Pyramid Analytics & AI - frequently asked questions

AI agents built on other platforms can increasingly use Pyramid's semantic layer: this is exactly the direction ServiceNow has said it wants to take the acquisition: using Pyramid's semantic layer as shared, trusted ground truth that AI agents across ServiceNow's platform can reason against, reducing the risk of agents hallucinating figures or contradicting each other. That capability is still rolling out rather than fully mature at the time of writing.

Yes — Hopton can advise you if you're evaluating ServiceNow and Pyramid together for the first time. This is a common starting point for organisations that use ServiceNow for IT, HR, or supply chain workflows and want to understand what embedding governed analytics into those workflows would actually look like and cost, before committing to either platform in more depth.

Hopton can help you decide between Pyramid and Power BI rather than assuming Pyramid is the answer, and we would rather have that conversation honestly upfront. If your data estate is genuinely Microsoft-centric and your governance and cost profile favours Power BI, we will tell you that directly rather than push Pyramid because we are a partner for both. The right platform depends on your data sources, deployment constraints, and existing Microsoft investment, not on which one earns us a larger margin.

Yes — Pyramid Analytics can be deployed on-premise. Unlike many modern BI platforms that are cloud-only, Pyramid supports cloud (SaaS), on-premise, and hybrid deployment. This makes it suitable for regulated industries - such as financial services, healthcare, and public sector - where data residency, sovereignty, or security requirements prevent cloud-only deployments.

Yes — Pyramid can be deployed for a subset of users first rather than the whole organisation, and we would usually recommend it. A phased rollout - starting with a specific business function or a defined group of power users - lets you prove value, refine the semantic model, and build internal champions before extending licences more broadly, which tends to produce better adoption than a big-bang organisation-wide launch.

There is a webhook-based connection to Microsoft Teams for alerts and notifications. Deeper native integration with Microsoft Office or Google Workspace applications is more limited than some competing tools, which is worth knowing if embedded Office collaboration is a priority for your rollout.

Yes — Pyramid can do data science and machine learning, not just dashboards. Data science is one of the three pillars Pyramid combines with data preparation and business analytics, and the platform supports building and applying predictive models as part of the same workflow used for reporting, rather than requiring a separate specialist tool.

Yes — Pyramid can embed inside applications other than ServiceNow. Embedded analytics in Pyramid is not exclusive to ServiceNow - dashboards and GenBI can be embedded inside other internal applications and portals as well. ServiceNow is simply the most direct embedding path now that Pyramid is part of the same company.

Yes, SAP is one of the source systems Pyramid connects to directly, alongside the major cloud data platforms, which is relevant for organisations running SAP alongside Microsoft or other analytics infrastructure.

Pyramid can work alongside Microsoft Fabric or Snowflake rather than replacing them, and this is the most common pattern we see. Pyramid connects directly to Fabric, Snowflake, Databricks, Azure Synapse, Redshift, and SAP among many others, so it typically sits as an analytics and semantic layer on top of whatever platform already holds your data, rather than requiring you to migrate that data anywhere first.

Yes — access and functionality can be tailored by user type. Pyramid uses profiles to tailor which modules and functionality a given user sees, so a casual report viewer is not presented with the same modelling and authoring tools as an analyst or data scientist, which helps avoid the platform feeling overwhelming to less technical users.

No — you do not need Pyramid already deployed before Hopton can help with ServiceNow embedding. We can scope and deliver the Pyramid platform and the ServiceNow embedding together as one engagement if you are starting from scratch, or add embedding to an existing Pyramid deployment if you already have one running standalone.

No — you do not need to be a ServiceNow customer to use Pyramid Analytics. Pyramid remains usable as a standalone decision intelligence platform independent of ServiceNow's other products. The embedded workflow scenarios are additive for organisations that run both, not a requirement to use Pyramid at all.

Generative BI does not eliminate the need for a BI or analytics team, and we would be sceptical of anyone claiming it does. GenBI reduces the volume of ad hoc, repetitive questions that land on an analytics team, freeing them for higher-value modelling and strategic work. It does not remove the need for someone to build and maintain the semantic model, connections, and governance that make GenBI's answers trustworthy in the first place.

Hopton implements only the analytics layer, not ServiceNow itself. We are not a ServiceNow platform implementation partner in the ITSM or ITOM sense, and we do not build or configure core ServiceNow workflows, tables, or modules. Our ServiceNow partner status specifically covers embedding Pyramid's decision intelligence platform into a ServiceNow environment that a client already has, or is implementing with a dedicated ServiceNow partner alongside us. It is the same division of labour we apply on Business Central: we work with the platform partner, not as the platform partner.

No — Hopton does not only work with clients who are also on ServiceNow. Most of our Pyramid work is independent of ServiceNow. We do the embedded-in-ServiceNow work for clients where that is relevant, but Pyramid stands on its own as a decision intelligence platform for clients with no ServiceNow footprint at all.

Yes — Pyramid Analytics does work with non-Microsoft data sources. Pyramid Analytics connects directly to over 250 data sources - including Azure, Snowflake, SAP, Salesforce, Google BigQuery, SQL Server, Oracle, and many others - querying data in place without requiring it to be moved or duplicated. This makes it particularly well suited to organisations with complex, multi-cloud, or hybrid data environments. It is not tied to any single vendor ecosystem.

Pyramid does not charge per user in the same simple per-seat way that Power BI does. Because pricing reflects role mix and deployment scale rather than a flat per-user rate, the total cost is more sensitive to how many higher-tier (Analyst and Professional) seats you provision than to your total viewer population. Getting that role mix right is one of the first cost-optimisation conversations we have with clients evaluating Pyramid.

Yes — Pyramid does have a universal client across devices. Pyramid uses a single client architecture that works across web, desktop, and mobile, so the same content and permissions apply regardless of the device a user opens it from.

Pyramid and ServiceNow Performance Analytics are not the same thing, and ServiceNow has not indicated it is retiring either. Pyramid adds a broader, cross-source decision intelligence layer - direct query across 250-plus sources, data science, and Generative BI - that extends well beyond the scope of ServiceNow's built-in reporting, which is more narrowly focused on ServiceNow's own data.

Pyramid does not necessarily require an ETL or data warehouse layer underneath it. Its direct query model is designed to work against operational systems and warehouses alike without a mandatory extraction step. That said, for very large or complex estates, having a well-modelled warehouse or lakehouse underneath still improves performance and simplifies the semantic model, so we do not treat direct query as a reason to skip good data architecture altogether.

Yes — Pyramid does support predictive analytics as well as descriptive dashboards. Its data science module supports forecasting and predictive modelling as a native part of the platform, rather than requiring the output of a separate data science tool to be re-imported for visualisation.

Yes, Pyramid's Model module supports conventional dimensional modelling, and organisations moving between the two platforms generally find their existing star-schema thinking transfers, even though the underlying engines and calculation languages differ.

A Pyramid rollout does not necessarily need a large dedicated internal team, but you do need clear ownership - typically an admin or platform owner internally, supported by power users in each business area. We build enablement into every engagement specifically so that capability sits inside your organisation rather than staying dependent on us indefinitely.

Being part of ServiceNow makes Pyramid both a safer and a riskier choice for new deployments, in different ways. It is a safer choice in the sense that Pyramid now sits inside a much larger, well-capitalised platform business with a clear strategic rationale for continued investment in its core technology (the semantic layer and direct query engine). It carries more uncertainty in the sense that product roadmaps, packaging, and pricing under new ownership can shift, and it is too early to say exactly how. We talk clients through both sides rather than only the reassuring one.

Neither the Partner of the Year status nor Hopton's accreditation changes now that Pyramid is part of ServiceNow — not that has been announced. Existing partner accreditations and recognitions carried over at close of the acquisition. Whether ServiceNow changes the structure of Pyramid's partner programme going forward is one of the things we are watching, in the same way we are watching the wider product roadmap.

The ServiceNow acquisition does not change Pyramid's data governance model — not that has been announced. ServiceNow's own positioning emphasises trusted governance as a selling point of the combined offering, which suggests continuity rather than a weakening of Pyramid's governance model, but this is an area we would want to see demonstrated in practice as the integration matures rather than take purely on messaging.

The acquisition does not immediately change what Pyramid does technically. ServiceNow has stated its intention to integrate Pyramid's semantic modelling and direct query capabilities into its Now AI Platform, with reported synergy between Pyramid's PYRANA query engine and ServiceNow's RaptorDB Pro to support real-time decision-making at the platform level. This is a roadmap direction rather than something that changed on day one of close.

Email hello@hoptonanalytics.com or use the contact details on hoptonanalytics.com. The first conversation is typically a short discovery discussion about your current data landscape and where Pyramid might genuinely add value, rather than a generic product demo.

To start a ServiceNow and Pyramid conversation with Hopton, email hello@hoptonanalytics.com. Tell us where you currently stand with ServiceNow and Pyramid individually - whether you have neither, one, or both already - and we will scope the conversation accordingly rather than assume a starting point.

Pyramid Analytics and Power BI are both enterprise-grade analytics platforms, but they solve different problems. Power BI is a Microsoft-native dashboarding and reporting tool - it excels within the Microsoft ecosystem and is best suited to organisations with strong Microsoft investment and primarily dashboard-driven use cases. Pyramid Analytics is a governed decision intelligence platform - it excels at serving mixed user populations, querying diverse non-Microsoft data sources, delivering Generative BI at scale, and supporting on-premise or hybrid deployments. Many large organisations use both. Hopton works with both platforms and will recommend the right fit for your situation.

Compared to Power BI, Pyramid takes a different approach: Power BI is deeply embedded in the Microsoft ecosystem and licensed simply per user, with a large community and rapid feature release cadence. Pyramid's advantages are its single-platform breadth (BI, data prep, and data science together), its direct query model across a very wide range of non-Microsoft sources, and its role-based rather than strictly per-user licensing at scale. Which is right depends heavily on how Microsoft-centric your data estate already is and whether you need the data science and cross-source querying Pyramid brings natively.

Pyramid handles row-level security by controlling access down to the row level, so two users looking at the same report or the same GenBI answer only see the rows their role and permissions entitle them to, which matters as much for AI-generated answers as it does for traditional dashboards.

PYRANA is designed for in-place querying against large datasets without requiring the data to be moved into an in-memory model first, and Pyramid also supports in-memory and hybrid model types where that suits performance needs better. Which mode is right depends on data volume, refresh frequency, and query pattern, and this is one of the first things we assess in a Pyramid discovery phase.

Pyramid supports auditing and compliance through built-in auditing and usage monitoring, which tracks who accessed what content and when. This supports both general compliance requirements and the more practical need to understand which content is actually being used, so licensing and governance decisions can be based on real usage rather than assumption.

Pyramid's Generative BI and Copilot in Power BI both aim to let business users ask questions in plain English, but they are grounded in different semantic layers - Pyramid's own model versus Power BI's dataset and measures - and Pyramid's GenBI has a longer track record specifically as a dedicated natural-language querying capability, having been a core part of the product before generative AI became a mainstream BI feature. In practice, the better answer depends on which platform already holds your governed semantic definitions.

UX design factors significantly into a Pyramid rollout. A platform this capable can overwhelm business users if every module and function is exposed by default, which is a criticism levelled at Pyramid in independent reviews. Designing interfaces and dashboards around how your specific users actually work, rather than accepting default templates, is one of the areas we focus on most, and it is a meaningful driver of adoption versus a standard deployment.

Every answer GenBI produces is generated against the same semantic model, row-level security, and role-based permissions that apply to every other part of the platform. A user cannot get an answer through natural language that they could not have reached through a standard report, which is the key distinction Pyramid draws between GenBI and an ungoverned AI chat layer sitting outside the BI tool.

Pyramid Analytics pricing is quote-based rather than published as a fixed price list, and varies by deployment size, user mix, and data volume. Licensing is typically structured around user roles - broadly Viewers, Analysts, and Professionals (data scientists and BI architects) - with cost driven far more by how many Professional and Analyst seats you need than by total headcount using the platform.

Hopton's own Pyramid platform implementations - environment setup, data source connections, semantic modelling, and security configuration - typically go live in eight to twelve weeks. Timelines extend for larger data estates, more complex governance requirements, or a higher number of source systems to connect.

Documenting a Pyramid semantic layer properly takes about a day for most mid-market deployments: gathering the people who understand the current definitions, writing them down against each metric and dimension, and agreeing the version everyone will use going forward. Treat the output as a living document rather than a one-off exercise, and set aside similar time each year to keep it current as the business changes.

Hopton does not publish the exact date it became a Pyramid partner. Pyramid has been part of Hopton's practice for a meaningful part of our history, alongside the eight years of governed analytics delivery for UK and Ireland organisations that sits across our wider Microsoft and Pyramid work combined.

Pyramid ships with more than 250 built-in connectors, spanning cloud warehouses (Snowflake, Databricks, Microsoft Fabric, Azure Synapse, Redshift), ERP and CRM systems (including SAP), and a wide range of databases and files. Its direct query architecture means most of these connections avoid a separate extraction step.

ServiceNow and Pyramid did not disclose the exact figure ServiceNow paid for Pyramid Analytics. It has been reported in the press as being in the region of several hundred million dollars.

Already using ServiceNow is a strong reason to evaluate Pyramid seriously, particularly if embedding analytics inside existing ServiceNow workflows would remove real friction for your teams. It is not automatically the right answer for every use case - if most of your reporting need sits in the Microsoft stack (Power BI, Fabric, Business Central), that remains a valid and often simpler path. We look at where the analytical work actually happens before recommending either.

Yes — Hopton is a ServiceNow partner. Alongside being Pyramid Analytics' UK Partner of the Year, Hopton is also listed as a ServiceNow partner, which is what lets us deliver Pyramid analytics embedded directly into ServiceNow workflows for clients who run both.

Yes — Hopton is an official Pyramid Analytics partner. Hopton is Pyramid Analytics' UK Partner of the Year, and we are also a ServiceNow partner, which matters directly for clients wanting Pyramid embedded into existing ServiceNow workflows.

No — Pyramid Analytics is no longer an independent company. ServiceNow announced its intent to acquire Pyramid Analytics on 12 February 2026, and the acquisition closed on 10 March 2026. Pyramid now operates as part of ServiceNow rather than as an independently owned company.

No — Pyramid is not a cloud-only product. It can be deployed in the cloud, on a private cloud, on-premises, in a hybrid configuration, or hosted and managed by Pyramid or a partner. This flexibility is one of the reasons organisations with regulatory or data residency constraints that rule out a cloud-only tool still consider Pyramid.

For organisations migrating off Tableau, Qlik, or MicroStrategy, Pyramid is a credible destination, particularly where the driver is consolidating BI, data prep, and data science into a single platform rather than running three separate tools. We have run these migrations and structure them to preserve existing reports while opening up what Pyramid adds on top.

Pyramid's support for on-premises and private cloud deployment, combined with direct query rather than mandatory data duplication, makes it a workable option for organisations with residency or regulatory constraints that would rule out some cloud-only competitors. The specifics still need to be checked against your particular regulatory regime rather than assumed.

Pyramid has offered lower-cost or free entry tiers aimed at individuals and small teams historically, alongside its quote-based enterprise tiers. Given the ServiceNow acquisition, we would confirm current tier availability directly with Pyramid or Hopton rather than relying on older public pricing pages, since packaging can change under new ownership.

ServiceNow's acquisition of Pyramid is similar to how other platform vendors have acquired BI tools: there is a recognisable pattern of large platform vendors acquiring analytics companies to add a semantic and AI-grounding layer, and the rationale ServiceNow has given echoes similar moves by other software vendors in recent years. What is different about the Pyramid deal is the emphasis on grounding AI agents in trusted metric definitions specifically, rather than analytics for its own sake.

No — this was not ServiceNow's only recent acquisition. Pyramid was one of several data and AI-related acquisitions ServiceNow made in a short period, alongside companies including Data.World and Veza, all aimed at strengthening the data, governance, and semantic layer underneath its workflow platform.

Hopton holds Level 3 Pyramid Analytics accreditation, which sits alongside our Microsoft Partner status. The award recognises the outcomes we have delivered for clients; the accreditation reflects the technical certification our team holds on the platform itself. The two are related but not the same thing.

Pyramid organises its functionality into what it calls an Analytics OS, built around six core modules: Model (semantic modelling), Formulate (calculations and business logic), Discover (data exploration and querying), Illustrate (visualisation), Present (dashboards and storytelling), and Publish (distribution and scheduling). A further module, Tabulate, gives users a spreadsheet-style interface directly inside the platform.

Instead of a user leaving their ServiceNow workspace to open a separate BI portal, Pyramid content - dashboards, KPIs, or a Generative BI question box - sits inside the ServiceNow interface the person is already using to manage tickets, cases, or requests. The aim is to let a decision get made at the point the work is happening, rather than requiring a detour through a different system.

On Pyramid engagements, Hopton delivers platform implementation (environment, connections, semantic modelling, security), UX and dashboard design, Generative BI enablement and training, embedded analytics into existing applications or ServiceNow workflows, migration from legacy BI tools, and structured training and enablement programmes for admins, power users, and analysts.

A ServiceNow-embedded Pyramid engagement with Hopton involves the same core work as any Pyramid implementation - semantic modelling, data source connections, security configuration, dashboard and GenBI design - with the additional step of surfacing that content inside the specific ServiceNow workspaces, portals, or workflows your teams already use, so analytics appears in context rather than in a separate tool.

Documenting a Pyramid semantic layer means writing down, in one place, what every key metric and dimension in your model represents. Most Pyramid deployments have this knowledge sitting in one or two people's heads rather than in the platform itself, which is a risk regardless of who owns Pyramid. A properly documented semantic layer survives staff changes, platform changes and ownership changes.

For existing Pyramid customers, the ServiceNow acquisition changes nothing operationally in the near term: existing deployments, licences, and support arrangements continue. The medium-term picture depends on ServiceNow's product direction, which is still unfolding. We would encourage existing customers to have a direct conversation with their account team about their specific renewal timeline rather than relying on general market commentary.

Pyramid is used across higher education, technology, government, engineering, hospitality, and financial services, among others, and its reference base skews towards larger and more analytically mature organisations. Hopton's own Pyramid deployments have concentrated on retail, food and drink, and professional services clients in the UK mid-market to enterprise range.

AI Analytics is the broad term for analytics platforms and approaches that use artificial intelligence to enhance how organisations access, interpret, and act on data. It covers Generative BI, augmented analytics, predictive analytics, smart discovery, and embedded intelligence. Pyramid Analytics is an AI Analytics platform. When Hopton talks about AI Analytics, we mean governed AI analytics - not AI that produces outputs you cannot trust or audit.

Decision Intelligence is Pyramid Analytics' positioning for what their platform does - it connects data, analytics, and the decisions that organisations need to make, in one governed environment. The idea is that analytics should not end at a dashboard. It should feed directly into a decision - and where possible, into the workflow that enacts that decision. With Pyramid now part of ServiceNow, Decision Intelligence is increasingly delivered directly inside enterprise workflow systems.

Embedded Analytics means analytics capability built directly into another application, portal, or workflow - rather than sitting in a standalone BI tool. Instead of users switching to a separate analytics platform to answer a question, the analytics appears inside the system they are already working in. Pyramid Analytics supports fully white-labelled embedded analytics, including within ServiceNow. Hopton designs and implements embedded analytics experiences - including the UX and UI design layer - so that the analytics feels native to the system it lives inside.

Generative BI (GenBI) is Pyramid's natural-language querying capability. A user types a business question in plain English and receives a governed answer - typically in under thirty seconds according to Hopton's own deployment benchmarks - drawn from the same semantic model and security rules that govern every other part of the platform, rather than a separate, ungoverned AI layer bolted on top.

Generative BI (GenBI) is an AI-powered capability within Pyramid Analytics that allows users to ask questions about their data in plain English - and receive a governed, trusted answer automatically, without needing to write SQL, build a report, or wait for an analyst. Pyramid's GenBI engine interprets the natural language query, identifies the relevant data sources, applies your governance rules, and returns the result in under 30 seconds. It differs from general AI assistants in one critical way: every answer is governed. It cannot return an ungoverned or hallucinated result, because it queries your actual connected data under your defined rules.

Hopton runs a five-stage approach for Pyramid: Discover (auditing your data landscape and decision-making needs), Design (architecture, semantic model, UX wireframes, and governance agreed up front), Build (environment setup, connections, dashboards, and security in structured sprints), Enable (structured training for admins, power users, and analysts), and Evolve (ongoing support and optimisation).

Hopton Analytics was named Pyramid Analytics Partner of the Year - the highest recognition awarded to a Pyramid implementation partner. Our capability covers the full implementation lifecycle: platform architecture, data source connection, semantic model design, UX and UI design for dashboards and embedded experiences, Generative BI configuration, user training, and adoption programmes. We also bring a Microsoft data engineering practice, which means the underlying data estate that Pyramid connects to is well-structured, governed, and reliable.

Master Flow is Pyramid's mechanism for managing data pipelines and content dependencies in a controlled way, supporting version control and consistency as content moves from development into production.

PYRANA is Pyramid's direct query engine. It translates the queries a user builds through Pyramid's interface into ANSI SQL or MDX and runs them against the source system in place, which is what allows Pyramid to avoid extracting and duplicating data into its own store.

Pyramid Analytics is an AI-powered decision intelligence platform that gives every person in an organisation - from analysts to the board - governed, self-service access to data. Unlike traditional BI tools, Pyramid queries data directly at the source without duplication, connects to over 250 data sources, and uses Generative BI to answer questions in plain English in under 30 seconds. It was acquired by ServiceNow in March 2026 and is now part of the world's leading enterprise workflow platform.

ServiceNow is the leading enterprise platform for workflow automation and digital operations, used by 85% of Fortune 500 companies. It manages how work gets done across IT, HR, customer service, finance, and operations at some of the world's largest organisations. In February 2026, ServiceNow announced the acquisition of Pyramid Analytics, completing the deal in March 2026. The strategic rationale is that ServiceNow manages workflows; Pyramid provides the decision intelligence that should inform them. Together, they embed AI-powered analytics directly into enterprise operations - not as a reporting afterthought, but as a core part of how decisions get made and acted on.

Tabulate is Pyramid's built-in spreadsheet interface, giving users a familiar grid-based way to work with data directly inside the platform rather than exporting to Excel and losing governance and lineage in the process.

Migrating from Tableau or Qlik to Pyramid mirrors any BI migration: inventory existing reports and identify which are still actively used, translate the underlying data models and calculations into Pyramid's semantic layer, rebuild dashboards against that model, and run both platforms in parallel briefly to validate parity before decommissioning the legacy tool.

The Pyramid Analytics Partner of the Year award is Pyramid's annual recognition of the partner delivering the strongest outcomes across its network, based on delivery quality, customer results, and business growth with the platform. Hopton holds the UK title. We have not published the specifics of the award cycle or ceremony on this FAQ, so for more detail we would point you to a direct conversation or to hoptonanalytics.com.

In a Pyramid implementation that goes badly, two things account for most of the difficulty we see: skipping proper semantic modelling. Both are avoidable with a structured Discover and Design phase.

The practical link between Pyramid Analytics and ServiceNow today is that Pyramid is a ServiceNow company and Hopton is both a Pyramid partner and a ServiceNow partner. Practically, that means Pyramid's analytics can be embedded directly inside ServiceNow workflows and portals, so a user working an IT, HR, or supply chain process in ServiceNow can see governed analytics in context rather than switching to a separate BI tool.

The semantic model is the layer that defines what a metric means once, centrally, so that "revenue" or "active customer" means the same thing everywhere it is used across dashboards, ad hoc queries, and Generative BI answers. This is the piece industry analysts point to as the reason ServiceNow wanted Pyramid: it gives AI agents a consistent, mathematically grounded definition to reason against, rather than each agent inferring meaning independently and risking contradictory answers.

What makes Pyramid different from a conventional BI tool is direct query - the core difference is direct query. Most BI platforms require data to be extracted, ingested, and duplicated into the tool's own store before it can be analysed. Pyramid queries source systems directly through its PYRANA engine, using ANSI SQL or MDX under the hood, so data stays where it lives and users work against current, governed data rather than a stale copy.

A Pyramid deployment needs ongoing support beyond initial implementation: ongoing semantic model maintenance as source systems and business definitions change, user administration as roles shift, and periodic platform optimisation as usage grows. We build this into our Evolve phase rather than treating go-live as the end of the engagement.

Pyramid was founded in 2008 by Omri Kohl, who served as its Chief Executive Officer. The company is headquartered in Amsterdam, with additional offices in London, New York City, and Tel Aviv.

ServiceNow's own public statements point to IT, HR, and supply chain as initial focus areas, using Pyramid's data connectivity, AI-powered querying, workflow automation, and governance together. These are the workflow areas where ServiceNow already has the deepest customer footprint, so they are the natural starting point for embedded analytics.

ServiceNow's stated rationale is to embed intelligence directly into the workflows that run a business, rather than leaving analytics as a separate destination staff have to visit. Pyramid brings a governed semantic layer and a high-performance direct query engine that ServiceNow did not previously have at that depth, and the acquisition is widely read as part of ServiceNow's broader move from being a workflow execution layer towards what it calls a "system of intelligence" that can ground AI agents in trusted, shared definitions of business metrics.

Hopton built its practice on Microsoft technologies - Power BI, Azure, Microsoft Fabric - because for most UK mid-market organisations, Microsoft is the right foundation for a governed data estate. That has not changed. What has changed is that the best answer for analytics and decision intelligence is not always a single-vendor stack. Pyramid Analytics - now part of ServiceNow - delivers AI-powered decision intelligence at a scale and with a governance model that complements, rather than replaces, the Microsoft data platforms we build on. We added Pyramid to our practice because our clients needed it, not because we were looking to expand our vendor portfolio.

A Microsoft-focused consultancy like Hopton also offers Pyramid because not every client's data estate is Microsoft-only. Where an organisation's data genuinely sits across a mix of platforms - Redshift, Databricks, SAP, and Microsoft Fabric together, for example - or where on-premises or hybrid deployment is a hard requirement Power BI cannot meet, Pyramid is often the better-fitting tool. We position it alongside Power BI as the complementary option for those situations, not as a replacement for our core Microsoft-native practice.

You would choose Hopton over another Pyramid partner for three things we would point to: UX and UI design depth that is specifically aimed at driving adoption rather than just reaching go-live; Microsoft-native data engineering capability for organisations running a mixed Microsoft and non-Microsoft estate; and a governance-first delivery approach that builds trust in the platform's outputs from day one rather than retrofitting governance after launch.

Yes — Hopton will keep supporting Pyramid deployments through the ServiceNow transition. As both a Pyramid partner and a ServiceNow partner, we are positioned to support clients through whatever direction the integration takes, and we will continue to give clients a straightforward, non-speculative view of what has actually been confirmed versus what remains a roadmap intention as the acquisition matures.

There is no indication that Pyramid will eventually only work with ServiceNow data. Pyramid's value has always been its ability to query broadly across an organisation's entire data estate, not just one system, and ServiceNow's own messaging talks about extending Pyramid's reach rather than narrowing it. We would treat any claim that Pyramid is becoming ServiceNow-only with scepticism until it is confirmed by ServiceNow directly.

At the time of writing, yes - Pyramid continues to be sold and delivered as it was before the acquisition, including by partners such as Hopton. How much ServiceNow continues to invest in Pyramid as a standalone product, versus folding its capabilities purely into ServiceNow's own workflow suite, is a genuinely open question in the market, and one we would rather be straightforward about than speculate on confidently either way.