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How Cloud Is Changing the Face of IT Service Management

Dennis Drogseth

Cloud is no longer a new topic for IT, or for IT service management (ITSM). But its impact on how ITSM teams work, as well as on how IT works overall, has probably never been greater.

Indeed, more and more IT organizations have been “moving to the cloud.” But understanding its relevance can’t be achieved by viewing cloud as a “destination,” as if it were some miraculous travel resort in the sky — in spite of the much overused phrase “journey to the cloud.”

Optimizing cloud isn’t a linear process of simply “getting there.” Rather, cloud is a multifaceted resource to be utilized, managed, and understood in conjunction with other IT resources as an enabler of cost, service, and business efficiencies.

Leveraging EMA research on the future of ITSM and on digital and IT transformation, this blog looks at data relevant to the impact of cloud on ITSM teams and addresses the following questions:

■ Where and how are cloud adoptions (both public and private) occurring?

■ How is cloud affecting IT priorities overall, and how is it affecting ITSM priorities in particular?

■ Where and how is cloud changing how ITSM teams work?

■ What are some of the more prominent obstacles to integrating cloud for service management? And how is cloud adoption impacting ITSM success?

■ What should you look for in the future?

Where and How Are Cloud Adoptions Occurring?

Our digital transformation research confirms what other EMA research data indicates: Private or internal cloud adoption is still well ahead of public cloud adoption overall, although a hybrid, 50/50 balance between public and private is very much on the rise. Yet among the more popular services, external SaaS applications are number one and externally hosted infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings are at the number three spot. Top internal cloud priorities include software-defined data centers, internally hosted virtual applications, and internal IaaS options.

How Is Cloud Affecting IT and ITSM Priorities?

In terms of IT overall, our digital transformation research indicated that 85% of IT organizations are, in some way, linking their IT or digital transformation initiatives to cloud. The data also indicates that they view cloud primarily as a resource for transformation, but also as both a driver to promote more dialog between IT and the business and a catalyst for IT to become more holistic and cross-domain. However, some respondents felt that cloud was actually isolating IT from the business, and 15% felt that cloud was more disruptive than helpful in general.

When we asked specifically how cloud was impacting ITSM teams in our ITSM research, we saw that similarly, cloud was viewed first and foremost as a resource for expanding ITSM capabilities. But many ITSM teams also indicated that cloud:

1. Requires higher levels of automation

2. Makes us to pay more attention to DevOps

3. Makes asset management more challenging

4. Enables ITSM teams to reduce costs (could be OpEx or CapEx)

5. Puts pressure on ITSM to justify costs

6. Shortens review cycles for managing change

7. Promotes the representation of third-party SaaS services in our service catalogs

Where and How Is Cloud Changing How ITSM Teams Work?

The shifting priorities indicated above help to answer this very question. There’s a growing need for:

■ More advanced levels of automation

■ More creative and dynamic approaches to asset management and managing change

■ Expanding the reach of service catalogs to include SaaS and potentially other cloud services

■ Better integration with other parts of IT, such as development for DevOps

■ Minimizing costs and optimizing value and, by implication, documenting just how this is being done

Other data from our ITSM research indicates that a lot of these advances will have to come from better integrations with operations in terms of incident, problem, and change management, as well as shared analytics and superior process automation and workflow.

How Is Cloud Impacting ITSM Success, and What Are Some of the Obstacles to Watch out For?

In terms of how cloud is impacting ITSM success, there are strong data indicators that those ITSM teams that embrace cloud are far more likely to succeed than those that resist it. For instance, those who were extremely successful in making ITSM strategic and relevant were twice as likely to have support for cloud services in their service catalog and twice as likely to invest in more advanced levels of automation for change, both in support of cloud adoption and overall. Successful ITSM teams were also more likely to prioritize integrated operations for incident, problem, and change management in support of cloud than ITSM teams who viewed themselves as less successful.

When asked about obstacles to “superior cross-domain IT service management,” including cloud adoption, our respondents singled out organizational and political issues as number one. Poor dialog and communication across IT also ranked as a top obstacle, followed by lack of effectively defined processes and software deployment and administrative complexity.

What Should You Look for in the Future?

While I don’t have an actual crystal ball, I’m happy to make what I feel are three fairly safe predictions.

■ Cloud will continue to drive the need for better ITSM-Operations integration, a process that’s still very much in its infancy.

■ Cloud will continue to challenge ITSM teams and IT as a whole with its requirements and complexity, given the advent of software-defined data centers, microservices, and containers, as well as more pervasive public/private cloud adoption.

■ Not everything will move to the cloud, nor should it. So governance will become key—a central point of opportunity for ITSM teams. This will require understanding OpEx efficiencies as well as service relevance, portfolio optimization, and IT asset (including cloud) costs.

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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 ...

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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 ...

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How Cloud Is Changing the Face of IT Service Management

Dennis Drogseth

Cloud is no longer a new topic for IT, or for IT service management (ITSM). But its impact on how ITSM teams work, as well as on how IT works overall, has probably never been greater.

Indeed, more and more IT organizations have been “moving to the cloud.” But understanding its relevance can’t be achieved by viewing cloud as a “destination,” as if it were some miraculous travel resort in the sky — in spite of the much overused phrase “journey to the cloud.”

Optimizing cloud isn’t a linear process of simply “getting there.” Rather, cloud is a multifaceted resource to be utilized, managed, and understood in conjunction with other IT resources as an enabler of cost, service, and business efficiencies.

Leveraging EMA research on the future of ITSM and on digital and IT transformation, this blog looks at data relevant to the impact of cloud on ITSM teams and addresses the following questions:

■ Where and how are cloud adoptions (both public and private) occurring?

■ How is cloud affecting IT priorities overall, and how is it affecting ITSM priorities in particular?

■ Where and how is cloud changing how ITSM teams work?

■ What are some of the more prominent obstacles to integrating cloud for service management? And how is cloud adoption impacting ITSM success?

■ What should you look for in the future?

Where and How Are Cloud Adoptions Occurring?

Our digital transformation research confirms what other EMA research data indicates: Private or internal cloud adoption is still well ahead of public cloud adoption overall, although a hybrid, 50/50 balance between public and private is very much on the rise. Yet among the more popular services, external SaaS applications are number one and externally hosted infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings are at the number three spot. Top internal cloud priorities include software-defined data centers, internally hosted virtual applications, and internal IaaS options.

How Is Cloud Affecting IT and ITSM Priorities?

In terms of IT overall, our digital transformation research indicated that 85% of IT organizations are, in some way, linking their IT or digital transformation initiatives to cloud. The data also indicates that they view cloud primarily as a resource for transformation, but also as both a driver to promote more dialog between IT and the business and a catalyst for IT to become more holistic and cross-domain. However, some respondents felt that cloud was actually isolating IT from the business, and 15% felt that cloud was more disruptive than helpful in general.

When we asked specifically how cloud was impacting ITSM teams in our ITSM research, we saw that similarly, cloud was viewed first and foremost as a resource for expanding ITSM capabilities. But many ITSM teams also indicated that cloud:

1. Requires higher levels of automation

2. Makes us to pay more attention to DevOps

3. Makes asset management more challenging

4. Enables ITSM teams to reduce costs (could be OpEx or CapEx)

5. Puts pressure on ITSM to justify costs

6. Shortens review cycles for managing change

7. Promotes the representation of third-party SaaS services in our service catalogs

Where and How Is Cloud Changing How ITSM Teams Work?

The shifting priorities indicated above help to answer this very question. There’s a growing need for:

■ More advanced levels of automation

■ More creative and dynamic approaches to asset management and managing change

■ Expanding the reach of service catalogs to include SaaS and potentially other cloud services

■ Better integration with other parts of IT, such as development for DevOps

■ Minimizing costs and optimizing value and, by implication, documenting just how this is being done

Other data from our ITSM research indicates that a lot of these advances will have to come from better integrations with operations in terms of incident, problem, and change management, as well as shared analytics and superior process automation and workflow.

How Is Cloud Impacting ITSM Success, and What Are Some of the Obstacles to Watch out For?

In terms of how cloud is impacting ITSM success, there are strong data indicators that those ITSM teams that embrace cloud are far more likely to succeed than those that resist it. For instance, those who were extremely successful in making ITSM strategic and relevant were twice as likely to have support for cloud services in their service catalog and twice as likely to invest in more advanced levels of automation for change, both in support of cloud adoption and overall. Successful ITSM teams were also more likely to prioritize integrated operations for incident, problem, and change management in support of cloud than ITSM teams who viewed themselves as less successful.

When asked about obstacles to “superior cross-domain IT service management,” including cloud adoption, our respondents singled out organizational and political issues as number one. Poor dialog and communication across IT also ranked as a top obstacle, followed by lack of effectively defined processes and software deployment and administrative complexity.

What Should You Look for in the Future?

While I don’t have an actual crystal ball, I’m happy to make what I feel are three fairly safe predictions.

■ Cloud will continue to drive the need for better ITSM-Operations integration, a process that’s still very much in its infancy.

■ Cloud will continue to challenge ITSM teams and IT as a whole with its requirements and complexity, given the advent of software-defined data centers, microservices, and containers, as well as more pervasive public/private cloud adoption.

■ Not everything will move to the cloud, nor should it. So governance will become key—a central point of opportunity for ITSM teams. This will require understanding OpEx efficiencies as well as service relevance, portfolio optimization, and IT asset (including cloud) costs.

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) ...