The ITSM Evolution: How It's Changed Since 2015

In the recent report by the Enterprise Management Associates® (download below), 264 ITSM customers were asked about the current status of their ITSM. Areas of study covered everything from best practices and strategic priorities, to endpoint management and the impact of cloud.

First, let's look at the areas of marked growth between the years of 2015 and 2017 in ITSM’s next-generation evolution.

Consolidation of IT and non-IT customer service into a single organization grew.

In 2015, 72% of respondents reported that they had established an IT-to-enterprise team and 11% reported having no plans to go forward with such an initiative. In 2017, however, 83% reported an already-established IT-to-enterprise team and only 4% had no plans to establish such a team.

DevOps involvement dramatically accelerated.

In 2015 only 65% of ITSM teams were actively involved in agile/DevOps initiatives, which was up from 39% in 2013. However, in 2017 that number climbed to 89%.

The percentage of ITSM teams slated for growth rose from 50% in 2015 to 56% in 2017.

Perhaps even more significant, 15% were downsizing in 2015 while only 7% were in 2017.

Success rates also climbed.

In 2015 only 16% felt they were “extremely successful” and 36% felt they were “very successful.”  In 2017 these number of “extremely successful” respondents increased dramatically to 33%, and the “very successful” group grew to 43%.

Aside from areas of growth from 2015 to 2017, there are also areas of difference. And not every change between 2015 and 2017 was positive.

ITIL

In 2015, 20% of respondents showed ITILv2 adoption and 32% showed ITILv3 adoption. These numbers slipped in 2017 to 18% and 20%, respectively.

Functional Priorities

CMDB/CMS dropped from second place in “functional priorities” in 2015 to last place in 2017.

Cloud Impacts

The top impact of cloud on ITSM reported in 2015 was “Cloud is a resource for expanding ITSM capabilities.” In 2017, the top impact was “Cloud and virtualization are making asset management more challenging.”

ITSM Challenges

Perhaps most striking of all, the chief obstacle to ITSM success in 2015 was “organizational and political issues” (30%) while in 2017 it was “software, deployment, and administrative complexity” (27%). It should be noted that in both surveys, these top choices led by clear margins over the other options.

Check out the full report below!