EDITOR’S QUESTION
RAJESH GANESAN,
DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT
MANAGEMENT,
MANAGEENGINE
M
anageEngine recently
announced the results of its ‘IT
Service Management Future
Readiness’ survey. The survey, which
was conducted in collaboration with
ITSM.tools, consisted of ten questions
that focused on the opportunities and
challenges ITSM will see in the future.
It was presented to ITSM professionals
and garnered over 300 responses,
yielding key findings in five distinct
areas. These include:
• Working in IT: 82% of ITSM
professionals believe that the IT
roles of tomorrow will be more
challenging – and the majority
of the workforce currently feels
undervalued by management.
• Impact of politics on IT staffing:
More than 60% of respondents feel
that current global and local political
scenarios – like Brexit, the recent US
election and Australian immigration
policies – will adversely affect
recruitment for IT roles.
• New technology: Cloud technology
continues to enjoy positive feedback
from ITSM professionals in spite of a
“Only 16% of
respondents said
that they view
the development
of AI as a threat to
IT jobs.”
www.intelligentcio.com
“82% of ITSM
professionals
believe that the IT
roles of tomorrow
will be more
challenging.”
major outage. Artificial intelligence
(AI) isn’t seen as a major job disruptor
yet, with only 16% of respondents
saying it will affect IT jobs.
• Best practices: Only 24% of ITSM
professionals show confidence in
the existing ITSM best practices,
including ITIL, making a strong case
for their revamp.
• Meeting service expectations: With
an incoming millennial workforce,
77% of ITSM professionals believe
that IT teams will have to do more to
manage the expectation gap between
younger and older employees.
ITSM is getting shaped by
the cloud, AI and a millennial
workforce
Interestingly, while a majority of ITSM
professionals (57%) feel that their IT
teams deliver equal or better service than
consumer-facing companies, 77% also
believe that they need to do better to
match the expectations of the incoming
workforce of millennials. Also revealed in
the survey, only 16% of respondents said
that they view the development of AI as
a threat to IT jobs, contradicting what’s
seen as a popular notion.
The relevance of ITIL in a
changing ITSM landscape
While only 5% of respondents feel that
ITIL and other published ITSM practices
are irrelevant, roughly 66% believe ITIL
and other ITSM best practices have
failed to keep up with the changing
ITSM landscape.
These findings reinforce the need for
ITIL to reinvent itself to keep pace
with the changing trends in IT. The
ITSM industry is continually evolving
“Being aware of
potential future
challenges and
opportunities helps
ITSM professionals
stay relevant and
responsive.”
in response to its micro and macro
influencers, like technology, people,
practices and government regulations.
Being aware of potential future
challenges and opportunities helps
ITSM professionals stay relevant and
responsive to changing landscapes in IT
and business, giving their organisations
a competitive edge. n
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