Top 5 ITSM Trends To Watch Out For in 2018 - The Future of ITSMJune 02, 2018

The need for dependable and readily available IT services is growing at an exponential rate as more and more businesses rely on technology to operate. The main aim of modern ITSM software (IT Service Management) is to adopt service provider solutions and provide high-quality IT Services.

2017 was an excellent year for ITSM in terms of popularity and now looking at the road ahead, here are the top 5 trends to look out for in 2018.

Top 5 Trends That Will Shape the Future of ITSM:

• Security
• Digital Transformation
• Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• The Internet of Things (IoT)
• Customer Engagement and Experience

#1 Security

Security has been a big point of discussion in 2017. Thanks to the wide-spread WannaCry infection and the humiliation it brought to the several large companies by security breaches during 2017, IT security will be the major board-level topic for 2018.

As per the recent forecasts by Gartner, worldwide enterprise security spending will increase to US $96.3bn in 2018, an 8% increase from last year. Companies will be spending more on IT security due to increased awareness of emerging threats.

#2 Digital Transformation

Similar to security, digital transformation was also an IT buzz-word last year. Many investments have already been made in digital transformation by companies of all sizes. In 2018, organizations will start appreciating that digital transformation is more about doing better business than about getting better technology.

Digital transformation will not only be viewed as a strategy for creating new products and services that exploit technology, and better customer engagement, it will also help improve the quality of the business by improving back-office operations. Customers will start to look for the value proposition and technological advances in ITSM.

#3 Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Unlike digital transformation, AI hasn't picked up much pace in 2017. But now in 2018, AI has picked up a tremendous pace. From Apple’s Neural Engine used in iPhones to Samsung's Bixby smart assistant, AI has gained popularity among both the vendors as well as consumers.

Soon people will also look for integration of AI features in ITSM. As already seen, AI has worked wonders for the business-to-consumer (B2C) segment and it doesn’t require a great leap for those successes to internal use-case scenarios like IT support and other business use cases.

#4 Internet of Things (IoT)

IoT has been a big topic in the IT industry for many years. With the increasing use of AI and the use of intelligent devices in the workplace, IoT offers two critical areas of ITSM focus for 2018.

IoT device security and management will be the primary focal point for IT Service Management in 2018. Areas like data security, message integrity, and third-party cloud service provider issues such as scale, identification, authentication and privacy will be of prime focus for ITSM.

#5 Customer Engagement & Experience

In addition to all the above factors, customer engagement and experience deserves its own share of importance in corporate IT departments because of the continued rise of end-user expectations related to technology, service, support, and customer service. Failing to deliver those higher expectations will cause harm the business on multiple levels in 2018.