ITSM platforms maintain a critical role in providing a system of record for I&O leaders to deliver integrated IT services by capturing ITSM events and activities. Use this Market Guide to navigate the evolving ITSM platforms market and its representative vendors.
Many ITSM platform providers focus their product roadmaps on emerging features, including AI and non-IT case workflows, rather than building more robust core featuressuch as reporting, automation, integration and product usability.
While pricing has remained stable in the ITSM market, the total cost of ownership can vary significantly based on product bundling approaches, implementation costs and ongoing administration requirements.
I&O leaders are moving away from having a single ITSM product to integrating multiple solutions in order to provide flexibility and autonomy to product teams.
Identify your most critical operational needs by focusing on core ITSM practice and integration requirements first, while taking into account strategic near-term objectives in automation, line-of-business extensibility and AI.
Compare your solutions’ total cost of ownership across a three-year term. Do so by understanding the cost implications not just for the Day One needs, but for major roadmap items such as AI, asset management, integration and orchestration. Work with vendors to ascertain pricing of major updates and additional features as well as downstream implementation, migration and administration costs.
Develop a strategic ecosystem of ITSM platforms by cataloging existing tools and defining clear data capture protocols across platforms to enable unified end-to-end reporting and data analysis.
We define IT service management (ITSM) platforms as software that offers cohesive workflow management and automation for organizations to plan, deliver, support and improve integrated IT services. ITSM platforms provide a system of record for ITSM practices, including request, incident, problem, change, knowledge, service level and configuration management. Typically offered as SaaS, ITSM platforms are also available for on-premises deployments as per organizational needs.
ITSM platforms are key tools used to manage IT support issues and aid employee productivity. IT leaders require robust ITSM platforms to drive business value in the services they provide, and are increasingly looking for these products to support digital business transformation outside IT. By capturing, tracking and reporting on service-related activities across the estate, the platform acts as a coherent system of record for ITSM-related actions. ITSM platforms boost infrastructure and operations (I&O) teams’ efficiency through automating processes, streamlining decision making and providing seamless integration with third-party applications. As organizational needs grow, advanced multichannel support features enhance the end-user experience, helping IT services remain agile and aligned with business goals.
Mandatory Features
The mandatory features for this market include:
Support for the following ITSM practices with out-of-the-box forms, workflows and reports:
Incident management
Problem management
Request management
Change enablement
Knowledge management
These practices are augmented by:
An integrated configuration management system
The ability to define and monitor service levels
Common Features
Common features for this market include:
Multichannel engagement of users — e.g., self-service portal, mobile, virtual support agent, live chat, walk-up and collaborative support hub
Service configuration management
Service reporting and resource management
Service catalog management
Workflow, automation and integration among IT operations management (ITOM) tools, development tool chain and service providers
Integrated AI for automated and assisted insight
Case management to facilitate simple ticketing and workflow for business units adjacent to IT
A graphical process designer to visually create and manage workflows
Native discovery and dependency mapping for creating a service asset inventory and service configuration baseline
Integrated IT operations observability and event management
Connectors and APIs for third-party products, systems and platforms
ITSM practice performance monitoring and reporting
ITSM platforms support IT organizations in delivering digital services by offering a broad set of streamlined workflows, engagement channels, integrations and supporting insights to enable more effective decision making. Common capabilities for ITSM platforms include:
IT incident, problem and request management through a set of process workflows,decision-enabling context and automation, enabling IT’s support functions.
Change and release management capabilities that help automate and manage changes, assisting in identifying and reducing the risk of disruptions in the production environment.
IT knowledge management with one or more native knowledge bases, life cycle management for the knowledge articles and integration to other ITSM processes.
Service-level management and reporting to support data-driven decision making by visualizing and analyzing ITSM platform and integrated data for service quality management, costing, improvement and resource utilization (related to the supported ITSM practices).
Service configuration management, which provides I&O leaders with a federated system of record detailing the relationships and operational status of IT service components.
Integrated AI features to augment ITSM practices with natural language processing and AI-driven insights.
Platform scalability and integration for complex IT environments through a set of platform features that enable integration with adjacent tools, strong data controls and highly customizable workflows.
Case management to manage IT-adjacent tickets and business workflows, eliminating the need for separate business process automation tools or low-code application platforms.