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ITSM Futures: A Closer Look at Mobile and Unified Endpoint Management

Dennis Drogseth

In my last blog, I discussed how IT service management (ITSM) roles (and rules) are becoming more operations-aware. The blog examined a number of key game-changers for ITSM, including a growing requirement for shared analytics; the rise (not the demise) of the CMDB/CMS and service modeling; cloud as both a catalyst for innovation and a resource to be managed; and support for enterprise services such as facilities and HR. I also discussed two topics, mobility and unified endpoint management, that I’d like to examine in more depth here.

Mobility is King

OK — you probably didn’t need me to tell you that mobility is critical, but let me place its growing criticality in a more specific ITSM context with a few numbers.

■ 62% of our 270 respondents viewed lifecycle mobile support as “significantly” or “completely” impacting ITSM directions.

■ Mobility is anything but one-dimensional. In fact when we got the data for how actual mobile endpoints are being used by end users and ITSM professionals, the charts looked almost identical.

- 48% of end users and 45% of IT professional usage includes tablets, iPhones, Androids, and other mobile devices.

- 26% of both end users and IT professionals are using a mix of iPhone, Android, or other similar mobile endpoints (but no tablets).

- Only 15% (of end users) and 17% (of IT professionals) say they are not yet focused on any mobile devices.

■ 63% are using mobile endpoints in support of ITSM professionals with the following top-ranked results:

- Improved responsiveness to IT service consumers

- Increased IT efficiencies and reduced OpEx costs

- Improved collaboration between the service desk and operations

■ About two-thirds of our respondents allow end users to access corporate applications via mobile endpoints. And 50% of respondents offer their end users mobile access for ITSM-related requests and other interactions. Of these last, 78% saw “meaningful” or “dramatic” improvements in service delivery.

How Unified is Unified Endpoint Management?

Mobile is, of course, part of a bigger picture when it comes to endpoints. And here, our respondents generally favored integration and unified approaches. For instance, concerning mobile management, 58% preferred an integrated application that could support device management, configuration management, and enterprise mobility. Looking at endpoints more broadly, 82% viewed a unified console for managing mobile and traditional endpoints as “important” or “essential.”

When it came to unified endpoint management, the top seven functional priorities were:

■ Understanding software usage

■ License management

■ Software distribution

■ Operating system deployment

■ Patch management

■ Inventory management

■ Security

And the Winners Were …

So, how did the "extremely successful" map more specifically to questions of endpoint management and mobile empowerment? In my last blog, I mentioned that the extremely successful were twice as likely to leverage mobile for ITSM professionals, four times more likely to offer service consumers mobile support, and twice as likely to offer users access to corporate applications through mobile.

Here are a few additional data points regarding extremely successful priorities as opposed to those who were only somewhat successful, or unsuccessful:

Those who were extremely successful were:

■ Nearly eighteen times more likely to view lifecycle support for mobile users as “completely impacting” service desk operations

■ Three times more likely to have an overarching strategy for managing endpoints

■ Three times more likely to view managing and remediating endpoint issues at the service desk as critical

■ Four times more likely to prefer a single unified console for endpoints

So as you can see, the data here strongly suggests that a more progressive focus on both mobile and endpoint management helps to put ITSM teams in the winner’s circle.

Image removed.

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ITSM Futures: A Closer Look at Mobile and Unified Endpoint Management

Dennis Drogseth

In my last blog, I discussed how IT service management (ITSM) roles (and rules) are becoming more operations-aware. The blog examined a number of key game-changers for ITSM, including a growing requirement for shared analytics; the rise (not the demise) of the CMDB/CMS and service modeling; cloud as both a catalyst for innovation and a resource to be managed; and support for enterprise services such as facilities and HR. I also discussed two topics, mobility and unified endpoint management, that I’d like to examine in more depth here.

Mobility is King

OK — you probably didn’t need me to tell you that mobility is critical, but let me place its growing criticality in a more specific ITSM context with a few numbers.

■ 62% of our 270 respondents viewed lifecycle mobile support as “significantly” or “completely” impacting ITSM directions.

■ Mobility is anything but one-dimensional. In fact when we got the data for how actual mobile endpoints are being used by end users and ITSM professionals, the charts looked almost identical.

- 48% of end users and 45% of IT professional usage includes tablets, iPhones, Androids, and other mobile devices.

- 26% of both end users and IT professionals are using a mix of iPhone, Android, or other similar mobile endpoints (but no tablets).

- Only 15% (of end users) and 17% (of IT professionals) say they are not yet focused on any mobile devices.

■ 63% are using mobile endpoints in support of ITSM professionals with the following top-ranked results:

- Improved responsiveness to IT service consumers

- Increased IT efficiencies and reduced OpEx costs

- Improved collaboration between the service desk and operations

■ About two-thirds of our respondents allow end users to access corporate applications via mobile endpoints. And 50% of respondents offer their end users mobile access for ITSM-related requests and other interactions. Of these last, 78% saw “meaningful” or “dramatic” improvements in service delivery.

How Unified is Unified Endpoint Management?

Mobile is, of course, part of a bigger picture when it comes to endpoints. And here, our respondents generally favored integration and unified approaches. For instance, concerning mobile management, 58% preferred an integrated application that could support device management, configuration management, and enterprise mobility. Looking at endpoints more broadly, 82% viewed a unified console for managing mobile and traditional endpoints as “important” or “essential.”

When it came to unified endpoint management, the top seven functional priorities were:

■ Understanding software usage

■ License management

■ Software distribution

■ Operating system deployment

■ Patch management

■ Inventory management

■ Security

And the Winners Were …

So, how did the "extremely successful" map more specifically to questions of endpoint management and mobile empowerment? In my last blog, I mentioned that the extremely successful were twice as likely to leverage mobile for ITSM professionals, four times more likely to offer service consumers mobile support, and twice as likely to offer users access to corporate applications through mobile.

Here are a few additional data points regarding extremely successful priorities as opposed to those who were only somewhat successful, or unsuccessful:

Those who were extremely successful were:

■ Nearly eighteen times more likely to view lifecycle support for mobile users as “completely impacting” service desk operations

■ Three times more likely to have an overarching strategy for managing endpoints

■ Three times more likely to view managing and remediating endpoint issues at the service desk as critical

■ Four times more likely to prefer a single unified console for endpoints

So as you can see, the data here strongly suggests that a more progressive focus on both mobile and endpoint management helps to put ITSM teams in the winner’s circle.

Image removed.

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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 ...