Digital transformation. You’ve heard this term a lot: in industry publications, at trade shows, and maybe even in the halls at your office on your way to refilling your morning coffee. The bottom line is, if your company isn’t already “exploiting digital technologies and supporting capabilities to create a robust new digital business model” (as defined by Gartner), then you are probably in the process of doing so. IT service management (ITSM) and artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) are two paths enterprises are using to transform their business. But which one is helping organizations do this more effectively?

ITSM, a Hub for Innovation and Change

Today, ITSM is going well beyond the help desk. According to the EMA report, “Automation, AI, and Analytics: Reinventing ITSM,” 55 percent of organizations surveyed viewed ITSM as substantially growing in importance and had their ITSM budget increasing between 10 and 50 percent.

While many enterprises use their ITSM tools to process service desk tickets and requests (incident management), a core part of ITSM is also asset management, change management, and problem management. Data from the configuration management database (CMDB) holds IT asset data (or configuration items) and this data is used for process automation of changes, incidents, problems, and more. Automating these processes helps reduce downtime and cost when done effectively. And the key to automating these processes effectively and efficiently is clean and accurate data.

AIOps: Taking Data to the Next Level

Organizations want to automate. And AIOps uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to help drive automation. In fact, Gartner predicts that 30% of enterprises will adopt AIOps by 2023. And according to the EMA report, the number one initiative for AI/analytics is shared AIOps—IT operations analytics/digital operations/advanced event analytics. Why? Because it helps enterprises digitally transform by enabling your ITOps team to operate at the speed of business.

AIOps leverages big data along with AI/ML to predict behavior and diagnose root causes in order to automate processes. And by automating processes between ITSM and ITOps, AIOps is driving these teams together. The desire to apply analytics and automate affects both teams, and it’s the data that drives automation and analytics.

Data is the key, and clean data with context is what drives efficient and effective AIOps and ITSM.

And the winner is …

AIOps and ITSM are both helping organizations on their path to digital transformation. Enterprises are applying more budget and resources towards ITSM, and AIOps is shaping how enterprises use ITSM. Automation, AI, and analytics are used to cross-organizational silos with workflows and intelligence that help improve cost and operational efficiencies within IT and beyond. But neither can really be effective in transforming your business without good quality data. So, the winner is? Both. When combined with clean, contextual data. And here’s how you get the right data to fuel your digital transformation.

To find out more about how AIOps is helping to bring ITOps and ITSM together, read the EMA report >

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