What is ITOM and how is it different from ITSM?
This is an increasingly popular question for IT professionals. In part, this is driven by the need for organizations to use IT Operations Management (ITOM) in conjunction with more traditional IT service management (ITSM) because of the ever-increasing reliance on technology to enable business operations and outcomes. To help with your understanding, this blog explains what ITOM is, why it is needed, and what it entails.
So what is ITOM, anyway?
Firstly, there are various definitions out there, depending on the perspective of the definition provider because, unlike ITSM, there’s not an accepted industry-wide definition. Secondly, while organizations wish to “do” ITOM, most of the definitions they’ll find will talk about what ITOM tools are, not what the practice of ITOM is. For example:
“ITOM software is the set of IT management capabilities organizations need to effectively manage
the provision, capacity, availability, and performance of the IT infrastructure – which includes
computing, network, and application resources.”
This definition is indicative of the issues when defining what ITOM is and where it “sits” – that ITOM is commonly technology-defined. And each ITOM solution vendor has its own view of what ITOM is based on its solution’s capabilities. It also seems similar in coverage to ITSM which, unfortunately, makes it challenging to define ITOM and clearly position it against ITSM.
Why do we need ITOM?
The simplest way to describe the “why?” of ITOM is to talk about the ever-increasing reliance organizations have on technology. Whether this is in delivering products and services to customers, engaging those customers throughout the customer lifecycle, or enabling employees to do the work they need to do when they need to do it. In addition to this increased importance, there’s also increased IT volumes and complexity – with IT services potentially leveraging a mix of on-premises, cloud, and other third-party-provided capabilities. ITOM capabilities help tackle this complexity and allow organizations to understand how well their IT infrastructure, including applications, performs and remedy issues as needed. Ideally, before the issues adversely impact business operations and outcomes.
ITOM vs. ITSM
When positioning ITOM against IT service management, first appreciate that it’s not an either-or situation. Beyond this, it’s hard to say whether ITSM is a subset of ITOM, ITOM is a subset of ITSM (especially with ITIL 4’s broader coverage), or if they sit alongside each other with a degree of overlap. It will depend on the definition and understanding of ITOM employed.
The only certainty is that they aren’t entirely disparate capabilities nor precisely the same thing – there’s some overlap no matter the perspective taken. This situation is shown when the relevant technology solutions are considered:
- Some ITOM tool vendors might offer basic ITSM capabilities such as help desk
- Some ITSM tool vendors might offer specific ITOM capabilities
- And both ITOM and ITSM tool vendors will offer capabilities that will benefit both IT management disciplines even if they don’t market them as such
This blurring between ITOM and ITSM became more complicated when ITIL 4 was created on a much broader canvas and some ITSM pros might now consider that this new body of ITSM best practice guidance houses ITOM. However, if you want to keep the separate-disciplines perspective, the statement that “ITSM is focused on the services consumed by end-users, while ITOM is focused on the IT infrastructure and its components” is a helpful differentiator. Finally, another perspective to consider, that’s helped by the earlier definition, is that ITOM isn’t a distinct “thing.” Instead, there’s only IT operations and the technology they use – ITOM software.
Common ITOM capabilities
Despite the difficulties of defining what ITOM is and isn’t, we can talk about some of the typical ITOM capabilities seen in ITOM and ITSM tools. Ideally, we should take a business perspective of these ITOM capabilities, whereas with all aspects of IT, there’s a need to consistently deliver the technology enablement an organization needs. But the reality is that the capability-based definition of ITOM is heavily influenced by the available technology functions and features, with this differing by a technology vendor.
So here’s a list of what an ITOM tool might include, not a list of what every ITOM tool offers (nor what every ITSM tool vendor has added to help its customers with their ITOM needs):
- Intelligent alert and event management that offers “a single pane of glass” and AI-enablement
- Restorative automation and orchestration capabilities, including AI-enabled or intelligent
automation - Performance management analytics for devices, networks, and applications, including digital
experience management (DEX) capabilities - Device or client management capabilities, including patch management
- Discovery capabilities, including the configuration management database (CMDB), cloud
discovery, and service mapping - People resource management capabilities, such as on-call management
- Automated and predictive support for ITSM’s change, deployment, release, problem,
availability, and capacity management practices - Focused cloud management capabilities
Some ITOM tools will offer additional capabilities outside of these too. So that’s a quick introduction to what ITOM is. Please look out for future blogs that look at ITOM in more detail.
