ServiceOps is the Right Idea. So why is it Such a Challenge?

IT professionals don’t need to be convinced that silos are a problem. Most of us have lived that reality: the service desk doesn’t have visibility into operations, operations teams aren’t looped in on service priorities, and tickets, alerts, and metrics are disconnected and delayed. Everyone works hard, often heroically, but coordination is reactive, and the gaps show up in ways that users and the business always notice.

When the term “ServiceOps” entered the conversation a few years ago, it referred to the unification of IT service management (ITSM) and IT operations management (ITOM). It resonated immediately. It made sense to many different teams.

ServiceOps poses the challenge: “Let’s finally fix the divide between service and ops teams. Let’s stop reacting to incidents in separate systems with incomplete data. Let’s combine automation, observability, and workflows so that we can understand what’s happening across the IT estate and take action—before users are affected.”

The concept is sound. The potential is real. And as recent EMA research shows, the momentum behind ServiceOps is strong.

But the same research also makes something else very clear: ServiceOps still has a long way to go.