Gartner defines artificial intelligence applications in IT service management as tools that augment and extend IT service management (ITSM) workflows using AI. These analyze ITSM data and metadata (primarily found in ITSM platforms) to provide intelligent advice and actions on ITSM practices and workflows, such as IT service desk and support activities. This software can either be a stand-alone product, capabilities within an ITSM platform or an add-on to an ITSM platform.
Hardware asset management (HAM) tools are software applications and technology used by enterprise companies to manage all types of hardware assets, including IT, line of business and facilities management — regardless of location and industry. Key functionality includes the ability to: - Discover, identify, normalize, aggregate and store data for hardware assets. - Reconcile and manage the complete asset life cycle: procurement, arrival, storage, provisioning, use, transfer, service and disposition. - Govern access, visibility and control to specific assets based on the user’s role. - Optimize and integrate with other IT and financial systems for data, processes and workflow. - Flexibly assign asset ownership to a person, department or location. - Scale in record size and number of records as the organization grows. - Share standardized reports, create custom reporting and export data into other reporting systems. - Offer APIs for asset information to be ingested/entered through integration with procurement systems, software asset management (SAM) solutions or inventoried through CMDB or network discovery tools — as well as bar codes or RFID tags.
Gartner defines IT service management (ITSM) platforms as software that offers workflow management that enables organizations to design, automate, plan, manage, report on and deliver integrated IT services and related digital experiences. Supported practices include request, incident, problem, change, knowledge and configuration management, and case management, as well as interfaces for non-IT business needs. ITSM platforms are typically acquired as SaaS; however, they are also sold as on-premises deployments. I&O leaders select these solutions to be consumed by service desks and service operations, and are identifying opportunities for business workflows in other IT-adjacent departments.
Software asset management (SAM) tools are solutions that provide automation to support tasks required to produce and maintain compliance with independent software vendor (ISV) license use rights, while improving an organization’s ability to proactively identify and optimize software risk and spend. SAM tools provide in-depth software asset analysis through: - Conducting discovery - Analyzing software license entitlements - Automating the collection of software consumption data - Establishing ISV effective license position (ELP) - Governing software assets - Optimizing software value delivery - Sharing information with other tools and stakeholders