Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 09 | Page 77

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 INTELLIGENTCIO 77