itSMF USA has released the results of a new IT service management study. The study, conducted this year in partnership with Forrester Research, was created to help guide infrastructure and operations professionals through a better understanding of people, process and technology trends and best practices.

The study focused on current and future adoption of IT service management principles, including effective ITIL practices in use amongst itSMF USA’s member base. The resulting report, The State Of IT Service Management In 2011, was published by Forrester Research, Inc.

The study addressed a range of current topics for IT today, including the role of IT service management in bridging the gap between application and infrastructure teams, the level of ITIL process adoption and their relationship to benefits realized, the role of training and certification in adoption, the effect of executive sponsorship level on both adoption and benefits realized, the adoption and impact of ITIL v3 and the impact of tools on ITSM adoption.

“Data was collected from 491 qualified ITSM professionals who are heavily involved in ITSM efforts. The results clearly offer empirical evidence that ITSM offers significant benefits to the organizations and to themselves“, said Doug Tedder, President-Elect of itSMF USA.

Some insights from the research:

• The adoption of IT infrastructure library (ITIL)-based programs and certifications are mainstream, with IT service quality, productivity, and reputation with business leaders significantly enhanced because of it.

• More work needs to be done on certain execution elements, most notably change management. Execution still causes too many incidents. About 70% of all incidents are the result of a change. 58% of the subjects say over 10% of their incidents are caused by change. 25% are excessive (over 40% of incidents) and a beleaguered 22% don’t know. SaaS is viewed very favorably as a service desk software delivery option. 96% were satisfied or very satisfied with SaaS, whereas the numbers for traditional software models and homebrewed tools all hovered around 70%.

• Despite some dissatisfaction with service desk, buyers are unlikely to switch vendors. 57% said they would not switch and 21% said they would. 22% did not know.

• The anchor-boutique “shopping mall” model for management tools seems popular. Major
vendors are well entrenched, but 37% will fill gaps in their portfolios with smaller boutique
vendors.

• 51% of ITSM efforts are driven primarily by IT or business executives.

• ITIL has had an overwhelming positive impact on organizational productivity: 85% positive and 2% negative

• 70% received a positive salary increase in the past year with 31% over 5% (The general US population fell and general IT salaries were flat.)

• 77% indicated a positive relationship between their Application Development and Operations teams. This indicates DevOps success is far stronger in ITSM-focused organizations than in the general enterprise.