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itSMF USA Releases New Study on Service Management Adoption

itSMF USA has released the results of a new IT service management study. The study, conducted this year in partnership with Forrester Research, was created to help guide infrastructure and operations professionals through a better understanding of people, process and technology trends and best practices.

The study focused on current and future adoption of IT service management principles, including effective ITIL practices in use amongst itSMF USA’s member base. The resulting report, The State Of IT Service Management In 2011, was published by Forrester Research, Inc.

The study addressed a range of current topics for IT today, including the role of IT service management in bridging the gap between application and infrastructure teams, the level of ITIL process adoption and their relationship to benefits realized, the role of training and certification in adoption, the effect of executive sponsorship level on both adoption and benefits realized, the adoption and impact of ITIL v3 and the impact of tools on ITSM adoption.

“Data was collected from 491 qualified ITSM professionals who are heavily involved in ITSM efforts. The results clearly offer empirical evidence that ITSM offers significant benefits to the organizations and to themselves“, said Doug Tedder, President-Elect of itSMF USA.

Some insights from the research:

• The adoption of IT infrastructure library (ITIL)-based programs and certifications are mainstream, with IT service quality, productivity, and reputation with business leaders significantly enhanced because of it.

• More work needs to be done on certain execution elements, most notably change management. Execution still causes too many incidents. About 70% of all incidents are the result of a change. 58% of the subjects say over 10% of their incidents are caused by change. 25% are excessive (over 40% of incidents) and a beleaguered 22% don’t know. SaaS is viewed very favorably as a service desk software delivery option. 96% were satisfied or very satisfied with SaaS, whereas the numbers for traditional software models and homebrewed tools all hovered around 70%.

• Despite some dissatisfaction with service desk, buyers are unlikely to switch vendors. 57% said they would not switch and 21% said they would. 22% did not know.

• The anchor-boutique “shopping mall” model for management tools seems popular. Major
vendors are well entrenched, but 37% will fill gaps in their portfolios with smaller boutique
vendors.

• 51% of ITSM efforts are driven primarily by IT or business executives.

• ITIL has had an overwhelming positive impact on organizational productivity: 85% positive and 2% negative

• 70% received a positive salary increase in the past year with 31% over 5% (The general US population fell and general IT salaries were flat.)

• 77% indicated a positive relationship between their Application Development and Operations teams. This indicates DevOps success is far stronger in ITSM-focused organizations than in the general enterprise.

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itSMF USA Releases New Study on Service Management Adoption

itSMF USA has released the results of a new IT service management study. The study, conducted this year in partnership with Forrester Research, was created to help guide infrastructure and operations professionals through a better understanding of people, process and technology trends and best practices.

The study focused on current and future adoption of IT service management principles, including effective ITIL practices in use amongst itSMF USA’s member base. The resulting report, The State Of IT Service Management In 2011, was published by Forrester Research, Inc.

The study addressed a range of current topics for IT today, including the role of IT service management in bridging the gap between application and infrastructure teams, the level of ITIL process adoption and their relationship to benefits realized, the role of training and certification in adoption, the effect of executive sponsorship level on both adoption and benefits realized, the adoption and impact of ITIL v3 and the impact of tools on ITSM adoption.

“Data was collected from 491 qualified ITSM professionals who are heavily involved in ITSM efforts. The results clearly offer empirical evidence that ITSM offers significant benefits to the organizations and to themselves“, said Doug Tedder, President-Elect of itSMF USA.

Some insights from the research:

• The adoption of IT infrastructure library (ITIL)-based programs and certifications are mainstream, with IT service quality, productivity, and reputation with business leaders significantly enhanced because of it.

• More work needs to be done on certain execution elements, most notably change management. Execution still causes too many incidents. About 70% of all incidents are the result of a change. 58% of the subjects say over 10% of their incidents are caused by change. 25% are excessive (over 40% of incidents) and a beleaguered 22% don’t know. SaaS is viewed very favorably as a service desk software delivery option. 96% were satisfied or very satisfied with SaaS, whereas the numbers for traditional software models and homebrewed tools all hovered around 70%.

• Despite some dissatisfaction with service desk, buyers are unlikely to switch vendors. 57% said they would not switch and 21% said they would. 22% did not know.

• The anchor-boutique “shopping mall” model for management tools seems popular. Major
vendors are well entrenched, but 37% will fill gaps in their portfolios with smaller boutique
vendors.

• 51% of ITSM efforts are driven primarily by IT or business executives.

• ITIL has had an overwhelming positive impact on organizational productivity: 85% positive and 2% negative

• 70% received a positive salary increase in the past year with 31% over 5% (The general US population fell and general IT salaries were flat.)

• 77% indicated a positive relationship between their Application Development and Operations teams. This indicates DevOps success is far stronger in ITSM-focused organizations than in the general enterprise.

Hot Topic

The Latest

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 14, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud network observability... 

While companies adopt AI at a record pace, they also face the challenge of finding a smart and scalable way to manage its rapidly growing costs. This requires balancing the massive possibilities inherent in AI with the need to control cloud costs, aim for long-term profitability and optimize spending ...

Telecommunications is expanding at an unprecedented pace ... But progress brings complexity. As WanAware's 2025 Telecom Observability Benchmark Report reveals, many operators are discovering that modernization requires more than physical build outs and CapEx — it also demands the tools and insights to manage, secure, and optimize this fast-growing infrastructure in real time ...

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 ...