to embed AI agents alongside human staff. 

The firm said progress will depend on integrating these systems into legacy workflows and on managing tacit knowledge that AI tools cannot yet reliably capture.

Summarising the outlook, Ashutosh Sharma, VP and principal analyst at Forrester, said organisations would need to shift from early-stage AI enthusiasm to disciplined execution: “Leaders must move beyond the initial AI euphoria and embrace pragmatic innovation that drives business value. This means doubling down on governance, transparency, and measurable outcomes.”

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