2020 ITSM Predictions

As part of APMdigest's 2020 predictions, industry experts offer predictions on how ITSM and related technologies will evolve and impact business in 2020.

Start with 2020 Application Performance Management Predictions

APM SUPPORTS ITIL 4

APM will play a key role in supporting the new ITIL 4 framework by enhancing its predictive modeling and proactive monitoring capabilities to assist IT Service Management (ITSM). The workflow and reporting will be dynamic enough to present intrinsic datasets to support the very different demands for both Development and Operations.
Larry Dragich
Technology Executive and Founder of the APM Strategies Group on LinkedIn

CUSTOMER-CENTRIC THINKING

In 2020, the accelerated adoption of a combination of advanced automation techniques (i.e., RPA, deep learning, natural language processing) will notably increase the throughput of multiple ITSM processes and functions, increasing the service quality of IT departments while decreasing costs. Value must be a core principle in the provision of service and will require customer-centric thinking.
Olivier Saucin
Global Solution Director, Applications, CTG

ACTIONABILITY

Businesses will make progress moving toward an autonomous digital enterprise through technology innovations in AIOps, edge computing, the convergence of IT service management and IT operations management, SecOps, and DevOps. Rather than focusing on monitoring and observability — which only tell you what failed and why — businesses need to look at "actionability." Actionability takes it an important step further by giving actionable insights to help remediate while also helping to predict what could fail. Implementing technology that gives actionable insights will be critical for businesses looking to move further in their automation journey.
Ram Chakravarti
CTO, BMC Software

AUTOMATED INCIDENT RESOLUTION

When it comes to ITSM, and its manifestation beyond IT of Enterprise Service Management, we're going to see increased adoption of AI-driven automation — moving beyond service request resolution to automated incident resolution. Analytics, in general and predictive analytics to be specific will be used increasingly to drive decision-making proactively.
Dr. Akhil Sahai
CPO, Symphony SummitAI

24-HOUR IT

With the arrival of the new decade, IT organizations will begin a more concerted push to offer all IT services 24x7 to meet the expectations of around-the-clock business operations. New focus will be given to automation that supports this "always open" IT concept, so that IT never stands in the way of business requirements — regardless of the hour.
Kevin J. Smith
SVP, Ivanti

IMPROVED INTEGRATION

Based on reviews of ITSM software and tools on IT Central Station, our community members want better integration capabilities with reduced costs from their ITSM software and tools. In 2020, ITSM vendors who design better integration capabilities into their software and tools, while keeping costs low, will be addressing real user pain points.
Russell Rothstein
Founder and CEO, IT Central Station

DEVOPS MEETS ITSM

As businesses struggle to keep pace with customer expectations, they will see the need to adopt DevOps practices in all parts of their business, including mission-critical applications like the contact center that have thus far remained siloed and out of scope for DevOps initiatives. The implementation of DevOps as a catalyst for CX innovation in the contact center will break down CX system silos and fuel momentum of the drive towards cloud contact centers.
Elizabeth Magill
Senior Director of Product Marketing, Cyara

INCIDENT MANAGEMENT VS ENGINEERING

As is already being observed in smaller organizations, in 2020, the subservience of incident management organizations to engineering organizations will spread to larger enterprises as well. Companies are increasingly automating ITIL and ITSM. Those professionals that are impacted will be redeployed to positions that create even greater business value.
Paul Porter
VP Sales Engineering, xMatters

ITSM ALIGNS WITH THE BUSINESS

By the end of 2020, IT service management (ITSM) teams will decrease their focus on traditional ITSM best practices and instead focus on business alignment strategies. This new alignment will center more on automation and the speed of delivery than typical service management methods to ensure that service management is as dynamic and agile as the business processes it serves.
Kevin J. Smith
SVP, Ivanti

ITOM CONVERGES WITH SECURITY

The convergence of security and ITOM is just beginning to happen, we should continue to see more of this convergence play out, but many companies have struggled to fill the gap between the two groups, while there are only a few companies showing promise here.
Thomas Hatch
CTO and Co-Founder, SaltStack

Go to 2020 Digital Transformation Predictions

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The $600 Billion Wake Up Call

In 2026, the cost of downtime or an outage is no longer just a technical inconvenience; it's a $600 billion wake up call for global businesses. As our digital ecosystems become  more interconnected, each touchpoint introduces new risks and multiplies the consequences when things go wrong. And the data is clear: aggregate downtime costs  for Global 2,000 companies have surged 50% since 2024, reaching a staggering $600 billion ...

Breaking Down Agentic AI Fragmentation and Complexity with Governance

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Cloud Spend Is Rising and Cloud Optimization Is Key to Funding AI and Protecting Margins

Cloud spending is no longer viewed as a passthrough IT expense, but as a strategic financial lever that directly impacts innovation capacity, profitability and enterprise resilience, according to the CFO Cloud Cost Optimization Report from Azul ...

Building AI Agents That Build Trust

As AI moves from generating responses to performing actions, the need for trust increases exponentially. And as organizations enlist AI agents for increasingly sophisticated business processes, trust is going to be the single most important theme for spurring adoption. What can organizations do to build trustworthy AI agents? ...

Keys to Building a Partner Ecosystem That Scales

I've spent a lot of time in the channel, and one thing I keep coming back to is this: a partner program is only as good as what it looks like in the field. Many programs look great on paper, but when a partner is in front of a customer navigating a complex hybrid environment or trying to make the case for AI-powered observability, the gap between what a vendor promises and what it actually delivers becomes very clear, very fast ...

How AI Agents Are Reshaping DataOps for the Always-On Enterprise

Enterprises today operate in a real-time environment where uninterrupted access to trusted data has become a baseline expectation for users, applications and automated systems. Traditional DataOps models, built on manual effort and human triage, cannot keep pace with this always active demand. AI agents are emerging as the operational backbone, ensuring consistent data availability, reinforcing trustworthiness and enabling a level of scale that manual processes cannot achieve ...

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For decades, trust in the digital workplace rested on familiar signals. We trusted faces on video calls, voices on the phone, and emails that appeared to come from people we knew. These cues felt human and intuitive. They anchored how decisions were made, approvals were granted, and access was authorized. AI-powered deepfakes have quietly broken that model ...

Nine in Ten Enterprises Plan Cloud Data Repatriation amid Rising Cloud Costs and Data Sovereignty Mandates

Cloud migration was supposed to be a one-way door. For most enterprises, it turns out it isn't. Cloud data repatriation is a real and growing trend. A new survey ... finds that 89% of organizations plan to expand their on-premises infrastructure footprint over the next two years — and 75% have already moved at least some workloads back from public cloud in the past 24 months. The findings point to a broad rethinking of where data belongs ...

Why ITOps Need Right-Sized AI, Not Bigger Models

Over the past few years, large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized the software industry. Given their ability to excel at multi-step reasoning, LLMs have helped enterprises streamline workflows and adapt to the unknown. However, employing such models comes with sky-high costs, latency issues, and limited flexibility. In the realm of IT operations, it is generally wiser to employ smaller, domain-specific models instead ...

2020 ITSM Predictions

As part of APMdigest's 2020 predictions, industry experts offer predictions on how ITSM and related technologies will evolve and impact business in 2020.

Start with 2020 Application Performance Management Predictions

APM SUPPORTS ITIL 4

APM will play a key role in supporting the new ITIL 4 framework by enhancing its predictive modeling and proactive monitoring capabilities to assist IT Service Management (ITSM). The workflow and reporting will be dynamic enough to present intrinsic datasets to support the very different demands for both Development and Operations.
Larry Dragich
Technology Executive and Founder of the APM Strategies Group on LinkedIn

CUSTOMER-CENTRIC THINKING

In 2020, the accelerated adoption of a combination of advanced automation techniques (i.e., RPA, deep learning, natural language processing) will notably increase the throughput of multiple ITSM processes and functions, increasing the service quality of IT departments while decreasing costs. Value must be a core principle in the provision of service and will require customer-centric thinking.
Olivier Saucin
Global Solution Director, Applications, CTG

ACTIONABILITY

Businesses will make progress moving toward an autonomous digital enterprise through technology innovations in AIOps, edge computing, the convergence of IT service management and IT operations management, SecOps, and DevOps. Rather than focusing on monitoring and observability — which only tell you what failed and why — businesses need to look at "actionability." Actionability takes it an important step further by giving actionable insights to help remediate while also helping to predict what could fail. Implementing technology that gives actionable insights will be critical for businesses looking to move further in their automation journey.
Ram Chakravarti
CTO, BMC Software

AUTOMATED INCIDENT RESOLUTION

When it comes to ITSM, and its manifestation beyond IT of Enterprise Service Management, we're going to see increased adoption of AI-driven automation — moving beyond service request resolution to automated incident resolution. Analytics, in general and predictive analytics to be specific will be used increasingly to drive decision-making proactively.
Dr. Akhil Sahai
CPO, Symphony SummitAI

24-HOUR IT

With the arrival of the new decade, IT organizations will begin a more concerted push to offer all IT services 24x7 to meet the expectations of around-the-clock business operations. New focus will be given to automation that supports this "always open" IT concept, so that IT never stands in the way of business requirements — regardless of the hour.
Kevin J. Smith
SVP, Ivanti

IMPROVED INTEGRATION

Based on reviews of ITSM software and tools on IT Central Station, our community members want better integration capabilities with reduced costs from their ITSM software and tools. In 2020, ITSM vendors who design better integration capabilities into their software and tools, while keeping costs low, will be addressing real user pain points.
Russell Rothstein
Founder and CEO, IT Central Station

DEVOPS MEETS ITSM

As businesses struggle to keep pace with customer expectations, they will see the need to adopt DevOps practices in all parts of their business, including mission-critical applications like the contact center that have thus far remained siloed and out of scope for DevOps initiatives. The implementation of DevOps as a catalyst for CX innovation in the contact center will break down CX system silos and fuel momentum of the drive towards cloud contact centers.
Elizabeth Magill
Senior Director of Product Marketing, Cyara

INCIDENT MANAGEMENT VS ENGINEERING

As is already being observed in smaller organizations, in 2020, the subservience of incident management organizations to engineering organizations will spread to larger enterprises as well. Companies are increasingly automating ITIL and ITSM. Those professionals that are impacted will be redeployed to positions that create even greater business value.
Paul Porter
VP Sales Engineering, xMatters

ITSM ALIGNS WITH THE BUSINESS

By the end of 2020, IT service management (ITSM) teams will decrease their focus on traditional ITSM best practices and instead focus on business alignment strategies. This new alignment will center more on automation and the speed of delivery than typical service management methods to ensure that service management is as dynamic and agile as the business processes it serves.
Kevin J. Smith
SVP, Ivanti

ITOM CONVERGES WITH SECURITY

The convergence of security and ITOM is just beginning to happen, we should continue to see more of this convergence play out, but many companies have struggled to fill the gap between the two groups, while there are only a few companies showing promise here.
Thomas Hatch
CTO and Co-Founder, SaltStack

Go to 2020 Digital Transformation Predictions

Related Links

Hot Topics

The Latest

When AI Becomes the Corporate OS

AI is becoming the operating system of the enterprise. It acts as an invisible coordination layer that understands intent, connects systems, and executes work across complex SaaS environments. Previously, employees had to click through multiple systems — CRM, ERP, support tools, collaboration platforms — to complete a single task. Now, instead of navigating each application manually, they can simply state what they need to accomplish ...

The $600 Billion Wake Up Call

In 2026, the cost of downtime or an outage is no longer just a technical inconvenience; it's a $600 billion wake up call for global businesses. As our digital ecosystems become  more interconnected, each touchpoint introduces new risks and multiplies the consequences when things go wrong. And the data is clear: aggregate downtime costs  for Global 2,000 companies have surged 50% since 2024, reaching a staggering $600 billion ...

Breaking Down Agentic AI Fragmentation and Complexity with Governance

Deloitte found that 74% of enterprises expect to deploy agentic AI solutions in the next 24 months. However, the rush to deployment is outpacing foundational work, though. Only 21% of enterprises have fully formed agent governance models in place. The result? AI agents deployed without guidance or governance begin to function as fragmented islands of complexity ...

Cloud Spend Is Rising and Cloud Optimization Is Key to Funding AI and Protecting Margins

Cloud spending is no longer viewed as a passthrough IT expense, but as a strategic financial lever that directly impacts innovation capacity, profitability and enterprise resilience, according to the CFO Cloud Cost Optimization Report from Azul ...

Building AI Agents That Build Trust

As AI moves from generating responses to performing actions, the need for trust increases exponentially. And as organizations enlist AI agents for increasingly sophisticated business processes, trust is going to be the single most important theme for spurring adoption. What can organizations do to build trustworthy AI agents? ...

Keys to Building a Partner Ecosystem That Scales

I've spent a lot of time in the channel, and one thing I keep coming back to is this: a partner program is only as good as what it looks like in the field. Many programs look great on paper, but when a partner is in front of a customer navigating a complex hybrid environment or trying to make the case for AI-powered observability, the gap between what a vendor promises and what it actually delivers becomes very clear, very fast ...

How AI Agents Are Reshaping DataOps for the Always-On Enterprise

Enterprises today operate in a real-time environment where uninterrupted access to trusted data has become a baseline expectation for users, applications and automated systems. Traditional DataOps models, built on manual effort and human triage, cannot keep pace with this always active demand. AI agents are emerging as the operational backbone, ensuring consistent data availability, reinforcing trustworthiness and enabling a level of scale that manual processes cannot achieve ...

AI Deepfakes: Rethinking Trust in the Workplace

For decades, trust in the digital workplace rested on familiar signals. We trusted faces on video calls, voices on the phone, and emails that appeared to come from people we knew. These cues felt human and intuitive. They anchored how decisions were made, approvals were granted, and access was authorized. AI-powered deepfakes have quietly broken that model ...

Nine in Ten Enterprises Plan Cloud Data Repatriation amid Rising Cloud Costs and Data Sovereignty Mandates

Cloud migration was supposed to be a one-way door. For most enterprises, it turns out it isn't. Cloud data repatriation is a real and growing trend. A new survey ... finds that 89% of organizations plan to expand their on-premises infrastructure footprint over the next two years — and 75% have already moved at least some workloads back from public cloud in the past 24 months. The findings point to a broad rethinking of where data belongs ...

Why ITOps Need Right-Sized AI, Not Bigger Models

Over the past few years, large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized the software industry. Given their ability to excel at multi-step reasoning, LLMs have helped enterprises streamline workflows and adapt to the unknown. However, employing such models comes with sky-high costs, latency issues, and limited flexibility. In the realm of IT operations, it is generally wiser to employ smaller, domain-specific models instead ...