Cvent
companysaasenterprise-aiglean-customerblackstone
Cvent
SaaS hospitality and event software company. ~5,500 employees, ~30,000 customers. Blackstone portfolio company since 2023. CIO: Pradeep Mannakkara. CISO: Ben Mayrides.
Why Cvent matters in this wiki
The most concrete enterprise-scale agent governance case study in the wiki. Numbers worth remembering:
- 6,000+ agents in production (≈1,300 actively used)
- Built on the Glean platform with the AWARE Framework as the technical-controls layer
- Mandatory AI training for all 5,500 employees (CEO in the first session)
- 9 months of self-service AI access bought by adopting Glean (per Pradeep)
Cvent's playbook (worth replicating)
- Pick a platform with built-in fine-grained ACLs (Glean did this for them)
- Encourage Shadow AI / sprawl deliberately — 3–4 month window before layering in moderation
- Mandatory training program with executive sponsorship
- Filter funnel: vendor demo → ROI gate → sandbox → security/legal/privacy → production
- Apply AWARE per-agent for identity, context, guardrails, risk scoring, observability
- Time-bounded risk decisions: "too high for now"
- Build an internal task-level catalog of what agents do (not just a software catalog)
Real "no" example
Cvent declined to deploy Anthropic's Claude Co-work in regulated environments. Per Ben Mayrides — "risk is too high for now" — citing the open questions in agent identity and ecosystem observability for that product. The product itself flags "don't use this in a regulated environment" in its release notes; Cvent took that seriously.