Complete guide to IT operations management (ITOM)

Providing reliable and consistent IT service delivery for users on the front end always begins with your efforts to improve operations on the back end. IT operations management (ITOM) emphasizes the optimization of back-end processes, ensuring that technical teams have the tools needed to perform their duties, a structured set of practices in place to guide their actions, and a sound understanding of how their technical infrastructure is connected.

As IT environments become increasingly complex, spread out across various physical locations, digital channels, and the cloud, ITOM has become more important than ever before in ensuring that all technical components continually operate in harmony.

Tag along as we breakdown why IT operations management is so important in the modern digital age and how to verify that your approach is best serving your customers and contributing to broader organizational goals. 

What is IT operations management (ITOM)?

ITOM acts as an IT service management (ITSM) framework that encompasses the administration of an organization's technology infrastructure and its operational processes. This typically involves the monitoring, control, and optimization of all technical resources, including hardware, software, networks, and data centers. The primary goal of ITOM is to ensure the seamless functioning of IT services by overseeing key aspects such as performance, availability, and capacity. 

Key functions of IT operations management

From managing devices and services to automating critical processes, ITOM incorporates a range of essential functions that help businesses optimize their technological operations. By understanding these core capabilities, businesses can better leverage the framework to reduce operational costs, enhance service reliability, and improve overall IT performance.

Network infrastructure management

ITOM tools can track the performance, availability, and security of network devices such as routers, switches, and servers, ensuring that they’re functioning optimally. They continuously gather data about network traffic, usage patterns, and potential bottlenecks, allowing IT teams to detect and address issues before they escalate into significant disruptions.

Furthermore, ITOM enhances network security by monitoring anomalies and potential security threats in real-time. It allows companies to implement proactive measures to safeguard their networks, such as automated alerts for unusual activity, traffic spikes, or unauthorized access attempts.

Help desk management

One of the main functionalities of ITOM in a help desk system is its ability to automate ticket assignment based on predefined rules, ensuring that each request is directed to the most appropriate team or individual. This reduces manual intervention and eliminates delays in responding to support inquiries.

Another key advantage of operations management in help desk environments is its capability to integrate with ticketing systems, giving support teams access to detailed insights about incidents, configurations, and past service requests. This function enables the desk to troubleshoot issues more accurately and provide solutions based on comprehensive data.

Server/device management

Through ITOM, companies can maintain a comprehensive inventory of devices, applications, and services, verifying that all assets are properly tracked and managed throughout their lifecycle. This includes automating tasks like software updates, configuration changes, and patch management, which minimizes the manual effort required and reduces the risk of inconsistencies.

It also simplifies the management of service-level agreements (SLAs) by providing tools to define, track, and enforce performance benchmarks across different services and devices. With ITOM’s asset and configuration management capabilities, organizations can ensure that all resources are functioning within agreed-upon parameters, helping to prevent potential service disruptions.

Benefits of IT operations management

The ever-growing complexity of modern IT environments makes effective management critical to maintaining seamless operations. ITOM plays a vital role in helping businesses achieve this by offering a comprehensive approach to overseeing and optimizing technical infrastructure.

Let’s take a look at some of the ways in which operations management can help improve service delivery, streamline internal operations, and reduce costs:

Enhanced continuity

By managing tasks like configuration updates, software patching, and resource allocation, ITOM helps verify that systems remain up-to-date and functioning smoothly without disruptions. Operations management tools can also establish predefined workflows, so that incidents or changes are handled in a consistent manner, which assists in preventing unexpected service interruptions. 

This approach minimizes downtime and ensures that IT services are continually delivered without unnecessary delays or failures.

Improved productivity & efficiency

ITOM can enhance operational efficiency by providing centralized visibility and control over a business’s entire technical environment. This unified management approach allows IT teams to easily monitor and manage devices, applications, and services from a single platform. This serves to simplify tasks such as incident tracking, asset management, and SLA enforcement, ensuring that systems operate smoothly and meet performance standards. 

With faster problem identification and streamlined operations, ITOM empowers organizations to maintain high levels of efficiency while optimizing their IT assets for greater productivity.

Better end-user experience

ITOM often serves to improve the user experience (UX) by proactively addressing potential performance issues before they affect the end user. Through features like capacity management and predictive analytics, ITOM tools help technical teams anticipate and mitigate problems, such as server overloads or slow response times, that could degrade the UX.

Additionally, by managing resources like storage, bandwidth, and computing power effectively, ITOM allows organizations to deliver faster and more responsive IT services. This results in quicker load times, smoother application functionality, and better overall performance, which directly benefits the end user.

Reduced downtime

ITOM systems and practices empower companies to manage configurations and system dependencies efficiently, ensuring that all components of the technical environment are correctly aligned and functioning as intended. This reduces the likelihood of misconfigurations or conflicts between platforms that could lead to service disruptions.

Furthermore, operations management enhances continuity through robust capacity management, ensuring that IT assets are adequately allocated to meet demand. Ensuring that resources such as bandwidth, storage, and processing power are distributed appropriately helps prevent performance bottlenecks that could lead to system failures.

Optimize ROI

Through the effective management of assets, configurations, and services, ITOM verifies that technical infrastructure is always used to its full potential without unnecessary waste or redundancy. By maintaining efficient operations and avoiding excessive expenditures on IT resources, companies can significantly reduce operational costs, thereby improving ROI.

Even more, ITOM helps improve service availability and reduce downtime, which directly impacts revenue by ensuring critical systems are always accessible. This increased reliability means that businesses can provide better services to customers, often leading to higher satisfaction and retention rates. 

IT Operations management (ITOM)  vs IT Service Management (ITSM) vs IT Operations (ITOps)

ITOM and ITSM serve distinct but complementary roles within an organization’s IT ecosystem.

ITOM is a component of ITSM—it acts as one of its many frameworks that offer organizations unique approaches to overseeing their technical infrastructure. It’s narrower in scope than ITSM as a whole, emphasizing managing and optimizing the underlying infrastructure that supports IT services, such as networks, servers, storage, and applications. The primary goal of operations management is to maintain the health, availability, and performance of the technical environment, verifying that systems run smoothly and without disruptions.

ITSM, on the other hand, is centered around delivering IT services to users in a structured and process-driven way. It focuses on the customer-facing aspects of IT, such as self-service resources, service level management, and service desk operations. ITSM’s main objective is to provide a seamless, high-quality experience for end users through the delivery of reliable IT services. 

In short, ITOM manages the ‘back-end’ systems and infrastructure, while ITSM focuses on the ‘front-end’ delivery and management of IT services.

ITOM best practices

To truly harness the power of ITOM and ensure you're not just meeting but exceeding expectations with its upgrades, consider these essential strategies:

• Align IT goals with business objectives: By ensuring IT strategies are aligned with wider business goals, organizations can avoid miscommunication and misdirection. It’s all about creating a symbiotic relationship where IT initiatives drive business growth, and in turn, the business supports IT innovations.

• Embrace automation: In a world where speed, efficiency, and accuracy are paramount, relying solely on manual processes is a recipe for lag and error. Automation in ITOM doesn’t just mean faster results; it's about consistency, reliability, and freeing up human resources for tasks that demand creativity and problem-solving.

• Prioritize security and compliance: Innovation shouldn’t come at the expense of security. As IT landscapes become more complex, the risks associated grow in tandem. Prioritizing security means ensuring every new application, tool, or process is vetted, safe, and compliant with industry standards. It’s about proactively defending your IT resources while you continue to build and expand it.

• Foster continuous learning and adaptation within your IT team: The tech world is ever-evolving, and what’s considered on-par today may be obsolete tomorrow. Cultivating a culture of continuous learning ensures your team remains at the forefront of these changes. Encourage them to attend workshops, certifications, or even just regular brainstorming sessions. When your team grows, your IT operations flourish.

By integrating these practices into your ITOM strategy, you're setting the stage for operational excellence, sustained growth, and innovation. Remember, it's not just about managing operations but elevating them.

Challenges in IT operations management

Throughout your use of ITOM technology and frameworks, you may run into occasional difficulties in different areas of your game plan. Fortunately, with a little bit of teamwork, proactive planning, and creative thinking, many of these potential challenges can be easily overcome, possibly even leaving your organization stronger for the experience. After all, as they say, “adversity is preparation for greatness."

Integrating legacy systems

Connecting with legacy systems may be difficult when implementing IT operations management practices due to their outdated architectures and lack of standardization. Legacy systems often rely on proprietary technologies and custom interfaces, making them incompatible with modern ITOM tools. Data integration is a primary challenge, as legacy systems may store data in disparate formats and locations, creating difficulties in aggregating information.

To alleviate these concerns, organizations can adopt several strategies. One popular approach is to invest in modernization initiatives to update legacy systems when feasible. This might involve refactoring applications, migrating data to modern platforms, or implementing middleware solutions. By modernizing these systems, businesses can improve their interoperability, scalability, and agility, making them more compatible with ITOM practices.

Security in a dynamic environment

In dynamic environments characterized by frequent changes, maintaining control over security configurations and access permissions can be challenging. Rapid provisioning and decommissioning of resources can lead to misconfigurations, increasing the risk of security breaches and compliance violations.

To remedy this, companies should implement a defense-in-depth approach that incorporates multiple layers of security safeguards. This includes deploying network segmentation, firewalls, and intrusion detection systems to create security zones and enforce access controls. Additionally, implementing encryption, data masking, and tokenization techniques can help protect data both in transit and at rest, further reducing the risk of data breaches.

Cost management and ROI realization

Leveraging ITOM initiatives often require substantial upfront investments in infrastructure, tools, and personnel training. Businesses may experience difficulties in accurately estimating the total cost of ownership (TCO) and ongoing operational expenses associated with ITOM solutions. Initial implementation may also involve complex licensing models and hidden costs, making it challenging to accurately predict expenses.

It’s recommended that organizations conduct thorough cost-benefit analyses and ROI assessments to evaluate potential ITOM technology and investments. Furthermore, employing cost optimization strategies such as workload consolidation, resource pooling, and cloud migration can help reduce infrastructure costs and enhance cost efficiency. 

Leveraging automation

Integrating automation tools with existing infrastructure may require developing custom scripts to bridge compatibility gaps. Additionally, ensuring the coordination of automated workflows across different systems can be difficult, especially in dynamic and hybrid cloud environments.

To assist in these efforts, companies should adopt a phased approach that starts with automating low-risk, high-volume tasks and gradually expands over time. Prioritize initiatives based on their potential impact on efficiency and risk reduction, focusing on time-consuming tasks that can be easily standardized. It’s also vital to invest in sufficient training of IT staff to develop their expertise with AI-based tools, enabling them to implement automated workflows effectively. 

ITOM best practices

While ITOM frameworks provide a reliable foundation to build upon, it’ll be up to organizational leaders to ensure that best practices are employed to maximize their potential. A competent ITOM game plan typically involves extensive monitoring measures, task automation, incident response protocols, and more.

• Implement monitoring tools: Deploy comprehensive tracking tools to monitor the availability and health of IT services in real-time

• Automate routine tasks: Utilize AI-driven features to expedite repetitive tasks such as system updates, data backups, and IT patch management

• Ensure scalability and flexibility: Design IT systems with scalability and flexibility in mind, allowing them to accommodate growth and adapt to changing business requirements

• Implement disaster recovery plans: Develop robust disaster recovery and business continuity procedures to mitigate the impact of hardware failures, cybersecurity attacks, or natural disasters

• Continuously monitor performance: Regularly analyze the performance of IT applications, identifying bottlenecks and optimizing resources to enhance user experience (UX)

Accelerating business growth with ITOM

To truly appreciate the gravity of IT operations management potential for your business services, let's walk through a scenario:

Retail's digital makeover

Suppose that a mid-sized retail chain aspires to enhance its customer experience (CX) and streamline its operations.

The retailer starts its digital makeover by adopting a cloud-first strategy, moving its on-premises infrastructure to a scalable cloud computing platform. By employing IT operations management best practices and solutions, it’s provided with comprehensive monitoring capabilities that promote seamless migration and ongoing optimization. The business can automate the deployment and scaling of its e-commerce platform as well, ensuring high performance even during peak shopping periods.

Next, the chain leverages IT operations management tools to integrate AI-driven insights into its operations. By implementing automation tools, the retailer can analyze vast amounts of data generated by its sales channels, inventory systems, and customer interactions. This enables it to predict demand trends, optimize inventory levels, and personalize customer experiences. For instance, these analytics can identify which products are likely to be popular in different regions, allowing the company to stock stores accordingly.

Finally, ITOM’s automated incident management verifies that any IT issues affecting point-of-sale (POS) systems or online storefronts are quickly detected and resolved. The retailer can also utilize specialized tools to enable remote management of in-store Internet of Things (IoT) devices, ensuring that they operate efficiently and contribute to an interactive shopping environment.

Harness the power of ITOM with Freshservice

Freshworks’ Freshservice serves as the premier ITSM software available to businesses today, delivering robust ITOM, IT asset management (ITAM), and ITIL capabilities.

By employing Freshservice’s change management tool, IT teams can implement well-governed change control processes that allow for standardization and automation, while its service health monitoring assists in spotting root causes and prioritizing incidents based on user impact. Additional features include alert management, cloud management, IT modernization, and more, helping optimize your IT services in all areas of operation.

But don’t just take it from us; satisfied client Aaron C. extols Freshservice’s comprehensiveness and automation capacity, saying, “It's not JUST a ticket queue. Compared to the industry heavy-hitter, Zendesk, Freshservice features lots of powerful automation that can cut the busywork out of a technician's day. The idea of a single pane-of-glass for break/fix, projects, hardware and software inventory, and knowledge base, coupled with these time-saving automation, was too compelling for our org to pass up.”