How AI Will Reshape ITSM

Every organisation is an IT organisation, now that Artificial Intelligence is becoming more intertwined with IT infrastructure, technology leadership wants to get rid of the legacy applications, hardware, and processes due to obvious reasons.

Up until not too long ago, processes had more prominence than tools and human effort was counted on to bridge the gap but today things are precisely the opposite. Tools have taken the precedence and technology is expected and designed to cover for human effort. Tasks that were time-consuming and very complex have become so easy that it is no more an exclusive feature or crucial requirement. This is all through the grand arrival of Artificial Intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence or, what we call machine intelligence is well underway in demolishing old paradigms and setting up new ones. This phenomenon was heralded as unprecedented, especially considering we are nearing the stage where computers are adept to having conversations with humans, and actually being a core part of their lives and mental health.

The rate of its progression has been swift, dramatic and very real. In the words of Jeff Atwood, “We have to stop optimising for programmers, and start optimising for users.” This is a big part of helping the organisations to foresee into future and get ready with a strategy that links the advent of AI to the growth of IT Service Management. This strategy has vast potential in developing and transforming IT Service Management.

ITSM, in itself, is a broad spectrum connecting the dots between IT services and the end-users. It encompasses all the activities performed by an organization to design, create, implement, deliver, and manage IT services provided to its customers. ITSM employs several frameworks to meet its ends, ITIL being the most popular and preferred. ITIL CSI has come to be mainly in use for improving business. To understand ITIL, let’s look at its definition by Wikipedia. “ITIL, formerly, an acronym for Information Technology Infrastructure Library, is a set of detailed practices for IT service management (ITSM) that focuses on aligning IT services with the needs of business.”

ITIL describes processes, procedures, tasks, and checklists which are neither organization-specific nor technology-specific, but can be applied by an organization toward strategy, delivering value, and maintaining a minimum level of competency.

Not long ago, did we even dream of automated cars, yet today we have them in reality. Artificial Intelligence escalated real quick optimizing itself and empowering others, along with its partners- Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP). Their efficiency is immeasurable. AI in ITSM will renovate the system in whole. Let’s look at some of the possible fields for its growth.

• Incident management. Incidents are inevitable. That calls for rapid human action after every alteration. Lean defines incidents and incident management as ‘waste,’ dissipating time, energy, and resources. Wouldn’t it be great they were resolved automatically? Deploying AI in such locus can save IT employees from such routine tasks, not to mention its efficacy.

• Problem management. The key to problem management is pattern recognition. Most of the AI systems, depend on sophisticated pattern learning to identify specific issues. With such advanced pattern recognition in ITSM, problems can be fixed by machines themselves way before they even surface.

• Machine Learning.  Machine Learning bears the potential to optimize ITSM in unimaginable ways. The future of ITSM is brighter than the sun with its real advent. New ways of analysis, correlation, and resolution are being implied using contemporary ML tools, this is being achieved by a perfect combination ML software.

• Intelligent Chatbox for ITSM. With Siri and Google Assistant in your hand, you already have a general idea about their capabilities. AI implementation in ITSM chatbots will have more natural automated support provided with a conversational user interface, while natural Language Processing (NLP) assists it to converse in several languages. Machine Learning will enable such bots to deliver real-time answers.

• Increasing Productivity. A comparatively large number of companies, over the last few years, have adopted ITIL for enhancing their business. ITIL powered by AI will offer self-help as a smart option for its end-users, reducing Incident Management a.k.a. Ticketing, increasing customer satisfaction, accelerating business performance, and adding to the company’s productivity.

The advent of Artificial Intelligence is just about to cause global and phenomenal changes but has also put an end to limitations with the sprouting of vast and imminent possibilities. Not far from where we stand today, we are already diving into a future shaped by machines.