First developed in the 1980s, the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a set of detailed practices for IT activities such as IT service management and IT asset management that focus on aligning IT services with the needs of the business. ITIL 4 was formalised in 2019.
UC Berkeley defines IT Service Management (ITSM) as a process-based IT management framework intended to align the delivery of IT services with the needs of its customers. It involves a paradigm shift from managing IT as stacks of individual components to focusing on the delivery of end-to-end services using best practice process models.
In simplified terms, ITIL is a set of best practices while ITSM is the actual practice of managing IT operations as a service, in some cases drawing guidance from ITIL.
According to Rich Doheny, senior principal analyst at Gartner, ITSM tools are vital for infrastructure and operations (I&O) organisations to deliver business value in the services they provide.
In the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant for IT Service Management Tools, he adds: “These are most heavily used by IT service desks and IT service delivery functions to support the tasks and workflows for processes including incident, request, problem, change, knowledge and configuration management.”
In its 2022 Strategic Roadmap for IT Service Management, Gartner says the ITSM market is made up of a combination of older providers and relatively new-to-market cloud-based counterparts, in addition to competitors from adjacent markets such as CRM help desk, ERP human capital management and application development problem tracking.
ITSM and ITIL 4 adoption in Asia
Liam Ryan, vice president for Asia-Pacific at Ivanti, says the adoption of ITSM solutions and the maturity of the ITIL4 processes within these tools continues to grow in Asia. “Prior to 2020, many organisations (with the exception of large enterprise organisations) used low-maturity/low complexity ticketing solutions which were often deployed on-premise and only provided basic help desk functions,” he elaborated.
More recently, the digitalisation activities in Asia are influencing new interest in the use of ITSM as a way to enhance, if not formalise, customer experience initiatives. “We have seen accelerated adoption of best practices like ITSM to deliver superior user experiences and improved productivity,” said Wee Luen Chia, managing director and area vice president for Asia at ServiceNow.
He added that COVID-19 saw higher implementation rates and investments in cloud-based ITSM and the support of ITIL 4 in Asia to streamline work processes while resolving business issues that arise remotely.
Most popular ITSM tools in Asia
"The top two customer needs in Asia are to reduce operating costs by delivering self-service and improve risk and compliance through strong asset management processes.”
Wee Luen Chia
He further contends that the different processes are all inter-connected, and there is a very strong value proposition to running these different processes on one scalable and secure platform.
Arguably, every ITSM vendor will want to shift attention to the solution they are best known for. “What is more important than the individual processes within these tools is the automation and the ease of maturing these processes within the organisation,” said Ryan.
Obstacles to ITSM and ITIL 4 adoption
When you consider that ITIL libraries have been around since the 1980s, it would be hard to dismiss that these should have been widely adopted universally.
Ryan says many organisations take a firefighting approach to solving problems, and this has impeded them in adopting ITSM and ITIL 4.
“There have even been attempts in organisations to achieve greater levels of maturity through the implementation of ITIL best practices and automation, but unfortunately have generally been unable to sustain ongoing management of these processes,” he continued.
ServiceNow’s Chia cites two main challenges to ITSM and ITIL 4 adoption:
Technological: Outdated infrastructure prevents seamless integration of new technologies. Moreover, the lack of automation of routine tasks prevents IT teams from spending time on the implementation and deployment of ITSM and ITIL technologies.
People: This includes a lack of regular feedback from employees and IT teams, limited knowledge and minimal understanding of ITSM and ITIL 4.
“No matter the size of the organisation, there is a finite number of resources (time, people and budget) and adopting a new way of working is challenging for teams who are struggling to keep up with their workload, particularly when much of it is handled manually,” opined Ryan.
Advice when considering ITSM and ITIL 4
Ivanti’s Ryan believes organisations need to evolve from a fire prevention approach to IT. To do this, they must enable service management as a set of consistent, automated, and easily adopted services within the organisation.
“This requires a cultural shift and a need for IT to focus on employee experience and demonstrate their position as enablers of the process for all groups in the organisation such as human resources, finance, legal, procurement and facilities."
Liam Ryan
It can be argued that the delivery of any IT service, including technical support, is ITSM in practice. The only difference is whether one follows any of the prescribed set of approaches to delivering the service.
Ryan says IT has a key role to play in enabling every line of business and product team to adopt service management best practices. That said, handing IT a set of best practices to adopt is not as simple as purchasing a new set of tools.
He cautioned that enabling IT teams to scale and support a cross-functional governance role requires the introduction of new efficiencies. “This is where modern solutions such as artificial intelligence and machine learning come in, harnessing the power of technology to self-heal, self-secure and self-service the enterprise with hyper-automation,” he posited.
He also believed that the best solutions enable employees to self-service or better yet, proactively eliminate the problem before the employee even observes that there is an issue. This also frees up the IT team to focus on more strategic initiatives and to get out of the firefighting cycle that many teams get trapped in.
Chia advises organisations to “look at out-of-the-box implementations of ITSM and ITIL solutions. “This will allow organisations to get the most value from standardised best practices and the fastest time-to-value. From the savings and productivity gained, you can continue to invest back into digital innovation,” he continued.
Looking ahead
When evaluating ITSM solutions, Gartner recommends shortlisting vendors that will be in a position to support the organisation’s needs for at least five years and is able to demonstrate their commitment to invest in developing the tool capabilities to remain viable in the ITSM market.
Gartner’s Doheny says ITSM tools are beginning to address integration requirements with the DevOps toolchain and support agile workflows across ITSM processes. “Vendors are increasingly concentrating product development on non-I&O use cases as market saturation of ITSM tools continues,” he concluded.
