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ITSM in 2025: our experts predict the trends to watch
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ITSM in 2025: our experts predict the trends to watch
Effie Bagourdi
22 January 2025
10 min read
Effie Bagourdi
22 January 2025
10 min read
A comprehensive view of the future state of ITSM for 2025, including key opportunities organisations should have on their radar.
After a year of AI-driven solutions and the resurgence of configuration management databases, 2025 already looks set to see ITSM and ESM evolve in exciting new directions.
In this blog post, we take a brief look back at what went down in 2024 before delving into emerging trends for the next 12 months. From the rise of agentic service management and the need for AI governance to a renewed focus on people-centric ITSM and an emphasis on incident management in light of the CrowdStrike outage – there’s plenty to sink your teeth into for the year ahead.
Join Effie Bagourdi, Head of Service Management Practice at Adaptavist and Lacy Saute, Business Consultant, as they discuss what’s on the horizon for ITSM.
Looking back at 2024
But first, here’s a quick recap of what went on in 2024 and how Adaptavist stayed on the pulse on ITSM trends and developments.
Harnessing AI-driven solutions
“Thanks to the powerful capabilities of AI, 2024 will see the progression of its features and solutions as more businesses embrace or increase their focus on AI-enabled solutions.” Effie Bagourdi, Head of Service Management Practice at Adaptavist
AI continued to be a hot topic in 2024, with IT teams leaning on AI advancements to measure interactions more efficiently and provide a better, faster service with the help of AI-enabled bots and virtual agents.
Having a firm grip of the market combined with listening to our customer's pain points, allowed us to help overcome their challenges and ramp up their efficiencies by leveraging an AI-driven solution-based approach. As a result businesses are able to reduce drudgery for their service desk teams.
The comeback: Configuration Management Database (CMBD)
Our prediction that the resurgence of CMDB would continue in 2024 held true. We’ve seen strong interest from the market in these database solutions that help clarify the relationships between tangible and intangible assets – a vital component of mature service management teams.
Identifying this trend early, allowed us to strengthen our IT asset management (ITAM) offering in order to meet the needs of the market, by building bespoke CMDB solutions for our customers that suit their unique needs and challenges.
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What’s on the ITSM horizon for 2025?
With 2024 taken care of, it’s time to look ahead. While we expect to see AI and CMDBs to remain a fundamental part of service management for organisations this year, there are some more trends on the horizon that you would be wise to take note of.
Agentic service management
With 2024 taken care of, it’s time to look ahead. While we expect to see AI and CMDBs to remain a fundamental part of service management for organisations this year, there are some more trends on the horizon that you would be wise to take note of.
“Gartner projects that by 2028, 33% of enterprise software applications will incorporate agentic AI, up from less than 1% in 2024, underscoring the growing importance of autonomous AI systems in enterprise software solutions.” Tom Coshow, Sr Director Analyst at Gartner.
“Gartner has identified Agentic AI as a pivotal trend for 2025, highlighting its transformative potential in ITSM,” said Effie. “We see these advancements in all major service management platforms, such as Atlassian and ServiceNow.”
Using large language models (LLMs), agentic AI refers to autonomous AI systems capable of planning and executing tasks to achieve user-defined goals without explicit instructions. Highly flexible and easily scalable, this advancement is set to revolutionise ITSM and ESM. It enables AI agents to carry out complex service management tasks, provide personalised human-like interactions, and automate ticket escalation and resolution, helping to enhance efficiency and reduce the need for human intervention.
People experience in IT
“As the workforce continues to expect intuitive, consumer-grade experiences at work, prioritising people in ITSM is no longer optional; it’s essential for innovation, engagement, and sustained success.” Lacy Saute, Business Consultant at Adaptavist.
With all this talk of AI you might be forgiven for thinking people didn’t matter anymore. Quite the contrary! While the ITIL framework offers structured guidance for efficient service delivery, we expect to see a renewed focus on the human experience, centred around user satisfaction, empathy, and personalised interactions. Modern organisations are already embracing these employee-centric strategies, recognising that the quality of the IT service experience directly impacts productivity, collaboration, and overall workplace morale.
“From streamlined self-service portals to AI-powered chatbots that prioritise user needs, the emphasis on people experience is fostering stronger alignment between IT departments and business objectives.” said Lacy.
Major incident management
“Organisations are increasingly compelled to automate and integrate their incident management processes to ensure compliance, improve response times, and mitigate the risk of cascading failures across interconnected systems.” Effie Bagourdi, Head of Service Management Practice at Adaptavist.
The July 2024 CrowdStrike outage – considered the largest IT outage in history – was caused by a faulty software update. With insurers estimating the outage cost US Fortune 500 companies US$5.4 billion, it underscores the critical importance of implementing robust incident and change management processes. Many systems require manual intervention, prolonging the restoration process. With this comes a potential domino effect that can arise from inadequate incident response.
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“On a positive note, the outage has driven companies to adopt more robust incident management systems,” said Lacy. “They’re reevaluating and strengthening their processes, focusing on proactive risk assessment, real-time monitoring, faster response capabilities, and comprehensive disaster recovery plans.”
This has been bolstered by emerging regulatory frameworks, such as the EU’s NIS2 Directive and the USA’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC), which mandate that companies enforce more stringent cybersecurity measures, including timely detection and reporting of incidents, as well as implementing smarter, integrated incident response systems.
Strategic SaaS procurement
“We see more and more organisations shifting towards multifunctional platforms to mitigate the complexities and costs associated with managing numerous point solutions.” Effie Bagourdi, Head of Service Management Practice, Adaptavist
According to Fortune Business Insights, the global SaaS market is projected to reach $908.21 billion by 2030. And we expect to see a shift across the whole organisation, from traditional cost-cutting measures to a more value-driven approach to managing these investments.
“Vendors are responding to this trend by adapting their solutions to provide comprehensive, end-to-end service management capabilities.” said Effie. “They’re already offering out-of-the-box systems of work that seamlessly integrate across the organisation.”
AI governance
Effective governance is essential to ensure that AI technologies are developed and deployed responsibly, ethically, and in compliance with emerging regulations.
We’ve mentioned AI a couple of times already in our ITSM predictions for 2025, so it goes without saying that with this increased use, there will be a greater need for constructive governance frameworks too. From complying with data privacy laws to mitigating bias and ensuring transparency, it’s vital we ensure AI use in ITSM is ethical and effective. Because with stronger governance comes reduced risk of data breaches, greater user trust, and improved AI accuracy.
AI governance relies on governments to create and enforce laws that put appropriate guardrails in place. And the regulatory landscape for AI is evolving rapidly. In 2024, the European Union adopted the Artificial Intelligence Act, marking the first major law to regulate AI.
We also expect to see more IT leaders establishing AI ethics and compliance policies as they scale pilot projects into full-scale operations. Expect regular audits of AI applications and the introduction of feedback loops to refine AI accuracy and transparency within their ITSM systems. At Adaptavist, we’re already offering solutions, including audit and certification maintenance solutions to help organisations follow up on their compliance with critical regulatory requirements.
We have our finger on the industry pulse
Our experts worldwide constantly monitor the market to ensure we know what our customers need and how we can solve their challenges. This allows us to work with our customers as an extended arm of their business.
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Written by
Effie Bagourdi
Head of Service Management Practice
With 15 year's experience in IT and service management, Effie is an ITIL4 professional with a track record in highly regulated industries such as banking. Leading our service management practice, Effie is passionate about leveraging AI to elevate customer experience.
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