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What is ServiceOps? A Research-Based Look at Why It's on the Rise

Valerie O'Connell
EMA

A working definition: ServiceOps is a technology-enabled approach to unifying IT service and IT operations management for excellence in delivery of digital business services.

Although the two teams have different charters and skillsets, IT service and IT operations are inextricable. There is no service without effective IT operations.

Reducing friction caused by overlap, gaps, conflicting organizational goals, and disjointed processes, ServiceOps is all about IT service to the business. It is people-centric, technology-enabled, and C-level endorsed. It's also on the rise.

Recent EMA field research found that ServiceOps is either an active effort or a formal initiative in 78% of the organizations represented by a global panel of 400+ IT leaders. It is relatively early but gaining momentum across industries and organizations of all sizes globally.

Benefiting IT service and operations equally, ServiceOps tends to be grassroots in origin, but is well supported and funded at the C-level. Both grassroots adoption and C-level support stem from the fact that ServiceOps directly addresses many of the highest-priority IT objectives and challenges, especially IT employee productivity, reduction in outage frequency/duration/impact, improved service, user experience, and cost-cutting.

ServiceOps runs on automation and AI/ML technology tracks already laid down in cross-functional workflows. Most of all, ServiceOps makes sense to the people doing the work because it is practical and slashes wasted time on both sides.

When EMA asked representatives from its global panel of ServiceOps leaders to rate its organizational impact, the results were almost universally positive.

What Impact Has ServiceOps Had on Your Organization?


In case anyone is wondering, participants were offered numerous less-than-positive responses. They don't show up on this chart because negative responses were simply not chosen.

ServiceOps has no downside. It uses technology that is already in place and well understood so additional investment is no impediment to adoption. Results are not only immediate, but important. Practitioners answered the question, "What are the results when service and operations are effectively unified (ServiceOps)?" with a virtual tie for first place:

■ Faster time to find and fix problems

■ Higher productivity and less wasted time

What organization doesn't want these results?

They are logical outcomes of ServiceOps, which turns out to be a codeword for effective collaboration and effortless cooperation.

A word about the name … there is no magic to the phrase "ServiceOps." It's not a product or a technology. It's not even a methodology. It's a common-sense use of existing resources toward a common goal, so the name doesn't matter. However, EMA anticipates that the name will become commonplace and well recognized because it is simple, and it accurately conveys its meaning in the same way that DevOps does for its sphere of function.

So, why does ServiceOps matter now?

■ It's happening now — either formally or informally

■ Its benefits can be amplified with organizational support and funding

■ Recognizing the trends and opportunities makes it possible to harness the momentum and maximize results

■ A chance to make a difference without disruption or tons of additional investment

■ The competition is moving forward

Details of this research and its findings are covered in a vendor-free webinar on April 4:Automation, AI, and the Rise of ServiceOps

Valerie O'Connell is EMA Research Director of Digital Service Execution

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In 2026, the cost of downtime or an outage is no longer just a technical inconvenience; it's a $600 billion wake up call for global businesses. As our digital ecosystems become  more interconnected, each touchpoint introduces new risks and multiplies the consequences when things go wrong. And the data is clear: aggregate downtime costs  for Global 2,000 companies have surged 50% since 2024, reaching a staggering $600 billion ...

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Over the past few years, large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized the software industry. Given their ability to excel at multi-step reasoning, LLMs have helped enterprises streamline workflows and adapt to the unknown. However, employing such models comes with sky-high costs, latency issues, and limited flexibility. In the realm of IT operations, it is generally wiser to employ smaller, domain-specific models instead ...

What is ServiceOps? A Research-Based Look at Why It's on the Rise

Valerie O'Connell
EMA

A working definition: ServiceOps is a technology-enabled approach to unifying IT service and IT operations management for excellence in delivery of digital business services.

Although the two teams have different charters and skillsets, IT service and IT operations are inextricable. There is no service without effective IT operations.

Reducing friction caused by overlap, gaps, conflicting organizational goals, and disjointed processes, ServiceOps is all about IT service to the business. It is people-centric, technology-enabled, and C-level endorsed. It's also on the rise.

Recent EMA field research found that ServiceOps is either an active effort or a formal initiative in 78% of the organizations represented by a global panel of 400+ IT leaders. It is relatively early but gaining momentum across industries and organizations of all sizes globally.

Benefiting IT service and operations equally, ServiceOps tends to be grassroots in origin, but is well supported and funded at the C-level. Both grassroots adoption and C-level support stem from the fact that ServiceOps directly addresses many of the highest-priority IT objectives and challenges, especially IT employee productivity, reduction in outage frequency/duration/impact, improved service, user experience, and cost-cutting.

ServiceOps runs on automation and AI/ML technology tracks already laid down in cross-functional workflows. Most of all, ServiceOps makes sense to the people doing the work because it is practical and slashes wasted time on both sides.

When EMA asked representatives from its global panel of ServiceOps leaders to rate its organizational impact, the results were almost universally positive.

What Impact Has ServiceOps Had on Your Organization?


In case anyone is wondering, participants were offered numerous less-than-positive responses. They don't show up on this chart because negative responses were simply not chosen.

ServiceOps has no downside. It uses technology that is already in place and well understood so additional investment is no impediment to adoption. Results are not only immediate, but important. Practitioners answered the question, "What are the results when service and operations are effectively unified (ServiceOps)?" with a virtual tie for first place:

■ Faster time to find and fix problems

■ Higher productivity and less wasted time

What organization doesn't want these results?

They are logical outcomes of ServiceOps, which turns out to be a codeword for effective collaboration and effortless cooperation.

A word about the name … there is no magic to the phrase "ServiceOps." It's not a product or a technology. It's not even a methodology. It's a common-sense use of existing resources toward a common goal, so the name doesn't matter. However, EMA anticipates that the name will become commonplace and well recognized because it is simple, and it accurately conveys its meaning in the same way that DevOps does for its sphere of function.

So, why does ServiceOps matter now?

■ It's happening now — either formally or informally

■ Its benefits can be amplified with organizational support and funding

■ Recognizing the trends and opportunities makes it possible to harness the momentum and maximize results

■ A chance to make a difference without disruption or tons of additional investment

■ The competition is moving forward

Details of this research and its findings are covered in a vendor-free webinar on April 4:Automation, AI, and the Rise of ServiceOps

Valerie O'Connell is EMA Research Director of Digital Service Execution

Hot Topics

The Latest

AI is becoming the operating system of the enterprise. It acts as an invisible coordination layer that understands intent, connects systems, and executes work across complex SaaS environments. Previously, employees had to click through multiple systems — CRM, ERP, support tools, collaboration platforms — to complete a single task. Now, instead of navigating each application manually, they can simply state what they need to accomplish ...

In 2026, the cost of downtime or an outage is no longer just a technical inconvenience; it's a $600 billion wake up call for global businesses. As our digital ecosystems become  more interconnected, each touchpoint introduces new risks and multiplies the consequences when things go wrong. And the data is clear: aggregate downtime costs  for Global 2,000 companies have surged 50% since 2024, reaching a staggering $600 billion ...

Deloitte found that 74% of enterprises expect to deploy agentic AI solutions in the next 24 months. However, the rush to deployment is outpacing foundational work, though. Only 21% of enterprises have fully formed agent governance models in place. The result? AI agents deployed without guidance or governance begin to function as fragmented islands of complexity ...

Cloud spending is no longer viewed as a passthrough IT expense, but as a strategic financial lever that directly impacts innovation capacity, profitability and enterprise resilience, according to the CFO Cloud Cost Optimization Report from Azul ...

As AI moves from generating responses to performing actions, the need for trust increases exponentially. And as organizations enlist AI agents for increasingly sophisticated business processes, trust is going to be the single most important theme for spurring adoption. What can organizations do to build trustworthy AI agents? ...

I've spent a lot of time in the channel, and one thing I keep coming back to is this: a partner program is only as good as what it looks like in the field. Many programs look great on paper, but when a partner is in front of a customer navigating a complex hybrid environment or trying to make the case for AI-powered observability, the gap between what a vendor promises and what it actually delivers becomes very clear, very fast ...

Enterprises today operate in a real-time environment where uninterrupted access to trusted data has become a baseline expectation for users, applications and automated systems. Traditional DataOps models, built on manual effort and human triage, cannot keep pace with this always active demand. AI agents are emerging as the operational backbone, ensuring consistent data availability, reinforcing trustworthiness and enabling a level of scale that manual processes cannot achieve ...

For decades, trust in the digital workplace rested on familiar signals. We trusted faces on video calls, voices on the phone, and emails that appeared to come from people we knew. These cues felt human and intuitive. They anchored how decisions were made, approvals were granted, and access was authorized. AI-powered deepfakes have quietly broken that model ...

Cloud migration was supposed to be a one-way door. For most enterprises, it turns out it isn't. Cloud data repatriation is a real and growing trend. A new survey ... finds that 89% of organizations plan to expand their on-premises infrastructure footprint over the next two years — and 75% have already moved at least some workloads back from public cloud in the past 24 months. The findings point to a broad rethinking of where data belongs ...

Over the past few years, large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized the software industry. Given their ability to excel at multi-step reasoning, LLMs have helped enterprises streamline workflows and adapt to the unknown. However, employing such models comes with sky-high costs, latency issues, and limited flexibility. In the realm of IT operations, it is generally wiser to employ smaller, domain-specific models instead ...