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The Future of ITSM: How Are Roles (and Rules) Changing? Part 2

Dennis Drogseth

Both the “rules” and the “roles” governing IT Service Management (ITSM) are evolving to support a far-broader need for inclusiveness across IT, and between IT and its service consumers. Recent EMA research, What Is the Future of IT Service Management? (March 2015), exposed a number of shifting trends that might surprise many in the industry.

Start with Part 1 of this blog

Research highlights show the following trends in rules and roles:

■ Cloud continues to be a game changer. ITSM teams are playing a more dynamic and service-aware role in managing cloud investments through a growing focus on such things as higher levels of automation and more attention to DevOps. ITSM teams are also integrating cloud services into their service catalogs — with SaaS (internal cloud) services, IaaS (internal cloud) services, and SaaS and IaaS services in public cloud tied for third.

■ The move to support enterprise services is also changing ITSM rules and roles. Only 89% of respondents had plans to consolidate IT and non-IT customer service — up from just two years ago when only 75% had plans to consolidate.

■ Mobility is seriously changing the ITSM game — in terms of both improved IT efficiencies and end-user outreach. 85% of our respondents had mobile support for end users, often across heterogeneous environments (tablets, iPhones, and Android phones, as examples). And 50% allowed end users to make ITSM-related service requests via these devices, making ITSM teams, and IT as a whole, considerably more consumer-friendly.

■ In parallel, the demand for more unified and effective endpoint management is expanding the requirements for role-based expertise. The leading requirements/skills here include capturing software usage, software license management, software distribution, operating system deployment, and patch management — across a fully heterogeneous set of endpoint options.

We also looked at success rates in an attempt to understand the chemistry of the most successful ITSM teams. To do this, we contrasted the 18% of respondents who viewed their ITSM initiative as “extremely successful” with the 12% who felt they were only “somewhat successful” or were “largely unsuccessful”. Those who were “extremely successful” were also:

■ Four times more likely to have integrated their IT and non-IT service desks

■ Twice as likely to have a CMDB/CMS-related technology deployed

■ Dramatically more likely to support cloud in service catalogs

■ Twice as likely to be leveraging mobile for ITSM professionals

■ Nearly four times more likely to offer service consumers mobile support for ITSM-related actions

■ Twice as likely to offer users access to corporate applications through mobile

■ More than twice as likely to be slated for growth

Overall, the news seems encouraging for ITSM teams willing to reach out and embrace a growing set of technologies and responsibilities. This means being ready to support new roles and expertise, while promoting more informed dialog, both between enterprise end-users and the service desk and between ITSM teams and the rest of IT — including operations and development. The news is probably not so good for the fainthearted seeking to cling to traditional ways of working in an “ITSM silo.” In other words, both the need and the opportunity for ITSM leadership awaits you — and our data suggests that the time to engage is now.

Image removed.

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The Future of ITSM: How Are Roles (and Rules) Changing? Part 2

Dennis Drogseth

Both the “rules” and the “roles” governing IT Service Management (ITSM) are evolving to support a far-broader need for inclusiveness across IT, and between IT and its service consumers. Recent EMA research, What Is the Future of IT Service Management? (March 2015), exposed a number of shifting trends that might surprise many in the industry.

Start with Part 1 of this blog

Research highlights show the following trends in rules and roles:

■ Cloud continues to be a game changer. ITSM teams are playing a more dynamic and service-aware role in managing cloud investments through a growing focus on such things as higher levels of automation and more attention to DevOps. ITSM teams are also integrating cloud services into their service catalogs — with SaaS (internal cloud) services, IaaS (internal cloud) services, and SaaS and IaaS services in public cloud tied for third.

■ The move to support enterprise services is also changing ITSM rules and roles. Only 89% of respondents had plans to consolidate IT and non-IT customer service — up from just two years ago when only 75% had plans to consolidate.

■ Mobility is seriously changing the ITSM game — in terms of both improved IT efficiencies and end-user outreach. 85% of our respondents had mobile support for end users, often across heterogeneous environments (tablets, iPhones, and Android phones, as examples). And 50% allowed end users to make ITSM-related service requests via these devices, making ITSM teams, and IT as a whole, considerably more consumer-friendly.

■ In parallel, the demand for more unified and effective endpoint management is expanding the requirements for role-based expertise. The leading requirements/skills here include capturing software usage, software license management, software distribution, operating system deployment, and patch management — across a fully heterogeneous set of endpoint options.

We also looked at success rates in an attempt to understand the chemistry of the most successful ITSM teams. To do this, we contrasted the 18% of respondents who viewed their ITSM initiative as “extremely successful” with the 12% who felt they were only “somewhat successful” or were “largely unsuccessful”. Those who were “extremely successful” were also:

■ Four times more likely to have integrated their IT and non-IT service desks

■ Twice as likely to have a CMDB/CMS-related technology deployed

■ Dramatically more likely to support cloud in service catalogs

■ Twice as likely to be leveraging mobile for ITSM professionals

■ Nearly four times more likely to offer service consumers mobile support for ITSM-related actions

■ Twice as likely to offer users access to corporate applications through mobile

■ More than twice as likely to be slated for growth

Overall, the news seems encouraging for ITSM teams willing to reach out and embrace a growing set of technologies and responsibilities. This means being ready to support new roles and expertise, while promoting more informed dialog, both between enterprise end-users and the service desk and between ITSM teams and the rest of IT — including operations and development. The news is probably not so good for the fainthearted seeking to cling to traditional ways of working in an “ITSM silo.” In other words, both the need and the opportunity for ITSM leadership awaits you — and our data suggests that the time to engage is now.

Image removed.

The Latest

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...

Today, organizations are generating and processing more data than ever before. From training AI models to running complex analytics, massive datasets have become the backbone of innovation. However, as businesses embrace the cloud for its scalability and flexibility, a new challenge arises: managing the soaring costs of storing and processing this data ...

Despite the frustrations, every engineer we spoke with ultimately affirmed the value and power of OpenTelemetry. The "sucks" moments are often the flip side of its greatest strengths ... Part 2 of this blog covers the powerful advantages and breakthroughs — the "OTel Rocks" moments ...

OpenTelemetry (OTel) arrived with a grand promise: a unified, vendor-neutral standard for observability data (traces, metrics, logs) that would free engineers from vendor lock-in and provide deeper insights into complex systems ... No powerful technology comes without its challenges, and OpenTelemetry is no exception. The engineers we spoke with were frank about the friction points they've encountered ...

Enterprises are turning to AI-powered software platforms to make IT management more intelligent and ensure their systems and technology meet business needs for efficiency, lowers costs and innovation, according to new research from Information Services Group ...

The power of Kubernetes lies in its ability to orchestrate containerized applications with unparalleled efficiency. Yet, this power comes at a cost: the dynamic, distributed, and ephemeral nature of its architecture creates a monitoring challenge akin to tracking a constantly shifting, interconnected network of fleeting entities ... Due to the dynamic and complex nature of Kubernetes, monitoring poses a substantial challenge for DevOps and platform engineers. Here are the primary obstacles ...

The perception of IT has undergone a remarkable transformation in recent years. What was once viewed primarily as a cost center has transformed into a pivotal force driving business innovation and market leadership ... As someone who has witnessed and helped drive this evolution, it's become clear to me that the most successful organizations share a common thread: they've mastered the art of leveraging IT advancements to achieve measurable business outcomes ...

More than half (51%) of companies are already leveraging AI agents, according to the PagerDuty Agentic AI Survey. Agentic AI adoption is poised to accelerate faster than generative AI (GenAI) while reshaping automation and decision-making across industries ...

Image
Pagerduty

 

Real privacy protection thanks to technology and processes is often portrayed as too hard and too costly to implement. So the most common strategy is to do as little as possible just to conform to formal requirements of current and incoming regulations. This is a missed opportunity ...

The expanding use of AI is driving enterprise interest in data operations (DataOps) to orchestrate data integration and processing and improve data quality and validity, according to a new report from Information Services Group (ISG) ...