AI: The Future ofITSM Automation

AI is widely recognized as a transformative tool for efficiency gains, but more organizations should consider its key role in building resilience.

IT organizations are struggling with a complex set of obstacles that strain resources and impact service delivery:

• Operational bottlenecks: handling repetitive, time-consuming tasks and service delivery delays that reduce productivity and strain teams. (Managing repetitive tasks is the #1 cited challenge by IT professionals.)


• Service expectations: adapting to evolving expectations for faster, more intuitive and always-available services.


• Tech complexity: navigating growing complexity and legacy systems that limit innovation and reduce organizational agility.


• Evolving cybersecurity challenges: protecting IT services against advanced cyberattacks while maintaining service performance and ITSM compliance.

Most IT professionals recognize AI's transformative potential to meet these challenges, viewing it as essential for modern, efficient ITSM.

In fact, 65% predict AI and automation will improve overall IT service quality. And 86% say AI-powered technology is key to making IT organizations more efficient. These aren’t the only IT benefits organizations can derive from AI.

Transitioning to AI-powered operations also improves IT resilience: the ability to keep critical systems running and to recover rapidly from disruptions (e.g., proactive problem detection, faster incident response and reduced downtime).

AI empowers organizations to spot and fix problems before they become outages. The vast majority (85%) of IT professionals believe AI and automation solutions like root-cause analysis and predictive maintenance can help decrease IT ticket volume by identifying potential issues before they impact users, though just 28% of organizations use AI-powered root-cause analysis today.

And beyond incident management, AI strengthens a company’s resilience by improving capacity planning. Using AI, companies can predict future resource needs, which allows them to scale infrastructure proactively rather than scramble to address performance bottlenecks after they occur. Currently, only 35% of organizations use AI to optimize resource utilization.

IT professionals are “all in” on AI as a positive, transformative power. However, companies need to prioritize training to reap the benefits.

IT professionals are convinced of AI’s positive, transformational power in the workplace.

• 84% use gen AI at work (28 points higher than non-IT professionals).


• 83% say workplace AI tools will improve their productivity in the next 12 months.

And the perceived gains from AI are not just related to efficiency. IT professionals also believe AI will improve the quality of their work life.

• 67% predict AI will free up their time to do more interesting/fulfilling work.


• 70% say the growing use of AI and automation will increase their job satisfaction.

Despite all the upside, organizations are not doing enough to equip their employees to use AI effectively and safely. Among those whose organizations allow gen AI tools, 60% say their companies have not yet provided training in how to use gen AI for work-related tasks.

This gap between AI adoption and training represents a critical missed opportunity. While IT professionals are eager to embrace AI and are confident in its potential, the majority are left to figure out these powerful tools on their own.
 
This training shortfall is particularly concerning given a worsening IT skills gap.

Even while record numbers of students graduate from university with tech degrees in fields like computer science, the AI environment is changing so quickly that these skills are not keeping pace with industry demand. Consider:

• A Harvard Business Review study found that the half-life of some technology skills is as low as 2.5 years — a time span that is likely to become even shorter with advances in gen AI.
• A study from International Data Corporation (IDC) found the business impacts of the IT skills shortage to be widespread — and expected to grow. Among IT leaders in North America, nearly two in three say a mismatch of IT skills is negatively affecting revenue growth, quality and customer satisfaction. IDC also predicts that by 2026, more than 90% of organizations globally will feel the impact of this skills gap.

Ivanti's own research finds that one in three organizations (33%) cite skills gaps as a significant barrier to adopting IT automation.

Skills gaps will become even more consequential as AI fundamentally reshapes what IT work looks like. As AI and automation take over routine tasks, IT professionals will increasingly move into more strategic roles that focus on AI oversight, complex problem-solving and business alignment.

The talent evolution is already underway: More than half (55%) of IT pros report that implementing AI and automation has created entirely new roles and specializations within their organizations.

Despite proven use cases for AI and automation in IT-Ops, uptake of new methods and tools remains uneven.

Ivanti’s research reveals that while IT professionals are using AI for individual tasks, most organizations are still working to harness its full potential for transforming workflows. For instance:

• 67% of IT teams have automated ticket routing.


• 60% use automation for identity and access management.


• 58% have automated password resets.

However, adoption of more complex IT automation use cases is still moderate to low. Just 42% of IT professionals say they use automation for predictive IT maintenance, and only 28% use AI-powered root cause analysis.

Companies so far have been cautious about embracing AI in IT-Ops environments — despite overwhelming enthusiasm among IT professionals — due to a combination of operational, technical and strategic barriers:

AI depends on high-quality, well-structured data. Most IT organizations still struggle with fragmented or incomplete datasets, legacy systems that are hard to integrate and knowledge bases that are not consistently updated. 89% contend that siloed data negatively impacts their organization's IT operations.

Integration with existing systems is costly and complex. Most companies still depend on legacy infrastructure that will require substantial investments to make AI-ready. More than 1 in 3 IT professionals (38%) cite tech complexity as among their organization’s biggest barriers to effective IT operations.

Security and privacy risks are also top concerns. Deploying AI often means processing sensitive organizational data, triggering anxiety about vulnerabilities and data exposure. 42% of IT professionals cite security and compliance concerns when asked about barriers to IT automation; it’s the #1 cited challenge.

AI projects require significant upfront investment. Leaders face pressure to demonstrate clear returns amidst uncertain benefits, especially when deploying more sophisticated use cases beyond basic automation. Add to that, building consensus for these types of deployments is a slow process, particularly in large organizations.

AI is already delivering predictive insights and streamlining ITSM workflows. The breakthrough use cases are yet to come.

What’s next on the horizon? Deploying AI across the IT organization, both to replace routine tasks and to drive more sophisticated, future-looking applications.

Today: automating everyday IT tasks

AI is already handling many of the routine tasks that consume IT teams' time.

Routine IT automation: Analysts estimate the average cost to resolve an IT ticket ranges from $15 to $17, and multiples higher for escalated requests. HDI research finds that companies are using AIs to resolve high-volume requests like password resets or system restarts in seconds, shaving millions off annual service costs in large enterprises. Currently, 58% of organizations use AI for password resets, and 52% use it for employee onboarding.

 

Self-service AIs (AI-powered ITSM): Deploying intelligent chatbots and virtual agents within ITSM platforms allows employees to resolve common IT issues themselves, accelerating support and freeing up IT professionals for higher-value tasks. Office workers increasingly prefer this route. 36% say they would choose an automation or chatbot to solve their IT problems — up five points in one year. Here, AI ITSM is a win-win, empowering employees to manage their technology the way they prefer to.

 

Proactive monitoring and self-healing: AI systems continuously monitor infrastructure, predict failures and automatically remediate issues without human intervention, translating to higher uptime, improved business continuity and a better employee experience.

Tomorrow: collaborative, agentic automation

The next phase will see AI agents working together on complex, multi-step processes.

Agentic automation: Autonomous, collaborative AI agents will take on complex workflows — from cybersecurity incident response to software deployment — working together with minimal human oversight to resolve incidents, provision resources and ensure compliance.

 

End-to-end lifecycle management: AI agents will not only fix issues but also detect, diagnose and optimize IT systems from provisioning to retirement.

 

Sustainability algorithms: AI will optimize IT workloads for minimal energy use and hardware waste, automatically balancing workloads for maximum environmental and business benefit. 82% of IT professionals say sustainability and energy efficiency is important to their company leadership, but just 24% say their IT organization is “highly sustainable.”

 

Resource monitoring: AI-driven monitoring helps CIOs spot over-provisioned cloud environments, underused licenses and redundant applications — issues that drain budgets.

This report is based on Ivanti’s 2025 Technology at Work Report: Reshaping Flexible Work and 2025 Digital Employee Experience Report. These reports were conducted in February 2025 and May 2025 respectively and surveyed a combined total of over 3,000 IT professionals and 6,000 office workers around the world.  

The research was administered by Ravn Research, and panelists were recruited by MSI Advanced Customer Insights. The survey results are unweighted.