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2021 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 6

Industry experts — from analysts and consultants to users and the top vendors — offer thoughtful, insightful, and often controversial predictions on how APM and related technologies will evolve and impact business in 2021. Part 6, the final installment in the series, covers ITSM.

Start with: 2021 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 1

Start with: 2021 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 2

Start with: 2021 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 3

Start with: 2021 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 4

Start with: 2021 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 5

FOCUS ON BUSINESS CONTINUITY

Business continuity and operational risk management interest takes precedence. It is not a question of "if," but rather "when" a disaster will strike. Responding to an incident in crisis mode without the benefit of planning, coordination, and testing can result in more downtime, higher recovery costs and times, a potential negative impact on brand and reputation, and business loss. In 2021, with the continued impact of COVID, we are likely to see even more interest from businesses, customers and investors regarding operational risk management, business continuity, and resiliency.
Anne Hardy
CISO, Talend

IMPROVED ITSM GUI AND DASHBOARDS

A common trend among IT Central Station ITSM reviews in 2020 was the lack of user-friendly interfaces. I therefore foresee vendors investing in the improvement of their GUIs and dashboards to enhance the user experience.
Russell Rothstein
Founder and CEO, IT Central Station

SELF-SERVICE ITSM

AI/ML assisted self-service whether through chat bots, virtual assistants, or purpose-built portals will become the channel of choice for offering or receiving help and information. On the enterprise side, the stunning cost savings make it a no-brainer. But customers and employees choose it as well. No surprise here. People like getting what they want or need, when they want or need it, in the way they want to seek it.
Valerie O'Connell
Research Director, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA)

In reaction to the pandemic, more and more organizations will bring in internal IT teams, and utilize self-service models and SaaS platforms to reduce the dependencies on external resources.
Ali Siddiqui
CPO, BMC Software

In 2021, chatbots powered with AI will begin to eliminate the "front-line" support analyst as the human ITSM analyst will be replaced with self-service portals and intelligent chatbots. Analysts will shift their focus to major incidents (one-to-many), problem management, and change management. Over the next 3-5 years, human involvement for most ITIL processes will be decreased because of improved machine learning and automation capabilities. We will see the traditional IT analysts become much more focused on business objectives versus IT tasks.
Marcel Shaw
Principal Federal Solutions Architect, Ivanti

Self-Serve Analytics will ramp up in 2021. As the pandemic continues in 2021, companies will look to further reduce dependencies on IT functions with self-serve analytics. This will help them turn data into valuable, shareable assets more quickly. Remote workforces and online expansions are draining IT resources. Automated data preparation, curation, stewardship, quality controls, and machine learning tools will help to stem the tide of IT demands.
Krishna Tamman
CTO, Talend

ENTERPRISE SERVICE MANAGEMENT

The use of ITSM people, processes, and products in support of non-IT functions such as HR and facilities will become the norm. In a world where people will complain about the mustard at a free lunch, EMA research yields an absolutely unambiguous endorsement of ESM. It has universally positive outcomes. C-level keepers of the budget will fund these initiatives without hesitation.
Valerie O'Connell
Research Director, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA)

As organizations have adjusted to the realities of remote work and adapting to manual tasks which result in decreased productivity, businesses are scaling and deploying ITSM solutions, leading to an increase in operational complexity to support the diverse needs of users and IT environments. To help reduce this complexity, and deliver an amazing employee experience organizations will look to enterprise service management solutions as a way to adopt processes that drive digital transformation. With AI service management, businesses can leverage hyper-automation and operations automation to increase productivity across the organization. Enterprise service management is the natural evolution to ITSM and will help businesses evolve into autonomous digital enterprises.
Ali Siddiqui
CPO, BMC Software

CMDB/CMS GETS NEW LIFE

It's back to the future as old ideas get new life in new use cases. CMDB/CMS will get a brand refresh for its critical role in delivering the service modeling that AIOps requires. With digital transformation in overdrive, service modeling and effective change management are center stage. CMDB/CMS in combination with discovery and dependency mapping (DDM) will be re-imagined and shaped to new use cases that power service excellence and cost-cutting initiatives.
Valerie O'Connell
Research Director, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA)

IOT PERFORMANCE IMPROVES

Adoption of IoT use cases under the umbrella of "edge computing" will accelerate standardization of operating system and application components, greatly improving performance, monitoring, and reliability of IoT solutions.
Jered Floyd
Technology Strategist, Office of the CTO, Red Hat

Check back after the Holidays for 2 more predictions series, covering NPM and the Cloud.

Hot Topics

The Latest

As businesses increasingly rely on high-performance applications to deliver seamless user experiences, the demand for fast, reliable, and scalable data storage systems has never been greater. Redis — an open-source, in-memory data structure store — has emerged as a popular choice for use cases ranging from caching to real-time analytics. But with great performance comes the need for vigilant monitoring ...

Kubernetes was not initially designed with AI's vast resource variability in mind, and the rapid rise of AI has exposed Kubernetes limitations, particularly when it comes to cost and resource efficiency. Indeed, AI workloads differ from traditional applications in that they require a staggering amount and variety of compute resources, and their consumption is far less consistent than traditional workloads ... Considering the speed of AI innovation, teams cannot afford to be bogged down by these constant infrastructure concerns. A solution is needed ...

AI is the catalyst for significant investment in data teams as enterprises require higher-quality data to power their AI applications, according to the State of Analytics Engineering Report from dbt Labs ...

Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

Regardless of OpenShift being a scalable and flexible software, it can be a pain to monitor since complete visibility into the underlying operations is not guaranteed ... To effectively monitor an OpenShift environment, IT administrators should focus on these five key elements and their associated metrics ...

2021 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 6

Industry experts — from analysts and consultants to users and the top vendors — offer thoughtful, insightful, and often controversial predictions on how APM and related technologies will evolve and impact business in 2021. Part 6, the final installment in the series, covers ITSM.

Start with: 2021 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 1

Start with: 2021 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 2

Start with: 2021 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 3

Start with: 2021 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 4

Start with: 2021 Application Performance Management Predictions - Part 5

FOCUS ON BUSINESS CONTINUITY

Business continuity and operational risk management interest takes precedence. It is not a question of "if," but rather "when" a disaster will strike. Responding to an incident in crisis mode without the benefit of planning, coordination, and testing can result in more downtime, higher recovery costs and times, a potential negative impact on brand and reputation, and business loss. In 2021, with the continued impact of COVID, we are likely to see even more interest from businesses, customers and investors regarding operational risk management, business continuity, and resiliency.
Anne Hardy
CISO, Talend

IMPROVED ITSM GUI AND DASHBOARDS

A common trend among IT Central Station ITSM reviews in 2020 was the lack of user-friendly interfaces. I therefore foresee vendors investing in the improvement of their GUIs and dashboards to enhance the user experience.
Russell Rothstein
Founder and CEO, IT Central Station

SELF-SERVICE ITSM

AI/ML assisted self-service whether through chat bots, virtual assistants, or purpose-built portals will become the channel of choice for offering or receiving help and information. On the enterprise side, the stunning cost savings make it a no-brainer. But customers and employees choose it as well. No surprise here. People like getting what they want or need, when they want or need it, in the way they want to seek it.
Valerie O'Connell
Research Director, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA)

In reaction to the pandemic, more and more organizations will bring in internal IT teams, and utilize self-service models and SaaS platforms to reduce the dependencies on external resources.
Ali Siddiqui
CPO, BMC Software

In 2021, chatbots powered with AI will begin to eliminate the "front-line" support analyst as the human ITSM analyst will be replaced with self-service portals and intelligent chatbots. Analysts will shift their focus to major incidents (one-to-many), problem management, and change management. Over the next 3-5 years, human involvement for most ITIL processes will be decreased because of improved machine learning and automation capabilities. We will see the traditional IT analysts become much more focused on business objectives versus IT tasks.
Marcel Shaw
Principal Federal Solutions Architect, Ivanti

Self-Serve Analytics will ramp up in 2021. As the pandemic continues in 2021, companies will look to further reduce dependencies on IT functions with self-serve analytics. This will help them turn data into valuable, shareable assets more quickly. Remote workforces and online expansions are draining IT resources. Automated data preparation, curation, stewardship, quality controls, and machine learning tools will help to stem the tide of IT demands.
Krishna Tamman
CTO, Talend

ENTERPRISE SERVICE MANAGEMENT

The use of ITSM people, processes, and products in support of non-IT functions such as HR and facilities will become the norm. In a world where people will complain about the mustard at a free lunch, EMA research yields an absolutely unambiguous endorsement of ESM. It has universally positive outcomes. C-level keepers of the budget will fund these initiatives without hesitation.
Valerie O'Connell
Research Director, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA)

As organizations have adjusted to the realities of remote work and adapting to manual tasks which result in decreased productivity, businesses are scaling and deploying ITSM solutions, leading to an increase in operational complexity to support the diverse needs of users and IT environments. To help reduce this complexity, and deliver an amazing employee experience organizations will look to enterprise service management solutions as a way to adopt processes that drive digital transformation. With AI service management, businesses can leverage hyper-automation and operations automation to increase productivity across the organization. Enterprise service management is the natural evolution to ITSM and will help businesses evolve into autonomous digital enterprises.
Ali Siddiqui
CPO, BMC Software

CMDB/CMS GETS NEW LIFE

It's back to the future as old ideas get new life in new use cases. CMDB/CMS will get a brand refresh for its critical role in delivering the service modeling that AIOps requires. With digital transformation in overdrive, service modeling and effective change management are center stage. CMDB/CMS in combination with discovery and dependency mapping (DDM) will be re-imagined and shaped to new use cases that power service excellence and cost-cutting initiatives.
Valerie O'Connell
Research Director, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA)

IOT PERFORMANCE IMPROVES

Adoption of IoT use cases under the umbrella of "edge computing" will accelerate standardization of operating system and application components, greatly improving performance, monitoring, and reliability of IoT solutions.
Jered Floyd
Technology Strategist, Office of the CTO, Red Hat

Check back after the Holidays for 2 more predictions series, covering NPM and the Cloud.

Hot Topics

The Latest

As businesses increasingly rely on high-performance applications to deliver seamless user experiences, the demand for fast, reliable, and scalable data storage systems has never been greater. Redis — an open-source, in-memory data structure store — has emerged as a popular choice for use cases ranging from caching to real-time analytics. But with great performance comes the need for vigilant monitoring ...

Kubernetes was not initially designed with AI's vast resource variability in mind, and the rapid rise of AI has exposed Kubernetes limitations, particularly when it comes to cost and resource efficiency. Indeed, AI workloads differ from traditional applications in that they require a staggering amount and variety of compute resources, and their consumption is far less consistent than traditional workloads ... Considering the speed of AI innovation, teams cannot afford to be bogged down by these constant infrastructure concerns. A solution is needed ...

AI is the catalyst for significant investment in data teams as enterprises require higher-quality data to power their AI applications, according to the State of Analytics Engineering Report from dbt Labs ...

Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

Regardless of OpenShift being a scalable and flexible software, it can be a pain to monitor since complete visibility into the underlying operations is not guaranteed ... To effectively monitor an OpenShift environment, IT administrators should focus on these five key elements and their associated metrics ...