The Context Layer (Semantic Layer) In Enterprise AI (And Where Business Rules Go)
From Josh Bersin by Josh Bersin
April 10, 2026 · 13 min
About this episode
The episode discusses the challenges of integrating legacy business rules into new enterprise AI systems and introduces the concept of a context layer.
One of the new enterprise AI challenges we face is this: where do we put all the business rules, security rules, policies, and company specific practices we’ve built into our legacy systems for the last 30 years? If we want to embark on Agentic HR (or any other domain), do we rebuild all these rules in the Agents? Well the big idea going forward is the development of a “context layer” or “semantic layer” which stores all the company structure, rules, and policies in a single place. Today ServiceNow introduced its “Context Engine” which plans to do this, and last week Gloat did the same. In this podcast I explain what this is and the implications of various AI architecture options, and compare the idea of building this in ServiceNow or Gloat or using AI Agent tools from Workday, Oracle, SAP, or other incumbent vendors. Additional Information Agentic HR: Where Enterprise AI Is Going – Imperatives Why AI Is A Massive Job-Creation Technology, Despite What You Think The Age of the Superworker (and Supermanager) Get Galileo: The AI Superagent for HR
People in this episode
Host: Josh Bersin
Topics covered
- enterprise AI
- context layer
- business rules
- Agentic HR
- AI architecture
- ServiceNow
- Gloat
Keywords
- enterprise AI
- context layer
- business rules
- Agentic HR
- AI architecture
- ServiceNow
- Gloat
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: ServiceNow, Gloat, Workday, Oracle, SAP
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