Reshaping ITSM : (Intelligently Transforming Service Management)

Released on AXELOS Publishing

IT Infrastructure management and support domain are experiencing a new makeover when it comes to tools, technologies, and methods introduced on top of the service layer. Support and service are an integral part of every business. Every organization is an IT organization; every process is related to the IT process. When it comes to handling stakeholder expectations– IT plays a vital role as every business component is built on the foundation of IT infrastructure (End-user* Enterprise* Application*). All the IT service area companies are working to adopt new and unconventional ways of I&O (Infrastructure & Operations) to gain dominance and advantage. This is being accelerated by introducing capabilities and disruptive technologies that are reincarnated as the future of the present world. Global IT service organizations have become competitive regarding service levels, expectations, and quality. Top contesting players are getting aggressive with improvised solutions/products, functionalities, customizability, ease of deployment, and new business models. These options drive the IT service providers to adopt new products, which are a combination of cloud, Digital, and AI-AU-AN (Artificial Intelligence-Automation-Analytics). The emphasis is more on the speed of service, service excellence, and service availability. Technology leadership wants to eliminate legacy applications, hardware, and processes for obvious reasons. The primary intent is to transfer the cost of I&O ownership to the IT service provider giants for mutual benefits.

In the past, processes had more prominence than tools, and human effort was counted on to bridge the gap, but today things are precisely contradictory. Tools have taken precedence, and technology is expected to cover for human endeavor. We have been interacting and working with IT processes in multiple set-ups, environments, and businesses for decades. The information, work instruction, action, functionality, and triggers are well understood, translating into the workflow and implant into new tools/applications. Tasks that were time-consuming and very complex have become so easy that it is no more an exclusive feature or crucial requirement. Example: Dashboards, reporting & Insights – This has evolved by great leaps as it has analytics embedded, SLA’s and other performance parameters are already calculated with narratives, and all this information is available anywhere anytime on a gadget of choice. Every business’s current ask is to move from a Probabilistic to a deterministic approach, which will help the organizations foresee the future and get ready with a strategy. This is possible as we have suddenly realized the potential and use of ever existing data oceans residing on our systems forever. The urge is to look deep within these data lakes and navigate the way forward by connecting everything to everything.

We need resilient and scalable service management solutions for growing businesses – diversified consumers – & – Integrated infrastructure.

The traditional way of troubleshooting the infrastructure components should change, if not already drastically changing. New means of analysis, correlation, and resolution are being implied using contemporary tools. This is being achieved by a perfect combination of Software (Product) – Analytics (Data) – AI components (Deep learning) and Humans foresight that build such systems. For illustration Deep learning-based tool that fixes recurring and new incidents and learns from every event to formulate a solution for future situations based on its previous resolution history, source, method, and nature of the occurrence. We are figuring out ways to use AI, Automation, and Analytics capabilities at every work instruction level in all possible ITIL processes.

 We cannot miss noticing that new-age cognitive technologies are transforming one facet of infrastructure mgmt. On the other hand, there are new methodologies like DevOps and Agile, Reference architecture framework– IT4IT, and VesiSM that are intersecting with service management processes at some level to add their respective strengths and benefits. These new emerging frameworks/methodologies provide the ability to build processes and holistic solutions that accommodate new-age technologies. 

IT Process are connecting more than before – Tools getting smarter than before – & People are innovating more than ever