ITSM: What Is It?

IT Service Management (ITSM) is a discipline for managing IT systems that maximizes the benefits to customers and the needs of the business. ITSM utilizes a mix of people, process and information technology, often adopting best practices to focus on the quality of the service. In keeping with the “service” aspect of the term, the focus has shifted from managing technology to managing the relationship with the customer.

Qualities of ITSM:

• Focus on relationships with customers (vs the users)
• Process-focused
• Focuses on best practices / frameworks to structure IT-related activities and interactions
• Does not focus on a particular product or system
• Focus on operations architecture
• Integrate assets and user management
• Focus on preventative and proactive processes
• Tends to be distributed (often partially cloud-based) vs in-house only
• Enterprise-wide and integrated
• Service-oriented instead of operation-oriented

Companies looking to implement ITSM must assess their desired future state of IT then look to the implementation of the desired framework. For more on making your organization service-oriented with the integration of ITSM, stay tuned to our InTelligence blog.