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.
Gartner defines IT service management (ITSM) platforms as software that offers cohesive workflow management and automation for organizations to plan, deliver, support and improve integrated IT services. ITSM platforms provide a system of record for ITSM practices, including request, incident, problem, change, knowledge, service level and configuration management. Typically offered as SaaS, ITSM platforms are also available for on-premises deployments as per organizational needs. ITSM platforms are key tools used to manage IT support issues and aid employee productivity. IT leaders require robust ITSM platforms to drive business value in the services they provide, and are increasingly looking for these products to support digital business transformation outside IT. By capturing, tracking and reporting on service-related activities across the estate, the platform acts as a coherent system of record for ITSM-related actions. ITSM platforms boost infrastructure and operations (I&O) teams’ efficiency through automating processes, streamlining decision making and providing seamless integration with third-party applications. As organizational needs grow, advanced multichannel support features enhance the end-user experience, helping IT services remain agile and aligned with business goals.
Gartner defines the service orchestration and automation platform (SOAP) market as encompassing solution suites that deliver capabilities enabling organizations to manage workloads, workflows, resource provisioning and data pipelines across their technology landscapes. SOAPs enable infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders to design and implement business services. These platforms combine workflow orchestration, workload automation and resource provisioning across an organization’s hybrid digital infrastructure. Increasingly, they are central to an organization’s ability to deploy workloads and to optimize deployments as a part of cost and availability initiatives. SOAPs expand the role of traditional workload automation by adapting to use cases that deliver and extend into data pipelines, cloud-native infrastructures and application architectures. These tools complement and integrate with DevOps toolchains to provide customer-focused agility, cost savings, operational efficiency and process standardization.