Splunk Inc.

07/29/2024 | News release | Distributed by Public on 07/29/2024 18:06

ITOM vs. ITSM: IT Operations Management & IT Service Management

Value proposition

ITOM generates value for the business through the maintenance of a service provider's technology components and computing requirements. IT Operations Management helps organizations improve workflows and increase the availability, proficiency and performance of IT operations, processes and services. By addressing how IT service issues are resolved in a faster manner, ITOM helps the business to:

  • Reduce service outages.
  • Improve user experience.

ITSM's value is generated across the service lifecycle - when the organization produces outputs that help its consumers achieve certain outcomes, within expected and reasonable cost and risk constraints. It is only when the consumer reports that they are satisfied with the service, that value is recognized.

Unlike ITOM, where value is in the operational condition of the underlying systems, ITSM's value is understood from an outside-in approach where the users of an IT service achieve required outcomes such as executing an e-commerce transaction successfully. According to ITIL guidance, value in ITSM can be evaluated by assessing the utility (functionality) and warranty (performance) of a service.

Tools approach

Let's look at the various tools deployed for ITOM and ITSM.

ITOM tooling

ITOM tools are primarily used to manage the provisioning, capacity, performance, and availability of computing, networking, and application resources. They include systems that facilitate:

  • Modern application development
  • Continuous deployment and delivery
  • Digital employee experience management
  • Value stream delivery platform management
  • Service and network orchestration
  • Automation platform management

According to Gartner, additional capabilities for ITOM tools include application performance monitoring (APM) and network performance monitoring and diagnostics.

(Related reading: application vs. network performance monitoring.)

ITSM tooling

ITSM tools are software platforms that offers workflow capability to support processes across the service lifecycle. The main capabilities include:

Integrating the tools

It is not uncommon to find organizations investing in both types of tools, since by nature of their overlapping activities, interfacing ITOM and ITSM tools brings the best of both worlds to a common ground. For example:

  • Monitoring data from an ITOM solution can generate incident tickets in an ITSM tool.
  • Changes made to infrastructure using ITOM tools can be promoted to an ITSM's solution change management module.

Reference frameworks

While there is no official ITOM framework, the scope it covers can point us to approaches that are relevant to the activities involved in managing of technology infrastructure. These would include DevOps, SRE, and other IT operations management guidance.

In stark contrast, ITSM has a plethora of associated frameworks, both old and new. They include:

  • ITIL 4. The most recent version of the age old ITIL framework for IT service management that has been a textbook guidance for over 30 years. It addresses ITSM from the basis of value streams and the service value system.
  • ISO/IEC 20000. This family of international standards for service management facilitates organizations to have their service management systems certified against the ISO/IEC 20000-1 standard.
  • FitSM is a lightweight ITSM framework whose development was funded by the European Commission.
  • VeriSM is a service management approach that helps service providers to create a flexible operating model to meet desired business outcomes.

As ITOM is a subset of ITSM, it borrows heavily from ITSM frameworks in the areas of technology infrastructure operations and management, as well as the helpdesk.

Final thoughts: You should optimize both

While it is understandable that IT practitioners may use the two terms interchangeably, there are marked differences given that the scope of ITSM is much broader. That doesn't mean that ITOM is inferior - rather that the focus is narrower and as such it is more relevant to IT functions whose day-to-day operational activities are centered on maintaining IT servers, network elements, and endpoint devices.

Without the reliability, quality, and continuity that ITOM practices contribute to IT infrastructure, it is impossible for ITSM to create and deliver value across the service lifecycle.