2020 ITxM Predictions: A Transfusion of Expert Insight

Quick question. What does ITxM mean to you? Well, a Google search leads immediately to scores of results pertaining to the essential, life-saving industry of transfusion medicine and the donation, storage, and distribution of blood products. But what does ITxM mean within the context of enterprise IT network environments? Well, it’s all about improving an organization’s capabilities within the areas of IT asset, IT service, and IT security management systematically. And toss in IT identity management as well.

Here’s the thing. Asset, service, security, and identity management encompass overlapping IT initiatives. Unifying IT includes discovering where these roads meet and charting the steps to boost efficiencies and reduce duplicate efforts. Unifying IT isn’t about getting two or more departments to work together more collaboratively. It’s about leveraging practices and tools to track asset lifecycles, improve service levels, manage identities and levels of access, and safeguard your IT investments and sensitive information.

Transferring IT Insight: Experts Share Their Predictions for 2020 and Beyond

The ITxM industry is one of those that is constantly changing. In the past decade, we saw IT innovations that few people could have accurately predicted. Looking forward, our team at Ivanti couldn’t help but wonder what the future holds for ITxM in the upcoming decade. We asked various ITxM experts to share their predictions for 2020 and beyond. The industry predictions below were kindly contributed by these ITxM-savvy gurus:

• Rory Canavan, CEO of SAM Charter, an internationally recognized consultancy in enterprise-wide Software and IT Asset Management
• Melanie Karunaratne, Director of Product Marketing at Ivanti
• Rich Gibbons, Microsoft Licensing Analyst, The ITAM Review
• Marcel Shaw, Federal Sales Engineer at Ivanti

Rory Canavan, CEO of SAM Charter

• More Indirect Licensing Clauses Will Come to Light: Offering users of one system access to the features and benefits of another system is an unwitting bi-product of an open API architecture, and one that makes software magnetic. Such technical achievements should be viewed as a privilege, not a right—and it’s a privilege that software vendors will be keen to exploit financially.
• SAM/ITAM Wages Will Rise: The lack of new blood in the SAM/ITAM industry is a worrying trend that could turn the industry into an old boys’ network—and result in a smaller field of experienced individuals demanding higher and higher wages/day rates.
• SAM/ITAM Will Get More Legal in Nature: An often-overlooked element of SAM/ITAM is a comprehension of basic legal concepts around Intellectual Property and how this translates into IT operations. If we have to go toe-to-toe with software vendors around the T&Cs of contract law, then it pays to know the rules under which contract and IP law can be applied.
• CCPA Will Be a Whip that Drives Better SAM/ITAM: The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is the USA’s version of EU General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). As of 2020, notices on websites for businesses trading in California have to inform the end user of what personal data is being captured and seek permission to use that data in the manner they wish. It also seeks to inform end users of how their data might be used by third parties. Certain limits are applied to the companies under this legislation (earning more than $25 million per annum, or trading in more than 50,000 personnel records), but expect this legislation to work its way down the economic food chain, and wider across America. Why would you build two information infrastructures—one to accommodate California and another to accommodate the rest of the USA? Such an option won’t scale for enterprise in the United States.

Melanie Karunaratne, Director of Product Marketing at Ivanti

• In 2021, AI Will Go Mainstream: Service management organizations will take AI and Machine Learning out of innovation labs and into mainstream workflow projects.
• In 2020, Unused SaaS Subscriptions Need to Go: Eliminating unused SaaS subscriptions will be a key focus for asset-management cost optimization initiatives.
• By the end of 2021, Green IT Disposal Will Be a Top Board Issue: Asset Managers will be expected to report out to the executive-level board their achievement against targets for green IT asset disposal in support of growing corporate social responsibility initiatives. The role of asset management will also have a dotted line reporting to the CISO in a bid to secure assets against increasing security incidents and breaches.

Rich Gibbons, Microsoft Licensing Analyst, The ITAM Review

• Low Code/No Code Will Continue to Grow: “Low code/no code” will continue to grow, empowering users across organizations to make apps and solutions that work for them, right there and then. No more searching for a solution in the market, waiting for approval, etc.; just make it yourself and crack on. This will cause several problems: the tools used pose a variety of compliance issues with their own licensing; connecting into other enterprise software will open up more indirect-access compliance issues; it will make an organization’s software portfolio messy and hard to manage; and will make data regulation compliance (like GDPR and the new California regulations) much more difficult.
• Cloud Audits and Audits from Tier 2 Vendors Will Become More Common: Cloud audits will start to become more common—that is, vendors auditing across public cloud environments like AWS and Azure, as well as auditing against SaaS app usage. We’ll also see a rise in audits from Tier 2 vendors like Quest, Micro Focus, etc.
• Organizations Will Begin to Look at Cost-Waste in the Cloud: Cloud economics, cost management, and FinOps will continue to grow in importance as organizations keep wasting big money in the Cloud. ITAM will see a growing focus on cost management alongside compliance.
• Partners Will Be Less Common with Tier 1 Vendors: Tier 1 vendors will take more business direct rather than via partners.

Marcel Shaw, Federal Sales Engineer at Ivanti

• AI Will Manage ITAM Solutions: By 2035, ITAM solutions will be managed by AI technology without the need for human intervention. With 8.8 billion people on earth averaging 16 connected devices per person, ITAM will require non-human asset managers powered by AI to keep up with asset management demands.

You can see all of our expert predictions for a new decade of IT in our new infographic. The infographic includes more ITxM predictions and others around security and changes to your day-to-day job.