Automation & AI Articles

Agentic ITSM

Agentic ITSM: Understanding the 4 Levels of AI Maturity in IT Service Management

Everyone is selling agentic AI, but the gap between the weakest and strongest versions is enormous. Manish Sharma of Rezolve.ai sets out a four-stage maturity model for AI in ITSM, from legacy retrieval through reactive assistants and process agents to true agentic systems that reason, act across connected systems, and catch problems nobody asked. He also gives you the questions to put to any vendor claiming agentic AI.
The ITSM Industry’s Repeating Failure Pattern

The ITSM Industry’s Repeating Failure Pattern

For over 20 years, ITSM has repeated the same failures. Through the ABC cards, Paul Wilkinson has spent decades tracing how culture, leadership, and behavior consistently derail success, not tools or frameworks. AI is now the latest shiny thing being sold to organizations that haven’t fixed the underlying pattern. This article looks at why the industry still hasn’t learned, and what it would take.
Value, Silos, and Why You Need to Think Before You Build

Value, Silos, and Why You Need to Think Before You Build

The mismatch between producer effort and user value is something Mark Smalley, IT Paradigmologist and author of nine books on digital and service management, has been thinking about for decades. In this article on the first episode of Roman Jouravlev’s Conversations with Giants series, Mark covers several ideas that have held up across four decades in ITSM.
AI Readiness: Is Your Organization Ready for AI?

AI Readiness: Is Your Organization Ready for AI? It Depends

AI is already here. The level of AI inclusion in ITSM tools and platforms is remarkable when you look at it closely. The question isn’t whether to engage with AI, it’s whether your organization has the right foundations to make it work. Trust, governance, and a clear reason for adopting it in the first place separate the organizations getting results from those that aren’t.
What I Learned from SDI SPARK26

Superheroes, Service Desks, and Chaos Monkeys – What I Learned from SDI SPARK26

The Service Desk Institute held its annual SPARK conference in Birmingham in March. Vawns Murphy captures her pick of the best sessions, the presenters worth listening to a second time, and the practical takeaways that stood out over three days of talks. This article is her selected version of the event for anyone who couldn’t get there in person.
Break the 1–3x ITSM Implementation Cost Rule

How AI Will Break the 1–3x ITSM Implementation Cost Rule

The rule of thumb in ITSM has long been that implementation costs one to three times the software license. Richard Mendis of Bytemethod.ai makes the case that agentic AI finally breaks this calculation, by taking on the configuration, documentation, and maintenance work that consumes the bulk of an implementation budget. The article explains where the savings show up first.
AI Help Desk Software

AI Help Desk Software: How LLMs, AI Agents & Chatbots Are Transforming IT Support

AI help desks powered by LLMs and AI agents are being rolled out to automate IT support, reduce Tier 1 tickets, cut operational costs, and scale support operations without adding headcount. Jeff Hume looks at where these systems are already delivering, what the current limitations look like, and how to think about them if you’re evaluating options for your own service desk.
The Hidden Cost of IT “Papercuts”: Why ITSM Automation Is a Business Continuity Strategy

The Hidden Cost of IT “Papercuts”: Why ITSM Automation Is a Business Continuity Strategy

It’s the small issues that eat away at your team’s capacity: password resets, access tweaks, profile changes, and “just a quick question” tickets that never make a headline but never stop arriving either. Lauren Okruch explains why the compounded impact of these papercuts is a real business continuity risk, and how ITSM automation delivers more upside on this class of work than the flashier use cases.
AI in ITSM

AI in ITSM: How AI Is Transforming IT Service Management

AI is changing IT service management, from automation and predictive incidents to smarter knowledge management and better end-user experiences. Daniel Burley walks through where the technology fits in an ITSM setup today, what it does well, what it still gets wrong, and how to think about where to invest first if you’re at the early end of the adoption curve.
Illustrated ITIL control tower rising above a digital landscape representing the ITIL (Version 5) framework

ITIL (Version 5) Explained: What’s New, What’s Changed, and Why It Matters

ITIL (Version 5) is here, and the questions from practitioners have started. This article works through the most common ones: what has changed, what has stayed the same, and what the key differences from ITIL 4 are. Roman Jouravlev, editor of ITIL and creator of the Conversations with Giants series, walks through the practical implications for anyone already running ITIL 4.
AI Survey 2026

AI Survey 2026: The Rise of Agentic AI Adoption in ITSM

We’re running a second 2026 AI survey just four months after our previous one. It repeats a similar AI survey from early 2025. This time, however, there’s a far greater focus on where the ITSM community is with Agentic AI rather than AI per se.

2026 ITSM Trends: What the Community Actually Wants Help With

Every year we ask the ITSM community what topics they want help with, and the 2026 results are in. This article covers what the community is asking for, how priorities have changed over six years, and what it all means. Spoiler: GenAI has fallen off a cliff and nobody wants to talk about people anymore.
The MSP Agentic AI Execution Gap

The MSP Agentic AI Execution Gap in Service Delivery

70% of MSPs say they’re using agentic AI. Only 10% are primarily using it where it counts. And according to new Omdia poll data, MSP’s customers are already further ahead. The report digs into the execution gap, the cost of hesitation, and why investors are increasingly factoring AI maturity into MSP valuations.
2026 ITSM Risks

The 2026 ITSM Risks Leaders Are Underestimating

The biggest ITSM risks for 2026 span four areas: people challenges, including exclusion and talent shortages, process maturity gaps in AI adoption, technology risks from unauthorized AI use and poor data quality, and value delivery failures from focusing on tools over outcomes.
How AI Helps Service Desks

AI-Assisted Service Desks

If you’re wondering about AI-assisted service desks, this article and the videos it links to are for you. Discover how AI-assisted service desks transform ITSM, especially for lean teams – improving speed, experience, and scalability across the business.