GigaOm Radar for Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) v5

IT service management (ITSM) refers to a set of tools that provide both a process methodology and a technology for defining and delivering IT services across an organization. Service desk staff are responsible for provisioning, managing, and measuring the quality of services that drive business value while ensuring the underlying technology supporting ITSM can consistently deliver reliable service. 

Services are defined according to the service catalog and then provisioned in response to service requests run by the IT team. Services encompass infrastructure, assets, people, uptime, configuration, and cost, all coming together to deliver a single, focused view of the service.

Workflow management is a core component for handling incidents, service requests, problems, and changes, along with automation to drive efficiencies within the organization. 

Collectively, these factors demonstrate IT’s business value and its contributions to the success of the organization. CxOs will be interested in solutions that help them proactively manage IT services, avoid disruption, create efficiencies, and track service costs to deliver and support their enterprise.

The domain of ITSM has grown substantially over several decades and continues to grow. Vendor solutions are commonly developed in accordance with a best practices framework, the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), which defines specific processes for handling IT services. ITIL is now in its fifth generation and demonstrates business value and digital transition of all service management functions, representing significant change. 

Since the publication of the 2025 GigaOm Radar for ITSM, the certification landscape has remained unsettled. Increasing numbers of ITSM vendors are certifying their products with PeopleCert, the official accreditation firm for ITIL 4. However, some vendors are retaining their relationships with Pink Elephant (PE), maintaining similar practices, despite the lack of ITIL 4 branding. Pink Elephant continues to support and advocate for ITSM disciplines as it has for decades and is expanding beyond frameworks into operational practices. Meanwhile, PeopleCert has announced ITIL 5, which presents a new perspective on a longstanding best practice framework.

This is our fifth year evaluating the ITSM space. This report builds on our previous analysis and considers how the market has evolved over the last year. 

This GigaOm Radar report examines 21 of the top ITIL-certified ITSM solutions and compares offerings against the capabilities (table stakes, key features, and emerging features) and nonfunctional requirements (business criteria). It provides an overview of the market, identifies leading ITSM offerings, and helps decision-makers evaluate these solutions so they can make a more informed investment decision.

GigaOm is evaluating vendors that have committed to ITSM essentials as defined by ITIL 4, an approach that was verified with evidence provided by vendors from PeopleCert and Pink Elephant. Scoring will provide a more granular perspective on ITIL 4 with regard to ITSM infrastructure and ITSM business value. ITSM essentials are required for a vendor to be included in the report. Our scoring examines vendor offerings in these areas and on other key features and important evaluation metrics. The report covers vendors from North America, South America, Europe, and Asia.

To help prospective customers find the best fit for their use case and business requirements, we assess how well ITSM solutions are designed to serve specific target markets and deployment models (Table 1).

For this report, we recognize the following market segments:

• Small-to-medium businesses (SMBs): In the SMB segment, ITSM functionality is similar to that found in enterprise-class solutions at a price point that fits within SMB budget levels. Some vendors place limits on the scale of the deployment, number of users, or even services supported by the ITSM solution. Solutions in this market segment are commonly bundled or closely integrated. They typically include problem, incident, service request management, and a configuration management database (CMDB). Some vendors support functionality such as IT asset management (ITAM). Service provider targets are also part of this segment when vendors are able to offer multitenancy. 

• Large enterprises: Large enterprises benefit from the robust capabilities of ITSM, assuming that the cost, compliance, and process aspects are all incorporated into these solutions. Functionality is often quite similar to that found in the midmarket, though on a much more expansive scale. Additional depth is provided with regard to asset categories, data, financial metrics, and risk analysis. ITSM helps enterprises save on IT spending and stay in compliance with corporate targets and contractual commitments. 

• Managed service providers (MSPs): MSPs remotely manage a customer’s network operations and deal with maintenance, upgrades, and other day-to-day activities, including ITSM. Their needs may align with those in the above categories, and solutions are assessed on their ability to meet them.

In addition, we recognize the following deployment models:

• On-prem: Self-hosted deployment allows organizations to install and manage ITSM solutions on their own infrastructure. It provides greater control over data and customization but requires in-house hardware and software management. It can be important to some verticals such as government and finance.

• SaaS: SaaS deployment involves accessing ITSM solutions hosted and managed by the vendor. Operators access the service over the internet, eliminating the need for on-prem hardware or software installation.

• Hybrid: Hybrid deployment combines SaaS and self-hosted models, offering flexibility. Some components of the ITSM solution may be hosted in the cloud (SaaS) while others run on the organization's infrastructure (self-hosted). This approach suits organizations with diverse security requirements and infrastructure setups.

To help prospective customers find the best fit for their use case and business requirements, we assess how well ITSM solutions are designed to serve specific target markets and deployment models (Table 1).

For this report, we recognize the following market segments:

• Small-to-medium businesses (SMBs): In the SMB segment, ITSM functionality is similar to that found in enterprise-class solutions at a price point that fits within SMB budget levels. Some vendors place limits on the scale of the deployment, number of users, or even services supported by the ITSM solution. Solutions in this market segment are commonly bundled or closely integrated. They typically include problem, incident, service request management, and a configuration management database (CMDB). Some vendors support functionality such as IT asset management (ITAM). Service provider targets are also part of this segment when vendors are able to offer multitenancy. 

• Large enterprises: Large enterprises benefit from the robust capabilities of ITSM, assuming that the cost, compliance, and process aspects are all incorporated into these solutions. Functionality is often quite similar to that found in the midmarket, though on a much more expansive scale. Additional depth is provided with regard to asset categories, data, financial metrics, and risk analysis. ITSM helps enterprises save on IT spending and stay in compliance with corporate targets and contractual commitments. 

• Managed service providers (MSPs): MSPs remotely manage a customer’s network operations and deal with maintenance, upgrades, and other day-to-day activities, including ITSM. Their needs may align with those in the above categories, and solutions are assessed on their ability to meet them.

In addition, we recognize the following deployment models:

• On-prem: Self-hosted deployment allows organizations to install and manage ITSM solutions on their own infrastructure. It provides greater control over data and customization but requires in-house hardware and software management. It can be important to some verticals such as government and finance.

• SaaS: SaaS deployment involves accessing ITSM solutions hosted and managed by the vendor. Operators access the service over the internet, eliminating the need for on-prem hardware or software installation.

• Hybrid: Hybrid deployment combines SaaS and self-hosted models, offering flexibility. Some components of the ITSM solution may be hosted in the cloud (SaaS) while others run on the organization's infrastructure (self-hosted). This approach suits organizations with diverse security requirements and infrastructure setups.

Table 1. Vendor Positioning: Target Market and Deployment Model

All solutions included in this Radar report meet the following table stakes—capabilities widely adopted and well implemented in the sector:

• Service management ecosystem

• Best practices certification baseline (ITIL 4/PE)

• Automation and orchestration

• Reports and dashboards

• Disaster recovery

Tables 2, 3, and 4 summarize how each vendor in this research performs in the areas we consider differentiating and critical in this sector. The objective is to give the reader a snapshot of the technical capabilities of available solutions, define the perimeter of the relevant market space, and gauge the potential impact on the business.

• Key features differentiate solutions, highlighting the primary criteria to be considered when evaluating an ITSM solution

• Emerging features show how well each vendor implements capabilities that are not yet mainstream but are expected to become more widespread and compelling within the next 12 to 18 months 

• Business criteria provide insight into the nonfunctional requirements that factor into a purchase decision and determine a solution’s impact on an organization

These decision criteria are summarized below.

Key Features

• Self-service portal: Configurable self-service includes technology and processes that enable ITSM technical leaders to design self-service portals so users can jumpstart the service process and streamline service desk operations. This reduces the human labor burden at the service desk and streamlines problem management, incident management, and service requests. 

• Knowledge management: Knowledge management tools record, track, and present detailed information about solutions to incidents and problems that may arise. They reduce technical support analyst time and increasingly employ AI to populate and locate the closest matching solution to accelerate mean time to resolution (MTTR).

• ITSM essentials (ITIL 4/PE): ITSM essentials are the critical disciplines for running a foundational ITSM program. To meet the table stakes for this report, the vendor needs certification evidence in at least five modules of ITIL 4. This research considered Pink Elephant, SerView, and PeopleCert at all certification levels. 

• ITSM infrastructure (ITIL 4/PE): ITSM infrastructure includes functionality that manages and monitors infrastructure such as networks, systems, and applications that may impact service quality or outages. This insight provides the service desk with key information about problems and incidents that arise in the environment. 

• ITSM business value (ITIL 4/PE): ITSM business value connects IT services more closely to the intended business value. This includes functionality that provides a bidirectional connection between any two business, financial, or service points in the context of ITSM. 

• Asset discovery: The ability to manage services requires knowledge of the infrastructure and assets used by services. Whether the ITSM tool has infrastructure discovery capabilities of its own or consumes the output of another tool, asset discovery is a key ITSM capability. This information is ideally stored in the solution's CMDB. 

• Workflow automation: Workflow automation tools are essential components of ITSM for streamlining the provisioning and support of IT and enterprise services. These capabilities eliminate labor costs and errors in service delivery and automate the notification of changes in status and impact of problems and incidents. 

• Enterprise service management (ESM): Builds upon the ITSM foundation or framework to extend IT services to any business service needed by the organization. This might include HR, facilities, manufacturing, or other mission-critical services or issues that can be managed by the tools in an ITSM solution, including service definition, asset tracking, problems, incidents, and service quality.

Table 2. Key Features Comparison 

Emerging Features

• OpenTelemetry-informed ITSM: OpenTelemetry is a set of APIs, software development kits (SDKs), tooling, and integrations designed to generate and manage telemetry data, such as traces, metrics, and logs. The project provides a vendor-agnostic implementation that can be configured to send telemetry data to another tool. It supports a variety of popular open source projects, including Jaeger and Prometheus.

• Business process integration: Enterprise business process management systems manage the organization's operations and financial systems. Workflows that translate to business processes for services defined outside of IT are at the heart of most ITSM solutions. In many cases, these workflows relate to IT and, increasingly, ESM-defined services. 

• Agile ITSM: More and more, ITSM solutions are combining their own robust best practices, such as ITIL, with agile methodologies. This provides an enterprise with a robust and efficient approach to service management. Agile brings adaptability to ITSM, using Kanban and Scrum and emphasizing greater collaboration.

• Geographically aware enablement: Geographically aware service enablement takes into account the definition, management, security provisions, and ownership of both the service itself and its performance metrics. This typically covers mobile devices and remote workers, as their usage patterns can impact their work.

• Shift left ITSM: In ITSM solutions, shift left denotes a strategy whereby problem resolution and support activities are moved closer to the end user, empowering them to solve issues themselves. This approach is most commonly handled through self-service, knowledge management, and automation. However, some vendors are leveraging AI for advanced approaches.

• Vulnerability management: This feature examines mechanisms within the solution that monitor security vulnerabilities and provide breach avoidance. This functionality can be delivered through security standards, encryption, monitoring, and alerting mechanisms. In all cases, the functionality moves beyond role-based access mechanisms. 

• User experience agreements: User experience agreements are a formalized mechanism to track the user experience separately from service levels and service level agreements. The user experience agreements are formalized measurements of user satisfaction and its performance.

Table 3. Emerging Features Comparison

Business Criteria

• Flexibility: Flexibility assesses an ITSM solution's adaptability to manage a wide range of IT services and vertical market domains such as government, utilities, finance, or healthcare. It also considers the flexibility to incorporate third-party solutions by integration or data extraction and to export asset and service information for use by an employee outside of the ITSM solution. 

• Ease of use: This criterion looks at many aspects of an ITSM solution as it impacts both business and IT teams. This includes the overall usability of the solution, how easy it is to configure or integrate, the level of training that is required, and how intuitive features and functions are to operate. Deployment of the solution must not place a strain on IT teams even as it impacts the way they operate. Ease of customization to meet business and user goals is critical, as is effective branding and visualization that enhances end user interaction.

• Ecosystem: An ecosystem is a system of interconnected technologies and services that support any given technology domain by delivering a comprehensive solution. The core technology is developed by the ITSM vendor, with third-party offerings and services becoming part of the overarching ecosystem. Services are a meaningful component of all ecosystems.

• Scalability: Scalability refers to the upper and lower limits of the ITSM solution's capacity to handle customer environments. Many solutions are designed for SMB environments, while others cross into large enterprise environments. Evidence of large deployments was considered, along with the ability to address IT services and enterprise services. 

• Maintainability: Each vendor was evaluated on how easily its product can be maintained, including updates, upgrades, patches, and bug fixes, along with the delivery method for all maintenance items. Moreover, customizations must be future-proofed within a solution.

• Security: ITSM environments are exposed to internal and external users, and for MSPs, multiple clients are often managed within the same solution. To protect data and reduce security risk, robust security provisions such as single sign-on (SSO), data separation, and role definitions must be included in the ITSM solution. 

• Cost transparency: Cost factors evaluate the potential financial impact of implementing an ITSM solution and the total cost of the solution, including people and processes. Implementing a robust ITSM solution requires corporate investment in a qualified team and participatory process development across the organization. 

Table 4. Business Criteria Comparison 

The GigaOm Radar plots vendor solutions across a series of concentric rings, with those positioned closer to the center being judged as having the most complete solution. The chart characterizes each vendor on two axes—balancing Maturity versus Innovation and Feature Play versus Platform Play—while providing an arrowhead that projects each solution’s expected evolution over the coming 12 to 18 months.

As shown in Figure 1, the majority of ITSM vendors covered in this report are concentrated in the Maturity half. The vendors placed in the Maturity/Platform Play quadrant demonstrate the maturity of the ITSM market overall, with a large number of well-established ITSM solutions. The vendors in the Maturity/Feature Play quadrant are focused on targeted aspects of the ITSM landscape. Those vendors typically provide ITIL 4 essential capabilities for their customers rather than covering a broader ITSM scope. The vendors in the Innovation half are challenging and expanding the footprint of ITSM solutions. 

Note, however, that vendors are almost equally distributed across the Feature Play and Platform Play axis of the Radar. This illustrates the progression in this year’s Radar report and captures a holistic view of ITSM solutions features and functions that includes ITIL 4 certification for ITSM essentials, ITSM infrastructure, and ITSM business value. 

Vendors were screened against table stakes to ensure a base level of support for ITIL 4 discipline certification. This consists of a minimum of five ITIL 4 ITSM essentials practices. After passing that threshold, vendors were scored based on ITIL 4 certifications in each ITIL 4 ITSM category. 

ITIL 4 support was considered along with other important key features for ITSM. In effect, vendors needed to demonstrate an ITIL 4 commitment along with critical service management functionality. Like last year, no evaluation of ITIL 3 was made, though progress toward robust ITIL 4 certification was a primary metric of evaluation with some vendors adding moderately to their ITIL 4 certification portfolio. 

The results show that of 21 vendors, all were ITIL 4 certified in a minimum of five ITSM essentials practices. Buyers focused on the core disciplines of problem, incident, change enablement, and knowledge management have many choices when seeking ITIL 4-certified solutions. Eighteen of these vendors have certified eight or more ITIL 4 practices, representing strong commitment to best practices support. 

Moving to ITSM infrastructure disciplines, the field narrows. GigaOm found that four solutions with the strongest ITSM infrastructure management disciplines have certified six of the eight ITSM infrastructure management disciplines. This leaves room for growth both in those that are highly rated with two additional disciplines and many more for those that have pursued infrastructure-based certification only in a limited way. This represents vendors that see stronger alignment with operations and ITSM focused on this category. Vendors offering fewer certifications in this category may be suitable solutions for SMB and enterprise customers addressing infrastructure management separately from ITSM ITIL 4.

The goal of ITSM and ESM is to connect IT and enterprise services to the business mission. Three solutions have achieved certifications of five or more ITSM business value disciplines through ITSM ITIL 4. Eleven solutions have certified one or no disciplines in this category. There is significant room for growth in demonstrating business value, both among this group of vendors and for those that are not currently supporting this ITSM ITIL 4 segment.

Other key and emerging features were considered in evaluating this year’s vendor pool. These features included requirements such as asset discovery, self-service portals, workflow, automation, and ESM. Emerging features included OpenTelemetry, agile ITSM, shift left ITSM, user experience agreements, and increasing needs for geographically aware service management. 

Most established vendors are moving to incorporate AI/ML, natural language processing (NLP), and automation into self-service and knowledge management functionality. Solutions are increasingly leveraging these technologies as the primary theme of growth to ease the labor burden on the service desk, provide hyperautomation, and provide greater visibility for customers who are comfortable with self-service approaches. 

Pricing, licensing, and professional services tend to be similar across all solution providers. Publication of pricing information varies by vendor. Buyers will find they can pay a premium for a solution with more ITIL 4-certified modules or save money by forgoing some functionality. Most organizations will want a solution that meets current needs and a vendor that aligns with their own level of commitment to ITIL 4 best practices at the time of purchase and moving forward. 

In reviewing solutions, it’s important to keep in mind that there are no universal “best” or “worst” offerings; every solution has aspects that might make it a better or worse fit for specific customer requirements. Prospective customers should consider their current and future needs when comparing solutions and vendor roadmaps.

Inside the GigaOm Radar

To create the GigaOm Radar graphic, key features, emerging features, and business criteria are scored and weighted. Key features and business criteria receive the highest weighting and have the most impact on vendor positioning on the Radar graphic. Emerging features receive a lower weighting and have a lower impact on vendor positioning on the Radar graphic. The resulting chart is a forward-looking perspective on all the vendors in this report, based on their products’ technical capabilities and roadmaps.

Note that the Radar is technology-focused, and business considerations such as vendor market share, customer share, spend, recency or longevity in the market, and so on are not considered in our evaluations. As such, these factors do not impact scoring and positioning on the Radar graphic.

For more information, please visit our Methodology.

Alemba: Alemba Service Manager

Solution Overview

Alemba is UK‑headquartered with a distributed global team and registered offices in the UK, US, and APAC. The company has roots in professional services, a model that is central to achieving the best value from Alemba Service Manager (ASM). 

ASM is an ITIL-compliant ITSM tool with certifications provided by Pink Elephant. The solution includes all-inclusive functionality and pricing, delivered as a SaaS-based cloud offering or on-prem. ASM Cloud is hosted on the Microsoft Azure platform. Functionally, the solution provides ITIL-certified self-service problem, incident, and service request management, among other practices. It provides multiple service catalogs and ESM functionality.

ASM uses AI-driven knowledge matching and workflow management to add efficiency and intelligence and to reduce resolution time for problems and incidents. For example, when creating an incident, AI automatically categorizes and prioritizes the incident and begins searching the knowledge base for answers according to the user types involved in the incident. Similarly, the workflow capabilities tie directly to its ability to serve organizations and their business process needs. 

Alemba is positioned as a Leader and Fast Mover in the Maturity/Platform Play quadrant of the ITSM Radar chart.

Strengths

Alemba scored well on a number of decision criteria, including:

• ITSM essentials (ITIL 4/PE): This solution is certified ITIL 4-compliant and is among the strongest of all vendors, with high scores in all ITIL 4 categories. The solution has complete competency in all ITSM essential modules, active management of ITSM infrastructure covering the majority of these disciplines, and more than half of the ITSM business value disciplines.

• ITSM infrastructure (ITIL 4/PE): Certification of this toolset for ITSM infrastructure was strong, with six out of eight disciplines being certified. These include availability management, capacity and performance management, deployment management, monitoring and event management, release management, and service validation testing. The solution is one of four vendors with the highest number of disciplines in this category being certified. 

• Enterprise service management (ESM): Non-IT service management is achieved through multitenancy, workflow development, configuration, and security, which can be tailored to each ESM application. 

Opportunities

Alemba has room for improvement in a couple of decision criteria, including:

• Asset discovery: Third-party tools are used for asset management. Asset discovery is achieved via third-party tools, mapping only the asset data required for ITSM management in the CMDB.

• OpenTelemetry-informed ITSM: The vendor's OpenTelemetry capabilities could be improved, as it does not directly follow OpenTelemetry APIs. However, it does provide metrics insights via its operations dashboards, and alerts can be triggered when certain conditions are met, providing service status insight.

Purchase Considerations

ASM can be purchased as an on-prem or SaaS-based solution. The company uses a named license system for analysts, requiring one license per user. Licenses are specific for either cloud or on-prem usage. Self-service portal users have access via a site license provided by Alemba. Professional services are commonly required for a robust implementation of the solution, in keeping with Alemba’s history of delivering value through its services. Billing is typically annual. 

MSPs will appreciate the attention Alemba has given to support branding, customization, dashboards, security, and multitenancy. ASM supports all common SSO systems and role-based access control (RBAC) to restrict access to all features, functions, and data in accordance with compliance guidelines, along with the separate Microsoft Azure tenancy to ensure complete security for customers. 

Alemba uses an atypical approach to multitenancy that provides segregated tenancy for data governance, protection, and separation from other customers, which would be desirable for some highly secure environments. 

Use Cases

ASM has been applied to vertical market segments, including finance, retail, local and federal government, healthcare, education, defense, charity, transport, and utilities.

The solution’s ESM functionality relies on a partitioning mechanism that segregates business functions within a single-tenant instance. All departments can use the same tool to separate workflows, configuration settings, and data security requirements. ASM has use cases that support ESM for HR, facilities, and digital transformation. 

Aranda Software: Aranda Service Management Suite

Solution Overview

Aranda Software offers an ITSM and ESM product portfolio that includes automation, process management, and multiple communication channels for every organization and ESM business function. Aranda Software’s product mix is composed of a tightly integrated set of modules that work closely together. This includes Aranda Service Management Suite (ASMS), Aranda Field Service (AFLS), Aranda CMDB, Aranda Query Manager (AQM), and Aranda Integration Center (AIC). 

While the solution employs chatbots to ease the support process, other technologies, such as AI, drag-and-drop workflow features, and knowledge management, further advance their use. Aranda Service Management Suite has incorporated into its channels and workflows a group of AI capabilities that accelerate the productivity of end users and technicians by reducing repetitive tasks through NLP-based ticket creation. 

Aranda Service Management Suite’s self-service functionality includes a centralized service desk that works with a chatbot integrated with Microsoft Teams and a native chatbot integrated with WhatsApp, streamlining collaboration and the process of requesting services. Dashboards allow users to drill down to understand real-time business metrics and are customizable to suit organizational needs.

Aranda Software is positioned as a Leader and Outperformer in the Maturity/Feature Play quadrant of the ITSM Radar chart.

Strengths

ArandaSoftware scored well on a number of decision criteria, including:

• ITSM essentials (ITIL 4/PE): The vendor is committed to ITIL 4 certification, specifically through PeopleCert. The solution has been accredited for all 10 of the ITSM essentials disciplines. 

• Workflow automation: The solution’s workflow and automation capabilities are friendly, providing drag-and-drop capabilities, a GUI-based interface, and no-code options to address non-developer needs in designing workflows. Further, the solution has a cross-solution automation that connects ITSM and UEM solutions to support and serve endpoint management in conjunction with ITSM.

• Enterprise service management (ESM): ESM functionality within the solution is managed through the CMDB, which is agnostic to IT versus non-IT services. In this way, data can be separated into workspaces to partition it as needed for ESM applications. 

Aranda Software was classified as an Outperformer because of its strong roadmap and especially its substantial investments over the past 12 months. It provides usability, security, financial management, and currency support among other new capabilities. AI, additional security, and hyperautomation are planned going forward. 

Opportunities

Aranda Software has room for improvement in a few decision criteria, including:

• ITSM infrastructure (ITIL 4/PE): While the vendor strongly supports ITIL 4 accreditation, its certification for ITSM infrastructure disciplines includes infrastructure and platform management, release, deployment, and event and monitoring modules, leaving room for growth to expand to all eight in this category. 

• ITSM business value (ITIL 4/PE): Similarly, the solution covers three ITIL 4 ITSM business value disciplines. These include service financial management, supplier management, and measurement and reporting, leaving five additional disciplines that can be adopted and certified.

• Business process integration: This feature requires the use of API development to address specific customer needs. The vendor has invested heavily in hyperautomation, RPA, and low-code and no-code automation, introducing native connectors for Power Automate and Zapier. These connectors improve its ability to connect with business process integration, leaving only direct integration as room for growth in this area.

Purchase Considerations

Aranda Software is part of the group of mid-market vendors that offers tightly coupled ITSM and ITAM solutions underpinned by a CMDB as the source of truth for services and assets that support those services. 

Aranda Service Management Suite consists of multiple tools under different SKUs, making purchases complex. Professional services from Aranda Software or a partner are required for a full deployment to assist with configuration, parameter-driven customization, and deployment. Limited licenses are available for development, test, user acceptance, and production environments. 

Aranda Software follows a traditional enterprise quote-based pricing model. This is common for vendors that provide highly modular and customizable software like their Aranda Service Management Suite (ASMS). The vendor uses a scalable pricing model, with discounts available for NGOs and education organizations.

Use Cases

Aranda Software is highly visible in Latin America and has a heterogeneous customer base, including government, healthcare, and banking and financial services verticals in the region, with US deployments as well. Aranda Service Management Suite is a multilingual solution with support for English, Portuguese, and Spanish. Latin America is Aranda Software’s primary market, and Spanish is well supported.

Aranda Software delivers ESM because its solution is agnostic about whether services are IT or corporate business services. Many use cases are available, including self-service automation, ITIL-focused applications, and field service management.

Atlassian: Service Collection

Solution Overview

Atlassian is increasingly visible in the ITSM domain and especially for agile ITSM. Since 2025, the Atlassian Service Collection has been bundled and sold to include Jira Service Management (JSM), Customer Service Management (CSM), Assets (CMDB), and Atlassian Rovo: "the new dedicated AI solution.” ITIL-aligned functions are delivered via Jira Service Management. Other relevant offerings for service management include Jira, Jira Product Discovery, and Confluence.

Atlassian brings collaboration expertise to the ITSM buyer. These capabilities enable enterprises to establish internal processes and collaborations with business partners. The solution includes predefined best practices with ITSM and ESM approaches to service deployment and measurement. The solution’s knowledge management features are provided through Confluence. Customers have access to basic knowledge management at no cost.

JSM includes a self-service portal, configurable workflows, no-code automation, virtual service agents, and a native mobile application. It does not support geographically based asset or service management. However, buyers invested in Atlassian's broader platform will appreciate the integration to solutions like Jira and the ability to connect differing roles through this shared resource. Atlassian has moved away from selling JSM as a standalone tool, instead pivoting to an AI-first "Service Collection" model.

Atlassian is positioned as a Challenger and Fast Mover in the Innovation/Feature Play quadrant of the ITSM Radar chart.

Strengths

Atlassian scored well on a number of decision criteria, including:

• Workflow automation: The solution has a flexible workflow engine that can be leveraged for automation. It is integrated across the service management toolset and linked to additional development tools.

• ITSM essentials (ITIL 4/PE): The solution is well certified through PeopleCert for nine of the ITSM essentials, demonstrating the core requirements for a best practices-based ITSM solution. 

• Agile ITSM: The vendor is well known for its agile implementation across product sets. This expertise is included in the service management portfolio with extensive and multiple layers of agile support throughout all applications, bringing agile ITSM to its users in a credible way and building on the company’s history in other domains. 

Opportunities

Atlassian has room for improvement in a few decision criteria, including:

• Self-service portal: The solution takes a lightweight approach to managing services and designing supportive features such as self-service and some aspects of automation. Some businesses will seek more comprehensive built-in features, examples, and templates.

• ITSM infrastructure (ITIL 4/PE): While the vendor has certified the majority of the ITIL 4 ITSM essentials disciplines, it has certified only event and monitoring in the category of ITSM infrastructure, leaving room for growth and expansion.  

• Asset management: Atlassian has a more recent addition for asset management, which encompasses hardware, software, network, and discovery capabilities, and it can import data. However, the scope of this solution has room for growth in comparison to its competitors. 

Purchase Considerations

Jira Service Management can be purchased as part of the Service Collection, which is exclusively available as SaaS. It takes a named user licensing approach and offers an enterprise license agreement (ELA) option. Four tiered options bundle various capabilities for the buyer. 

Atlassian is a good fit for buyers who need cross-collaboration or those who have experience with other Atlassian solutions and want to realize the benefits of collaboration and knowledge sharing. 

Pricing is open and available to prospective buyers.

Use Cases

Atlassian dominates the technology and telecom provider sectors. The company is a more recent entrant as an ESM solution provider. It has an integrated suite of products that it envisions using to connect IT and business teams and design efficient workflows for service delivery. 

Supported ESM solutions currently include HR, facilities, project management, legal management, contract management, finance management, and customer service management. Atlassian encourages creativity rather than a prescriptive approach to applying ESM.

BMC Helix: ITSM

Solution Overview

BMC Helix is a long-standing enterprise technology vendor headquartered in California, with a worldwide presence. It specializes in enabling digital enterprises with products that provide operations management, service management, automation, and workflow orchestration. Its ITSM solution is delivered through a single product called BMC Helix ITSM, though other BMC Helix modules may be needed to fully take advantage of the solution (for example, BMC Helix Discovery to connect services with supporting assets). 

BMC Helix ITSM is part of a portfolio of products. Its underlying microservices architecture serves as the platform for all BMC Helix offerings. BMC Helix leverages asset discovery tools from BMC Helix’s operational capabilities. Workflows necessary for knowledge management and self-service are integrated out of the box. 

The entire BMC Helix ITSM suite, including ITAM, incorporates generative and agentic AI, NLP, and intelligent heuristics. AI has been used well at all levels, including new dashboards that are dynamic and can be created through conversational AI. Buyers who require customization can rely on a data model that enables customization and an upgrade pathway for BMC Helix’s on-prem ITSM solution. Recent product updates include improved automation, natural language processing, AI agent creation, and integration improvements.

BMC Helix is positioned as a Leader and Fast Mover in the Maturity/Platform Play quadrant of the ITSM Radar chart.

Strengths

BMC Helix scored well on a number of decision criteria, including:

• Self-service portal: The solution offers a flexible, multi-role self-service portal that utilizes a vendor-owned innovation studio. Recent enhancements to the portal include modernized interfaces to improve the user experience and increased automation leveraging its AI tools. 

• Knowledge management: This feature is supported by Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS)-verified capabilities, adding structure and process to knowledge management. Additionally, the toolset uses AI to automate knowledge article creation, deduplication, and ongoing curation. 

• ITSM essentials (ITIL 4/PE): The current version of the ITSM solution includes substantial support for ITSM essentials practices, exceeding the table stakes handily. The vendor demonstrates full commitment to GigaOm’s ITSM essentials and has been certified by PinkVERIFY.

Opportunities

BMC Helix has room for improvement in a few decision criteria, including:

• ITSM infrastructure (ITIL 4/PE): The solution is currently certified for the availability, capacity and performance management, deployment, monitoring and event management, and release management disciplines in ITSM infrastructure. Improvement could be achieved by expanding this certification to include the remaining three disciplines.

• ITSM business value (ITIL 4/PE): This toolset is currently certified in one of GigaOm’s ITSM business value practices, service financial management, leaving much room for growth. 

• Geographically aware enablement: While location tracking is possible, the process relies on creating and managing configuration items (CIs) that support geographically aware service enablement. 

Purchase Considerations

BMC Helix ITSM is sold primarily as a SaaS-based solution, though it can also be purchased as an on-prem, containerized deployment. The discovery engine is agentless, which simplifies the implementation of the solutions. Buyers should also consider the investment required in processes and best practices as they embark on a purchase of BMC Helix ITSM and supporting products. 

As with some other ITSM platforms, the increased flexibility provided by BMC Helix does not necessarily lead to ease of use, particularly during the deployment phases. Many modules, such as asset discovery, are add-on products that are necessary to achieve a comprehensive ITSM solution. As a result, BMC Helix ITSM can become a large and sometimes costly solution when multiple modules are needed. To address this challenge, BMC Helix introduced bundles to reduce the need to buy several individual add-ons and to provide attractive bundle pricing for its buyers.

Pricing is available on an individual customer basis.

Use Cases

BMC Helix covers use cases in a number of market segments, including manufacturing, IT, and energy. The solution enables users to build custom layouts, which facilitates tailoring the solution to a particular use case or customer requirement. 

BMC Helix offers an ESM capability to deliver services beyond IT that leverage the ITIL-based ITSM toolset. Examples of enterprise services include HR, facilities, finance, security, customer service, and agile DevOps. The company provides out-of-the-box content for HR, facilities, finance, and security incident handling.

Freshworks: Freshservice*

Solution Overview

The Freshworks Freshservice solution offers integrated products for ITSM and ITAM with streamlined delivery as a cloud-based SaaS solution. The product is designed around a service-first model that includes a full suite of ITSM, ITAM, IT operations management (ITOM), and ESM features. 

The Freshservice ITSM solution has a modern, intuitive interface that allows it to handle problems, incidents, service requests, change management, and release management. Knowledge management features are also hosted in the cloud, and users can easily add solution articles to the database. In keeping with the solution’s intuitive strategy, the company has employed a gamification approach to improve service technician engagement.  

Freshservice provides a consolidated platform with no-code workflow automation. Freshworks anticipates that there will be integration with AI for generating key insights from a multisourced CMDB. This includes identifying potential duplicates and optimizing workloads for cost efficiency. One example is detecting usage patterns in a large AWS deployment and recommending adjustments, such as upgrading to a larger instance size. Recent enhancements include further investments in AI and additional advanced workflow automation, expanded virtual agents, and self-service options to streamline operations.

Freshworks is positioned as a Challenger and Fast Mover in the Innovation/Feature Play quadrant of the ITSM Radar chart.

Strengths

Freshworks scored well on a number of decision criteria, including:

• ITSM infrastructure (ITIL 4/PE): The solution has five certifications in the ITIL 4 ITSM infrastructure discipline: availability management, capacity and performance management, monitoring and event management, release management, and service validation. 

• Asset discovery: Asset discovery is a strong feature set for this toolset. Due to the integration between ITSM and ITAM components, the solution can discover hardware, software, cloud infrastructure, networks, and services, leaving only security assets as a growth area. Discovery is included with ITSM. 

• Agile ITSM: This emerging feature is a key part of the solution. It provides Kanban boards and emphasizes individuals and interactions over processes, tools, and business needs. It also focuses on working software over comprehensive documentation and service quality measures through collaboration.

Opportunities

Freshworks has room for improvement in a few decision criteria, including:

• Knowledge management: Knowledge management capabilities are included, but only limited automation and AI capabilities are available to streamline the management of the knowledge management lifecycle.

• ITSM business value (ITIL 4/PE): The vendor has heavily invested in ITIL 4 ITSM essentials, certifying 8 out of 10 disciplines in the category. However, it has certified only measurement and reporting for ITSM business value disciplines, perhaps reflecting its small to medium enterprise focus. 

• Enterprise service management (ESM): The solution offers ESM for non-IT services. However, much of the functionality is driven through the CMDB and requires a combination of manual and imported entries. Streamlined and out-of-the-box templates would jumpstart users seeking to implement these features.

Purchase Considerations

Freshservice is offered only on a SaaS-based, multitenant platform and requires no developer support for its rollout to a customer environment. Data centers are located in the US, European Economic Area (EEA), India, and Australia, and customers control which data center serves their organization. The company targets SMBs seeking an easy-to-use platform with low overhead and has an install base of more than 25,000.

Freshservice can handle small to large environments and can transmit service details over low-bandwidth networks. Its UI is up to date and intuitively geared toward smaller organizations. The architecture has multitenant capabilities that are built into the SaaS solution from the ground up. 

Freshservice is licensed by named users and provides four pricing tiers linked to feature sets. These include AI agent assist, virtual agent, analytics, and a separate business agent license for ESM. 

Use Cases

Freshservice is designed for companies in many different vertical markets and does not serve any particular use case. It is a flexible solution that relies on the CMDB to support its ability to handle varying environments.

The company supports ESM with use case examples in HR, facilities, project management, legal management, contract management, finance management, and other corporate domains.

Halo: HaloITSM

Solution Overview

Halo is a private company based in the UK with operations in the US, the United Arab Emirates, and Australia. HaloITSM is a complete solution designed to provide ITSM and ESM capabilities. HaloITSM is geared to speed time to deployment and provides templates, workflows, and processes that can be configured and tailored by the customers. 

The solution offers a unified UI and a consistent experience across all modules. Its modular design enables users to activate only the required features. HaloITSM provides out-of-the-box functionality to facilitate and automate processes, which are ITIL-aligned by default. The preconfigured best practice-driven processes assist users in logging, resolution, and root cause analysis. 

Halo offers an enriched self-service portal that allows users to submit service requests and access the knowledge base, service catalog, live chat, and all user tickets. It also includes limited automated workflows that address password reset and access to the solution’s knowledge base for resourceful users to identify potential solutions. The vendor focuses on extensibility without code such that all changes are upgradeable.  

Recent investments have included expanded AI use across the platform with smart tickets, UI redesign, CMDB refinement, and automation improvements. 

Halo is positioned as a Challenger and Fast Mover in the Maturity/Feature Play quadrant of the ITSM Radar chart.

Strengths

Halo scored well on a number of decision criteria, including:

• Knowledge management: The toolset’s knowledge management is connected to its workflow engine. It can be segregated according to role-based access permissions and skill level. The solution’s AI technology enhances it by more efficiently searching the knowledge base. 

• ITSM essentials (ITIL 4/PE): Within ITIL 4 ITSM essentials, the solution is certified in all 10 ITIL 4 disciplines for complete compliance. It is committed to PeopleCert ITIL 4 certification.

• User experience agreements: The solution supports user experience agreements through a mix of SLAs and experience KPIs attached to services, customers, and teams. For each user or customer, traditional service levels can be set and attached to experience measures such as satisfaction scores and survey-based targets.

Opportunities

Halo has room for improvement in a few decision criteria, including:

• ITSM infrastructure (ITIL 4/PE): The toolset is certified in a single ITIL 4 ITSM infrastructure insight practice area, release management, leaving room for growth in certification of the remaining disciplines in this category. That being said, buyers will be well served by supporting ITIL-based core ITSM functionality within their organizations. 

• ITSM business value (ITIL 4/PE): The solution is certified in two of the eight disciplines for ITIL 4 ITSM business value. These include supplier management and management and reporting. The vendor could improve its offering by expanding into disciplines that assess financial and business service values.

• Asset discovery: The vendor relies heavily on third-party solutions for closely aligned ITSM functionality, including asset management. While the vendor provides high-quality external support for asset management, it adds complexity and costs related to managing a multivendor environment.

Purchase Considerations

Halo has the strongest presence in Europe and North America. However, it also has a footprint in other parts of the world and is beginning to grow, especially via partnerships such as Eracent in the North American market. HaloITSM can be purchased as an on-prem solution or hosted as a SaaS option. The company licenses its products by named and concurrent users with monthly, quarterly, or yearly billing cycles. Its core product has a single tier or license for ITSM. 

Halo provides transparent pricing with no hidden fees and no extra add-on costs for features, avoiding the often separately billed ITIL functionality in this market segment. 

The licensing package includes development, testing, and production environments for full coverage within an enterprise environment. However, the company does not typically display a comprehensive public price list. Rather, it frequently publishes "starting at" rates and detailed pricing on official government frameworks and through authorized partners.

Use Cases

The HaloITSM solution is generally applicable across vertical market segments, though it’s found mostly in healthcare, technology, financial services, and telecom. HaloITSM supports ESM in several different applications that are customizable by the user. 

HaloITSM supports a wide array of use cases, including incident, problem, and change management, service request fulfillment, and asset management. It also supports a CMDB for automation and streamlining workflows. The platform supports ESM and has experience with HR, facilities, and customer service.

iET Solutions: iET ITSM

lution Overview

iET Solutions is headquartered in Canton, Massachusetts, and Munich, Germany, with its core development team based in Europe. The ITSM solution is built on the iET Solutions Enterprise Technology platform, and the ITSM solution is based on underlying Microsoft technologies. iET ITSM is a suite product set built around best practices. It includes the core platform, a CMDB, and software asset management. The solution integrates with several third-party add-ons, such as an asset discovery capability, to expand its functionality. 

Self-service is available using a customizable, preconfigured tool, which incorporates automated features such as templates, workflows, and assignments. It supports email integration by default. Knowledge management is available for all users, providing search capabilities without workflow linkages. User dashboards can be modified and shared. The overall user experience is consistent among modules, with a UI that is functional, consistent, and well designed, though it does not use some of the more modern design points found in competitors’ products. SSO is supported along with RBAC. Recent investments have incorporated AI functionally to streamline operations.

iET Solutions is positioned as an Entrant and Forward Mover in the Maturity/Platform Play quadrant of the ITSM Radar chart.

Strengths

iET Solutions scored well on a number of decision criteria, including:

• Knowledge management: Authorized users can create new content using the solution’s knowledge management capabilities. Knowledge base articles are recorded and require a manual review of content to ensure quality. Recent AI additions now include a stronger semantic search service designed to handle large volumes of text (like manuals and technical documentation) with higher accuracy and context in English and German.

• ITSM essentials (ITIL 4/PE): The vendor has achieved certification across all ITIL 4 ITSM essential modules. 

• ITSM infrastructure (ITIL 4/PE): Within ITIL 4 ITSM infrastructure, availability, deployment, monitoring and event management, and release management are all certified. The remaining four disciplines for ITSM infrastructure represent room to grow in certification.

Opportunities

iET Solutions has room for improvement in a few decision criteria, including:

• Asset discovery: Asset discovery is available within the solution via third-party integration only. The vendor currently has a close product integration with LOGINventory and stores asset details in its own CMDB. Other asset discovery tools can be integrated via the iET Integration Center, which supports interfaces such as REST and SOAP.

• ITSM business value (ITIL 4/PE): The solution is certified in one ITIL 4 ITSM business value discipline: portfolio management. This leaves room for growth to help customers achieve business value and insight from the ITSM solution. An additional business value module for financial management is anticipated in 2026.

• Workflow automation: There is a limited-function workflow automation engine within the solution. This feature allows users to define and handle common tasks via action plans. The system can automate functions such as resetting a password, scheduling a conference room, generating reports, and collaborating with others via customization.

iET Solutions is classified as a Forward Mover given its limited roadmap and modest enhancements over the past 12 months. While its ITSM is sound today, the solution needs updating with emerging technologies as part of a future roadmap. 

Purchase Considerations

iET Solutions offers a robust ITSM product with excellent support, both within the product’s help system and directly from iET Solutions staff with its training and deployment assistance. Most implementers do not employ professional services, but administrator training is popular. iET Solutions has strong loyalty and retention with current customers in Germany, Europe, and APAC and a growing presence in the US.

Deployment is on-prem or in the cloud using a Microsoft installer (MSI), which can be administered by customers. The license model can include a rental or initial fee, a per-seat fee, and additional maintenance fees. iET Solutions offers a bundled price for initial and per-seat fees. Maintenance is covered with a 3-year package. Licensing is flexible, with a 1:3 ratio of agents to users suggested. There is no licensing change for moving from on-prem to a cloud implementation. There is an additional charge for development or testing environments that can be bundled with the annual license.

Billing is handled annually for the concurrent user model and monthly for its SaaS or rental model. No additional fees are added to either model’s cost. 

Use Cases

iET ITSM is a general-purpose offering that can be customized by customers and partners. ITSM processes defined within iET ITSM can be used, and buyers can also create their own application to meet ESM needs for non-IT services. The company has a history in banking and energy market segments. 

IFS: IFS assyst

Solution Overview

IFS is a privately held company based in Linköping, Sweden. The company operates globally with a strong presence in North America, Europe, and the Middle East. Its ITSM solution is bundled as part of IFS assyst with add-on applications that can enhance the deployment. 

IFS assyst is a holistic service management offering combining ITSM, ITOM, and ESM into a single solution. It incorporates a self-service portal, an automated workflow engine, and knowledge management. All of these features leverage basic AI technology at this time, with plans for expanded use. Other features include ITAM, a service request catalog, SLA management, reporting, and Smart assyst through the solution’s chatbot. The solution also connects ESM with ERP (ESM4ERP).

IFS assyst brings its users an omnichannel self-service portal with flexible messaging options. Through this portal, users can log trouble tickets, research solutions using knowledge management, check status, and view available IT and ESM services. Some messaging channels include a virtual agent that provides conversational AI, live chat, Microsoft Teams collaboration, and mobile app communication. Recent investments include efforts to modernize the solution’s UI, guest accounts for self-service, Smart assyst for productivity improvements through summarization, and swarming capabilities.

IFS is positioned as a Leader and Fast Mover in the Maturity/Platform Play quadrant of the ITSM Radar chart.

Strengths

IFS scored well on a number of decision criteria, including:

• Self-service portal: The solution provides a self-service portal with omnichannel communications, including chatbot, IVR, and CTI. Workflows are also connected.

• ITSM essentials (ITIL 4/PE): The vendor has demonstrated one of the strongest levels of commitment to supporting ITIL 4 certification and was initially founded around best practices supported in earlier revisions of the solution. It has certified nine ITSM essentials disciplines.

• Enterprise service management (ESM): The solution is the only offering currently linking closely to enterprise resource planning (ERP) outside of custom integrations and, as a result, scored highly in business process integration for ITSM and ESM. The vendor offers ESM with out-of-the-box templates for HR, facilities, customer service, procurement, finance, legal, logistics, and security.

Opportunities

IFS has room for improvement in a few decision criteria, including:

• Knowledge management: The solution offers a knowledge base that is searchable by both users and technicians. Its knowledge is managed using KCS best practices. At this time, the solution is using chatbot and assyst copilot for its search mechanism. It has room to grow with future features in the areas of AI/ML summarization and automation of knowledge articles.  

• ITSM business value (ITIL 4/PE): The solution has certified two disciplines within the ITIL 4 ITSM business value category: service financial management and service continuity management. The remaining six disciplines would help it to align with business-centric needs related to ITSM.

• Asset discovery: The solution offers asset discovery. However, it is provided through the vendor’s ITOM solution’s discovery, and asset records are stored within the CMDB. Its ITOM discovery engine detects devices within the network with the help of predefined profiles. 

Purchase Considerations

IFS targets midsize businesses and large enterprise environments. IFS assyst can be licensed and installed on-prem or in the cloud as a SaaS solution. Named, concurrent user, and enterprise-wide licensing are all available. IFS offers packages to suit buyers’ needs for combinations of ITSM, ITOM, and ESM.

IFS uses Microsoft Azure as its hosting partner. It provides two major releases each year at roughly six-month intervals. In addition, minor releases or interim upgrades are provided every nine weeks. 

Today, IFS is the only company to have an ERP and enterprise apps (ERP, FSM, CRM, EAM, investment decisioning) and ITSM/ESM portfolio. Solutions combining the two, such as ESM4ERP and ESM for assets, illustrate a means forward that extends the capabilities of both enterprise apps and ESM/ITSM and are helpful to specific domains. 

IFS assyst maintains a secure environment for ITSM. Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) authentication is available and can be operated as an SSO secure environment. The SAML mechanism also enables managing identity using the customer’s existing Active Directory environment. Role-based security is also available. All account control remains with the customer. 

Use Cases

IFS has a strong presence in government agencies. In addition, IFS assyst demonstrates capabilities in HR, facilities, and other lines of business. It has a presence in manufacturing, utilities, and aerospace and defense vertical segments, though it applies across other industry sectors as well. 

The company delivers ESM as well as ITSM. ESM can be applied to HR, facilities, procurement, finance, logistics, and other corporate functions through customization.

Infraon: Infraon ITSM*

Solution Overview

Infraon ITSM is a cloud and on‑prem IT service management platform from EverestIMS Technologies, its parent company based in Bengaluru, India. It is an AI-powered software product company specializing in ITOM, ITSM, and network management. It’s available as SaaS (hosted on AWS or Azure) or on‑prem, with lightweight code designed to integrate with existing monitoring and management tools.

Infraon ITSM helps IT teams run a centralized, automated service desk aligned with ITIL best practices. It combines traditional ITSM modules (like incident, problem, change, and asset management) with AI and workflow automation to improve service quality and reduce operational effort. Its core capabilities include incident and problem management, change, release, and deployment management for stable IT management. 

The solution has a foundational CMDB and includes IT asset management to track configuration items, hardware, software, warranties, and licenses in a unified repository. 

Knowledge management and service catalog capabilities are part of the solution that support its self-service portal. 

Infraon is positioned as a Challenger and Fast Mover in the Maturity/Feature Play quadrant of the ITSM Radar chart.

Strengths

Infraon scored well on a number of decision criteria, including:

• Self-service portal: The solution earns top marks for its self-service portal, which is designed to present a single point of contact for users. The portal has evolved into an AI-powered hub designed to reduce ticket volume and empower users to resolve their own issues. It acts as a personalized, consumer-grade interface for all enterprise services and provides a unified consumer-like experience.

• ITSM infrastructure (ITIL 4/PE): The vendor has excelled in its certification for ITSM infrastructure and insight, including availability management, capacity and performance management, deployment management, monitoring and event management, and release management. Growth opportunities for ITIL certification in this category are infrastructure and platform management, service validation testing, and information security management.

• Workflow automation: The toolset performed well for workflow automation with its engine that replaces manual ticket handling with automated processes using a low-code, drag-and-drop visual builder. The system utilizes predefined business rules and AI-powered triggers to automatically categorize, prioritize, and route incidents or service requests to the most qualified technicians based on real-time workload and skill sets.

Opportunities

Infraon has room for improvement in a few decision criteria, including:

• ITSM essentials (ITIL 4/PE): The solution could improve its support for this criterion by certifying additional disciplines in this category. It currently is certified in 7 of 10 practices, including problem management, incident management, change enablement, knowledge management, service request management, service desk, and service configuration management. Expansion would include certification for asset management, service level management, and service catalog management.

• ITSM business value (ITIL 4/PE): The toolset lags behind competitors in its support for ITSM business value. It currently has certification for portfolio management only. Greater coverage for its customers would include certification in any of these disciplines such as project management, service financial management, service continuity management, workforce and talent management, supplier management, measurement and reporting, and relationship management.

• Enterprise service management (ESM): This solution offers ESM within its solution for non-IT functions such as HR, finance, facilities, and legal applications. Growth for this feature would be the addition of more out-of-the-box applications for ESM outside of these common applications. 

Purchase Considerations

Infraon ITSM is available as SaaS (hosted on AWS or Azure) or on‑prem, with lightweight code designed to integrate with existing monitoring and management tools. It is targeted at IT services providers and enterprise IT teams seeking faster response times, better collaboration, and higher end user satisfaction.

The vendor publishes its base pricing, making it one of the more transparent proprietary platforms in the ITSM market. Infraon provides a clear tiered structure on its website and via major software directories. The vendor offers three primary editions for its ITSM solution. They are: Essential, which is an entry-level tier designed for small teams that need to organize and track their basic IT work more efficiently; Standard, which is aimed at growing teams that require more structured processes and the introduction of AI to handle higher ticket volumes; and Professional, which is the full-featured enterprise edition designed for organizations that need to scale collaborative work and automate complex cross-departmental tasks.

Use Cases

Infraon ITSM is targeted towards midsize to large enterprises in MSPs, IT services, banking, financial services, insurance, healthcare, manufacturing, and education.

Infraon ITSM use cases support ITSM workflows like incident management, service catalogs, self-service portals, and AI-driven automation for root-cause analysis and ticket resolution. Other uses cover AIOps for predictive outage prevention, cloud resource optimization, and unified visibility across hybrid environments that are integrated with the ITSM solution.

InvGate: InvGate Service Management

Solution Overview

InvGate offers ITSM and ITAM solutions targeted at midsize and large enterprises. Each solution can operate independently or as a seamlessly integrated suite. 

The vendor’s ITSM product, InvGate Service Management, provides foundational capabilities, including incident, problem, knowledge, and change management. It can optionally be deployed with InvGate Asset Management, including its CMDB for recording details from both systems. The company is now certified in fifteen ITIL 4 disciplines with PeopleCert.   

InvGate offers a central AI Hub, workflow engine, and a dashboard for visualization. The workflow building tools provide templates and building blocks to ease development and assist with ESM deployment across non-IT departments. Investments in 2025 and 2026 have centered on improving AI use, especially for knowledge management. Automation has been added for major incidents and workflow governance.

In 2023, Riverwood Capital invested $35 million in InvGate, accelerating the company's R&D growth and geographical expansion. Buyers can expect ongoing robust investment, with InvGate’s continued strong foundation and commitment to AI and efforts to broaden market reach.   

InvGate is positioned as a Challenger and Fast Mover in the Maturity/Feature Play quadrant of the ITSM Radar chart.

Strengths

InvGate scored well on a number of decision criteria, including:

• Knowledge management: The solution has extensive knowledge management capabilities that are driven by its proprietary AI search and automation capabilities. It offers predefined templates to receive user content suggestions that further streamline knowledge management capabilities. Enhancements were also made over the past year to include an AI-based knowledge discovery feature. 

• Workflow automation: A workflow engine is available with a no-code design to ensure accessibility for workflow development. It offers a drag-and-drop visual representation with building blocks to enable further plug-and-play capabilities for users. During this research cycle, governance capabilities that can be predefined within the workflows have been added as well. 

• Asset discovery: The vendor offers a robust asset discovery solution that is provided with ITSM at no additional expense. It provides discovery, agent monitoring, and automatic mapping to track major categories of assets, populating the CMDB for ITSM users.  

Opportunities

InvGate has room for improvement in a couple of decision criteria, including:

• ITSM essentials (ITIL 4/PE): The solution is recently certified in the majority of  ITSM essentials ITIL 4 modules, which far exceeds table stakes for this report, leaving room to expand in one discipline. 

• Enterprise service management (ESM): The solution is applicable outside of IT and supported by functionality and proof cases. Separate data stores, workflows, and a unified self-service portal support the use of the toolset by multiple departments. The ESM implementation is largely tailored by the customer, leaving room for growth to provide more templates and out-of-the-box functionality in the future. 

• OpenTelemetry-informed ITSM: OpenTelemetry is not used within the solution. However, it is leveraged for the solution’s internal performance.

Purchase Considerations

InvGate was founded in Argentina and has a presence in North America, South America, and Europe, where it offers first-party support.It also has commercial teams in Europe and works with a network of partners to provide global reach. InvGate’s strategy is to help companies modernize their operations quickly and efficiently.

The solution has on-prem, cloud, and hybrid deployment options, with single-tenant servers available in locations such as the US, Canada, Germany, England, Brazil, and Singapore. For cloud, InvGate offers hosting in different regions and dedicated servers at an additional cost. This deployment flexibility allows organizations to choose the best model for their regulatory, compliance, and operational needs. Rather than relying on a private network, the platform uses established cloud infrastructure, ensuring it can adapt to different environments.

InvGate offers both named and concurrent licensing models, with pricing tiers tailored to different product feature sets. The ITSM solution is available in three packages, Starter Plan, Pro Plan, and Enterprise Plan, each priced based on the deployment size and the specific features required. Roles like collaborators, approvers, and end users do not require a license. Pricing is by a per-agent subscription fee, with no added costs, and it remains consistent for three years. The vendor is known for its pricing transparency.

Use Cases

InvGate has a strong, though not tailored, presence in the healthcare, government, banking, manufacturing, and professional services, though it is applicable across a wider variety of verticals.

Since the product was launched, InvGate has supported ESM and maintained a broader perspective on services outside of IT. InvGate Service Management can be used to onboard and manage many corporate functions. These include HR, facilities, security operations, legal management, customer service management, and field service management with supporting use cases. It also supports digital transformation, workflow automation, SLA management, and ITAM through its own solution and integrations. 

Ivanti: Neurons for ITSM

Solution Overview

Ivanti offers both ITSM and ITAM solutions as part of its comprehensive product portfolio. 

Ivanti Neurons for ITSM is a platform-based product consisting of the Ivanti Neurons platform and a suite of modules built on top of it. The solution offers out-of-the-box ITSM workflows that can be mapped to ITIL practices. The solution is also highly configurable, with automatic upgrades for these tailored changes. Ivanti is expanding through acquisitions, integrating its solutions into a unified platform.

The solution offers a prebuilt self-service portal paired with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, with new features added each year. Its asset discovery tools bring asset, infrastructure, and graphical service mapping features to the ITSM domain. Auto discovery is available, and the CMDB can be used as the system of record. The ability to adjust the portal’s look and feel to reflect customer needs, limit information, and tailor to location adds to its ease of use. 

The solution employs an AI-first approach to operations. The core of this approach is the integration of agentic AI, which allows the system to autonomously automate and resolve issues rather than just providing suggestions. Some enhancements include UI modernization, search-enhanced self-service, generative AI workflows to automate repetitive tasks, and digital experience insights. 

Ivanti is positioned as a Leader and Fast Mover in the Innovation/Platform Play quadrant of the ITSM Radar chart.

Strengths

Ivanti scored well on a number of decision criteria, including:

• Knowledge management: The solution has impressive knowledge management capabilities that facilitate automated and manual knowledge management. It also has a virtual agent that undertakes knowledge searches using NLP and AI to present the best and most relevant information using its generative AI application.

• ITSM essentials (ITIL 4/PE): Nine of the ten ITIL 4 modules are certified by the vendor. These include problem, incident, knowledge management, change management, and service request management, as well as asset management, service catalog management, service level management, and service configuration management. 

• Workflow automation: The toolset scored very well for its workflow and automation capabilities. It offers a low-code, drag-and-drop platform that is easy to use and includes automation. The feature leverages AI for self-healing capabilities that restore settings that may otherwise cause widespread outages. The solution also supports automation with other vendor offerings to fulfill end-to-end IT needs such as ITSM, automatic remediation via healing bots, and security. 

Opportunities

Ivanti has room for improvement in a few decision criteria, including:

• ITSM infrastructure (ITIL 4/PE): The company is most invested in ITIL 4 certification for ITSM essentials, having certified nine of ten modules within this category. Beyond ITSM essentials, it has certification for ITSM infrastructure, including availability management, deployment, and release management, leaving room for growth in certification of the remaining five disciplines. 

• ITSM business value (ITIL 4/PE): The vendor is certified in two disciplines within ITSM business value, including service financial management and portfolio management. There are six additional certifications in this category that could lead to further ITIL 4 service for its customers.

• OpenTelemetry-informed ITSM: The solution currently does not expose data using the OpenTelemetry standard. An API or iPaaS can be used to extract that information from third-party monitoring solutions. 

Purchase Considerations

Ivanti offers native SaaS deployment on Microsoft Azure, except for its FedRAMP offering, which is hosted on AWS. The SaaS offering is fully multitenant and provides testing, staging, and production environments. Ivanti is sold primarily as a SaaS-based solution, with an on-prem option that is substantially identical to the SaaS version, excluding a few cloud-specific features. Bundling is available. 

Ivanti has a large solution ecosystem with several IT modules, including security, zero trust access, patch management, and risk-based vulnerability management. Support for healthcare, HR, facilities, ITSM, and asset management makes Ivanti a compelling vendor for single-sourcing several services. 

Ivanti’s automated SaaS upgrade process ensures all customers are always on the latest version without disruption, unlike competitors that require manual upgrades or operate in single-tenant environments.

Ivanti Neurons for ITSM follows a strictly custom, quote-based pricing model and does not publish a price list. Tiers of pricing include ITSM Professional for entry-level buyers, ITSM Enterprise (which includes ESM functionality), ITSM Premium for the addition of intelligent automation and self-healing, and ITSM Enterprise Premium, which includes agentic AI and full autonomous service delivery across the entire organization. ITSM Premium and Enterprise Premium come with a full suite of Ivanti solutions across IT and security, including DEX and UEM and the full set of AI capabilities available from Ivanti.

Use Cases

Ivanti is a broad solution with functionality that includes security, zero trust access, patch management, and risk-based vulnerability management. It can be applied broadly across verticals and has use cases that demonstrate success in healthcare, education, and financial services. Geographically, Ivanti has a global presence including the Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific.

The solution can support a variety of use cases. ESM capabilities are available for non-IT services. Proven extensions include HR; facilities; project management; security operations; governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) management; and finance management. Additionally, use cases can include proactive service management through anomaly detection and self-healing, digital experience management, and automation across devices.

ManageEngine: ServiceDesk Plus

Solution Overview

ManageEngine, a division of Zoho Corporation, offers a platform-centric solution covering ITOM, ITSM, ITAM, and endpoint management. Its ITSM capabilities are provided through its ServiceDesk Plus product line, which can optionally include ITAM. The solution provides templates, automated workflows, no-code customization, and AI capabilities to improve efficiency. 

The solution offers out-of-the-box templates and development capabilities to design custom implementations. ManageEngine offers what it calls a “single-touch workflow automation,” which is an application-level low-code visual orchestration. It has been recently enhanced with Zia, the company’s AI engine. It has many applications that can connect and execute operations in third-party cloud and on-prem enterprise solutions. Its workflow automation, codeless customizations, and seamless integrations help to tailor the solution to unique environments. 

ManageEngine follows a zero-acquisition policy, prioritizing internal development and innovation. This approach differentiates it from competitors, allowing the ManageEngine team to focus on continuous innovation without large-scale redesign or integration challenges. As a result, the company develops and tests new capabilities in house, advancing its IT enterprise management suite and ITSM functionality in line with the market. 

ManageEngine is positioned as a Challenger and Fast Mover in the Maturity/Platform Play quadrant of the ITSM Radarchart.

Strengths

ManageEngine scored well on a number of decision criteria, including:

• Self-service portal: A streamlined and automated self-service portal using the vendor’s AI/ML technology, Zia, is available for this toolset’s users. This feature enables multiple communication channels, chat, and voice commands. The portal is designed per instance within the larger enterprise environment. 

• ITSM essentials (ITIL 4/PE): The solution is certified in nine ITIL 4 ITSM essential disciplines, up from five two years ago, providing its customers with broad core support for ITIL 4 standardization. 

• Workflow automation: The solution offers a strong workflow engine that continues to receive R&D attention from the company. It is GUI-based, with drag-and-drop capabilities and simplified workflows, and includes “single-touch” workflow automation that supports self-service and other functionality. The vendor has recently added further enhancements leveraging its AI capabilities. 

Opportunities

ManageEngine has room for improvement in a few decision criteria, including:

• ITSM infrastructure (ITIL 4/PE): The solution is certified for ITSM infrastructure functionality in a limited way, covering monitoring, release management, and deployment. The vendor has room for growth by adding additional disciplines.

• ITSM business value (ITIL 4/PE): The toolset is certified for ITSM business value for service financial management and measurement and reporting. The vendor will need to invest further in the areas of ITSM infrastructure insight and business value. 

• Business process integration: The solution does not currently support business process system integrations that fall outside of the company’s portfolio. This functionality is available only through customer-developed solutions.

Purchase Considerations

Customers may purchase ManageEngine as an on-prem solution, a SaaS-based deployment, or a hybrid combination of licensing models. ManageEngine also offers a multitenant option for service providers. Subscription and perpetual licenses are available. 

The company offers transparent and moderate pricing that is based on the number of nodes (or assets) that are being managed in combination with the number of technicians needing access to the management solution. ServiceDesk Plus offers three editions based on the increasing order of IT maturity: Standard, Professional, and Enterprise. Pricing is publicly available, with annual maintenance being separately billed. The CMDB is exclusively part of the enterprise edition of the solution. 

Use Cases

ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus is an industry-agnostic solution. It covers a range of verticals and uses its configuration and customization capabilities to address the unique needs of any given customer. 

ServiceDesk Plus can deliver ESM capabilities as well as ITSM. It does so by deploying multiple service desk instances. Each can be used to manage a department's services, segregating data and security by service desk instance. Examples are available for HR and hazardous materials management.

The solution’s use cases include ITSM process workflow and task management, service catalog and self-service portal, work collaboration, knowledge management, and non-IT workflow management.

Matrix42: Matrix42 Service Management

Solution Overview

Matrix42 Service Management is delivered through its Matrix42 Service Management  Platform, along with ITAM, Software Asset Management (SAM), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM), and Endpoint Data Protection. These modules are tightly integrated, but each can be purchased and used as a standalone system, supported by an underlying CMDB.

Matrix42 uses a single pane of glass to manage all aspects of service management. It provides a self-service portal featuring configuration-driven integration with its knowledge base. Automation helps service desk analysts identify relevant background information for problem resolution. Matrix42’s self-service portal provides a complete visual mapping of the service provisioning process. 

Matrix42 addresses atypical use cases through low-code or no-code tools, ensuring it can meet customer needs for customization and integrations. The company guarantees that such customization will follow upgrades to core product revisions over time. 

Matrix42 Intelligence was rebranded two years ago, creating an umbrella term for all AI capabilities offered throughout its service management portfolio: ITSM, ESM, SAM, HRSM, and others. Other recent changes include a completely new modernized UI, retiring the "classic look" of the solution, an advanced dependency map for the CMDB to visualize changes, and prioritization of data sovereignty and compliance with the EU AI Act.

Matrix42 is positioned as a Challenger and Fast Mover in the Maturity/Platform Play quadrant of the ITSM Radar chart.

Strengths

Matrix42 scored well on a number of decision criteria, including:

• Asset discovery: The solution offers a robust and tightly integrated ITAM solution with additional roots in UEM. Asset information is continuously monitored and automatically updated. 

• Workflow automation: An automated workflow with low-code and drag-and-drop capabilities is provided for users with the toolset. It also has bidirectional connectors with internal and external applications that may be needed for specific environments. In addition, a new no-code workflow design tool is provided to empower users to create AI-powered workflows and AI agents without any coding required. 

• Enterprise service management (ESM): The toolset offers ESM with separated data using Enterprise Queue Management. ESM capabilities are part of the solution at all levels. The solution is particularly sensitive to security and data separation, where appropriate.

Opportunities

Matrix42 has room for improvement in a few decision criteria, including:

• ITSM infrastructure (ITIL 4/PE): The toolset is only certified in three ITIL 4 ITSM infrastructure domains, leaving room for deeper certification.

• ITSM business value (ITIL 4/PE): The solution is not currently certified in any ITSM business value disciplines, leaving users with a business focus needing to look for alternative solutions.  

• Agile ITSM: Functionality that supports agile ITSM is supplied by a third-party partner. 

Purchase Considerations

Matrix42 offers on-prem, public cloud, or hybrid deployment and company management of the deployment. Language localization is part of the Matrix42 solution, and the company offers 18 languages, including German, English, Spanish, French, and Italian. The company’s support and corporate headquarters are in Germany, with support organized throughout Europe.  

Buyers wanting a tightly integrated ITSM and ITAM solution from a single vendor will be attracted to Matrix42’s approach to pricing, packaging, and integration of these solutions. Likewise, buyers focused on endpoint management and the expertise that comes from beginning with the endpoint device in mind will appreciate Matrix42’s approach to this ITOps function that supports ITSM.

The solution is available in two pricing tiers, Professional and Enterprise. The vendor does not publish a standard price list on its website; rather, it offers a quote-based pricing model. Buyers work with sales personnel and partners to better understand their needs and associated pricing. 

Use Cases

Matrix42 addresses a wide range of use cases. The solution offers extensive options for customizations and integrations to meet specific requirements. The company guarantees that customizations will be supported in core product upgrades over time. These customizations can be achieved using low-code or no-code tools, by the customer, or through third-party service offerings. 

Matrix42 ESM leverages ITIL 4 and process automation to meet the needs of corporate services outside of ITSM. It can be used across all industries. Matrix42 uses enterprise queue management to separate data for ESM, emphasizing security and data separation.

Motadata: ServiceOps

Solution Overview

Motadata ServiceOps is a single, unified ITSM product (service desk, asset management, patch and package management, and AI features) that has been built on a shared architecture, common data model, and a consistent user interface. The solution can be deployed on-prem, in the cloud, or as a hybrid solution. 

The offering is made up of an AI-enabled, ITIL-aligned ITSM platform designed to unify service management, asset management, and operations within a single, extensible ecosystem. Its platform leverages AI/ML, workflow automation, and unified analytics to streamline IT operations, reduce MTTR, and support ESM initiatives. 

Key features include modules for incidents, problems, changes, releases, and service requests. It employs AI/ML-driven automation and analytics to optimize workflows, speed resolutions, and support data‑driven decisions. Service desk and ticketing functionality is available with multilevel workflows, self-service, knowledge management, and collaboration. The vendor is focused on automation and integration to improve overall operational efficiency. Buyers can anticipate a moderate pace of change with limited or no acquisition activity.

Motadata is positioned as a Challenger and Fast Mover in the Innovation/Feature Play quadrant of the ITSM Radar chart.

Strengths

Motadata scored well on a number of decision criteria, including:

• Self-service portal: The solution offers customers a digital storefront of sorts to enable self-service. It moves beyond simple ticket submission to act as a hub where users can resolve their own issues, request services, and stay informed about IT health. It includes AI-powered issue resolution, contextual knowledge search, and Active Directory self-service.

• Asset discovery: The solution supports multimethod discovery for hybrid environments, covering on-prem networks, cloud infrastructure, and remote locations. It leverages agent-based and agentless approaches and utilizes the CMDB as the system of record. For cloud environments, AWS and Azure API-based discovery of compute, storage, and other cloud resources using native cloud credentials is employed. Virtualized environments are also managed. 

• Workflow automation: Workflow for ITSM includes a native no-code workflow with automation built into the solution to automate routine and event-driven tasks across all ITSM modules. It covers event-based automation, scheduled automation, cross-module automation, routing, assignment, and task orchestration.

Opportunities

Motadata has room for improvement in a few decision criteria, including:

• ITSM essentials (ITIL 4/PE): The vendor has certified its solution in seven of the ten ITSM essentials practices, leaving three remaining for expansion, including service catalog management, service desk, and service configuration management. Two of these are targeted for certification in the near future. It is certified in all remaining disciplines.

• ITSM infrastructure (ITIL 4/PE): The area of ITSM infrastructure is well covered, as the vendor is focused on the intersection of ITSM, ITAM, and ITOM. The solution has been certified in availability management, capacity and performance management, deployment management, monitoring and event management, and release management. Improvements could be made with the additional certifications of infrastructure and platform management, service validation testing, and information security management.

• ITSM business value (ITIL 4/PE): The solution is certified in one discipline in the category of ITSM business value. That discipline is measurement and reporting management, leaving room for growth in all of the remaining seven practice areas, including portfolio management, project management, service financial management, service continuity management, workforce and talent management, supplier management, measurement and reporting, and relationship management.

Purchase Considerations

Motadata ServiceOps can be deployed on-prem and in the cloud with enterprise-grade security and RBAC. It is designed to handle distributed environments with services and assets across multiple departments and locations, typical of midsize to large enterprises.

Motadata offers tiered pricing options, including Professional and Enterprise editions, to provide a more predictable and structured cost model. Pricing is not publicly available but can be obtained upon request.

While the software itself can be used directly by customers, engaging Motadata professional services or certified partners is usually recommended for a successful deployment, particularly in complex IT environments or for organizations seeking tailored solutions aligned with their specific asset management goals.

Use Cases

Motadata ServiceOps is not tailored for specific vertical markets. Instead, it offers a unified service operations platform with full-service management capabilities. This breadth allows the platform to support end-to-end service operations across multiple industries and environments. It is a customizable solution suitable for multiple market segments and has been proven in IT services, telecommunications, enterprise, and government sectors.

The solution supports a wide range of ITSM use cases, including  incident, request, change, and problem management; CMDB with relationship mapping; patch and package management; workflow-driven automation; knowledge management; project and task management; asset management; and patch management.

OpenText: OpenText Service Management

Solution Overview

OpenText Service Management (OTSM) consists of four capabilities: ITSM, ESM, CSM, and ITAM. The solution is built on a unified platform that integrates with the Observability portfolio, including Discovery and CMDB, AI and automation, and a reporting data lake. It offers sophisticated agentless and agent-based discovery and low-code and no-code configuration.  

OpenText Service Management uses AI/ML and NLP to offer strong self-service, knowledge management, and asset discovery. The product comes with an out-of-the-box self-service portal, supports the full knowledge management lifecycle, and offers integrated asset discovery. Automation connects the functions of incident management to knowledge management, creating new entries in the knowledge database and using intelligent data operating layer indexes to extend the functionality of NLP. 

Recent investments have included AI improvements with the release of the Aviator AI platform, which brings a shift toward agentic, automated workflows. The Aviator suite is now embedded as the core engine of SMAX, moving beyond basic chatbots to high-functioning virtual agents. UI improvements have also been made in service management. Finally, a new no-code modeler was introduced to facilitate building complex workflows. 

OpenText is positioned as a Challenger and Fast Mover in the Innovation/Platform Play quadrant of the ITSM Radar chart.

Strengths

OpenText scored well on a number of decision criteria, including:

• Knowledge management: The solution leverages the KCS knowledge management methodology within the solution. It is not segregated by role or service domain. The toolset provides an intelligent chatbot/virtual agent that end users can interact with to search the knowledge base, submit support and service requests, see news, enter ideas, and respond to other user questions. Based on previous responses, it automatically makes assignment recommendations for people or teams. 

• Asset discovery: Discovery functionality within the solution populates the asset inventory. This add-on module increases the cost of deployment for this solution. For the benefit of the buyer, the asset capabilities cover a wide range of asset types, with only security assets being a growth area. 

• Workflow automation: The solution offers a flexible workflow engine that can be attached to services or groups of services to standardize operations. Similar functionality is available for asset categories. 

Opportunities

OpenText has room for improvement in a few decision criteria, including:

• ITSM infrastructure (ITIL 4/PE): The solution has a solid foundation in ITIL 4 ITSM essentials. For ITSM infrastructure, it is certified in monitoring and event management and release management, leaving six other ITIL 4 disciplines in this category for growth.  

• ITSM business value (ITIL 4/PE): The vendor has not yet tackled ITSM business value certification for its solution. 

• Geographically aware enablement: The solution tracks mobile devices, though it is not currently supporting geographically based service development or management overall.

Purchase Considerations

OpenText offers licensing flexibility and provides a variety of deployment models while managing costs. OTSM is available in two editions: Express, which covers ITSM and ESM; and Premium, which includes ITAM and SAM and is available on-prem and as SaaS. Licensing is flexible, with perpetual licenses including a right-to-use option. An enterprise license agreement applies when OpenText Service Management is deployed on-prem, and it provides flexibility within a defined time span (typically three years). Another option, SaaS Flex, lets customers vary deployed capacity from month to month while paying only for the average deployed quantity. 

Universal Discovery, an add-on product that provides comprehensive discovery and asset data for OpenText Service Management, is highly scalable and has been field-proven to scale with OpenText Universal CMDB to 400 million configuration items. The solution is natively multitenant and suitable for service providers.

Use Cases

OTSM can be used across all industries. However, it has a strong customer base in retail, financial services, manufacturing, and research. It is strongest in North American and European markets.  

Functionally, OTSM can be used for problem management, change management, service request management, configuration management, knowledge management, and service-level management. The solution offers ESM with out-of-the-box content for various departments such as HR, facilities, finance, legal, and supply chain. 

Proactivanet: Proactivanet IT Service Management (ITSM)

Solution Overview

Founded in Spain, Proactivanet has offices around the world and specializes in localizing for multiple languages. Spanish is its top priority language in Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and Peru, where the company has its own technical support team. The company’s ITSM offering consists of various modules for discovering and managing IT services and assets using its ITAM and ITSM capabilities. ITSM can be purchased separately from ITAM or together in a tightly integrated suite.

Proactivanet offers a complete ITSM solution and is committed to ITIL 4 certification. Among its capabilities are problem and incident management, asset discovery, workflow automation, and dashboards. The solution uses its web portal to provide functionality for self-service and knowledge management connections. Its incident management module takes an end user perspective and provides a solid rich-text editor to give end users more control of their content. The solution provides no-code approaches to forms and dashboards and business rules for escalations. An omnichannel communication approach uses chatbots over several channels, and the solution has recently expanded its AI capabilities through its IAssists module.  

Proactivanet is positioned as a Leader and Fast Mover in the Maturity/Feature Play quadrant of the ITSM Radar chart.

Strengths

Proactivanet scored well on a number of decision criteria, including:

• Knowledge management: The solution provides manual entry and search capabilities for all users as well as AI additions through its chatbot. It has a redesigned knowledge base in its user portal, with enhancements introduced in 2025, including a document intelligence engine that functions as an AI chat-based assistant. Natural language queries are also available. 

• ITSM essentials (ITIL 4/PE): The vendor has certified its solution in all 10 of the ITIL 4 ITSM essentials. Additionally, the company stands out from other solution providers with its certification program and the vendor’s maturity model within the toolset, which assist its customers.

• Asset discovery: With its tightly integrated ITAM product line, the solution offers comprehensive asset management and discovery capabilities for hardware, software, network components, and security devices. Its workflow engine automates discovery. Cybersecurity capabilities are built into this module and represent a point of differentiation for the offering.  

Opportunities

Proactivanet has room for improvement in a few decision criteria, including:

• Workflow automation: Configurable workflow and automation capabilities are available in the solution, enabling users to automate tasks inside and outside the toolset. It offers a web-based interface with low-code and no-code capabilities. This area could be improved with more ease-of-use capabilities, such as out-of-the-box templates and workflows, as well as the ability to import workflows from external sources. 

• OpenTelemetry-informed ITSM: This feature is not offered by the solution directly and is not in demand by the vendor’s customers. Metrics are available through native integrations with infrastructure monitoring solutions within this offering. 

• Enterprise service management (ESM): ESM capabilities are available through custom REST API integrations with external solutions. The vendor is working to improve out-of-the-box integration with third-party automation platforms and to improve and expand its use of AI/ML within ESM.

Purchase Considerations

Proactivanet provides a number of licensing options, including purchased licenses and software subscriptions for on-prem usage and licenses for its SaaS offering. The solution offers both concurrent and named licensing models and can be installed using customer infrastructure (on-prem or customer cloud). Most often, Proactivanet is deployed using a SaaS model on AWS infrastructure. Small, large, and MSP environments are supported by Proactivanet, and its solution can transmit asset details over low-bandwidth networks.

Customers are locally supported in Europe and Latin America, and all aspects of the product delivery (documentation, support, online training, and professional services) can be offered in native Spanish.

Proactivanet offers solution customization to comply with certain customer requirements. For example, Service Management and Control was customized for NATO’s Federated Mission Networks.

Use Cases

Proactivanet is not intended for use in any particular vertical markets and can be broadly applied. It can be tailored to meet the needs of any particular business category. That said, Proactivanet does have a notable presence in the defense, banking, and insurance sectors. 

ESM is available with Proactivanet and has been applied to non-IT functions, including HR, facility management, maintenance, administration, and finance. Configuration, visibility, and access management are all separated within Proactivanet to enable independent service catalogs, workflow definitions, custom SLAs, operational-level agreements (OLAs), underpinning contracts (UCs), and unique staff assignments for the department. 

ServiceNow: ServiceNow IT Service Management (ITSM)*

Solution Overview

ServiceNow is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, with offices around the world. The vendor’s ITSM offering, ServiceNow IT Service Management (ITSM), was released as a disruptor at the time of the company’s founding. The vendor has since evolved and grown horizontally to cover adjacent spaces in ITOM, ITAM, security, and GRC.  

ServiceNow ITSM is a comprehensive solution that offers self-service, knowledge management, and asset discovery. Its capabilities are supported by an underpinning CMDB that helps customers identify applications and devices within the network. This collective functionality serves large departmental and enterprise-level environments with complex infrastructure by automating the service management process at all levels. 

The philosophy of the solution has shifted from being that of a "system of record" to an "autonomous system of action" with supporting functionality. Largely, agentic AI is being leveraged to execute tasks automatically through multistep workflows. The solution is closely aligned with ITOM and offers customers a single view with recommended actions. Proactive problem signals are available, and Now Assist for ITSM provides AI-based change summarization. This is an evolutionary change for ServiceNow ITSM.

ServiceNow is positioned as a Leader and Fast Mover in the Maturity/Platform Play quadrant of the ITSM Radar chart.

Strengths

ServiceNow scored well on a number of decision criteria, including:

• Knowledge management: The vendor offers knowledge management that adheres to KCS best practices methodology. It includes AI functionality to streamline the search process, providing an AI-active content source for the solution’s agentic AI strategy. 

• ITSM essentials (ITIL 4/PE): The solution is certified in all 10 ITIL 4 ITSM essentials. The solution is also certified in nearly all ITSM infrastructure practices and many within the ITSM business value domain. The company obtains its certifications through Pink Elephant. 

• Workflow automation: A highly automated, AI-driven workflow engine is available through the solution. The workflow/automation feature is a structured, end-to-end lifecycle process flow designed to restore service and fulfill user needs with minimal friction. It connects intake, resolution, and governance in a single platform. Business analysts can build complex workflows using a newly released coding solution that uses natural language.

Opportunities

ServiceNow has room for improvement in a few decision criteria, including:

• ITSM infrastructure (ITIL 4/PE): While the solution is certified in six of the eight disciplines within ITIL 4 ITSM infrastructure, it can expand these capabilities by adding service validation and information security management. 

• ITSM business value (ITIL 4/PE): Similarly, the toolset is certified in three of the eight ITIL 4 ITSM business value disciplines, showing no change from last year’s GigaOm Radar report. Complete coverage would require certification of service financial management, workforce and talent management, supplier management, measurement and reporting, and relationship management.

• Geographically aware enablement: This offering supports mobile devices and has location awareness. However, the solution does not currently support geographically based service development or management.

Purchase Considerations

ServiceNow ITSM is available in Standard, Pro, and Enterprise packages, each with named users. Additional IT-related solutions, including strategic portfolio management, ITOM, ITAM, integrated risk management, and security operations, are available at additional costs.

ServiceNow is a SaaS offering hosted in a private enterprise cloud, fully owned and operated by ServiceNow. This cloud features a multiple‑instance architecture that delivers logical single-tenancy by isolating each customer’s data from all others. This is achieved by using an enterprise‑grade cloud architecture and dedicated database and application services per customer instance, ensuring there is no possibility of commingling customer data, unlike in a multitenant architecture with a shared database. Self-hosting is available on an exception-only basis. 

Two platform updates are released annually, and ServiceNow frequently adds features and capabilities. However, upgrades and feature additions may lead to increased costs down the road.

The initial learning curve is steep, as the UI can be difficult to learn. Administration can be complicated as well due to the common service data model, which serves as the backbone for all applications across ServiceNow products. The product suite becomes easy to use through familiarity and repetition. An enterprise rollout requires careful budgeting, planning, training, and communication. 

Use Cases

ServiceNow's solutions address the unique challenges of many vertical market segments. The company has targeted solutions for healthcare, manufacturing, education, retail, and financial services. ServiceNow offers ESM capabilities and extensive examples across deployment uses. 

ServiceNow solutions are FedRAMP certified. ServiceNow's Government Community Cloud (GCC) has a FedRAMP High Baseline Provisional Authority to Operate (P-ATO). This certification allows federal agencies to use ServiceNow's cloud solutions and is critical to success in this sector. 

The ITSM solution can be used to manage service tickets, whether IT-based or non-IT, automate workflows, and manage the ever-growing knowledge base. 

SysAid: SysAid ITSM*

Solution Overview

SysAid was founded in Israel and has been gradually expanding over two decades. It has a customer-centric focus and serves the ITSM market with an all-inclusive offering called the SysAid ITSM platform. The company has invested in ITIL 4 certification over the past few years, with an increasing number of disciplines being certified to better support its customers' best practice initiatives. 

SysAid ITSM incorporates automated ticket management to help users categorize and prioritize issues in their networks, along with providing workflow automation, knowledge management, asset management, and a self-service portal. It incorporates generative AI in its chatbot and knowledge management. The SysAid Copilot uses generative AI for conversational self-service in an effort to accelerate problem resolution and improve service delivery. Recent investments have focused on agentic AI to support automated processes and ticket resolution.

SysAid is positioned as a Challenger and Outperformer in the Maturity/Feature Play quadrant of the ITSM Radar chart.

Strengths

SysAid scored well on a number of decision criteria, including:

• Knowledge management: The solution’s knowledge management is tightly integrated with its service desk. The solution leverages AI to enhance its capabilities using its copilot, the platform's generative AI feature, to ease the process of capture and search. Agentic AI autonomously generates knowledge base articles from operational interactions like tickets and chats and reduces the manual effort required to create knowledge articles. 

• ITSM essentials (ITIL 4/PE): ITIL 4 is supported at a greater level than in the past, moving from six ITIL 4 modules being certified to nine currently for ITSM essentials. 

• Workflow automation: The toolset’s workflow automation capabilities streamline and optimize various business processes. It has a no-code designer to build, share, and optimize digital processes ranging from basic approvals to intricate multistep workflows. It also has service orchestration to automate repetitive tasks and run script-based processes. 

SysAid is classified as an Outperformer because of its progress since the last research cycle, including advancements in ITIL 4 certification, improvements in its self-service portal, and high marks for its ease-of-use efforts.   

Opportunities

SysAid has room for improvement in a few decision criteria, including:

• ITSM infrastructure (ITIL 4/PE): While the vendor has demonstrated a commitment to developing ITIL 4 ITSM essentials certification, it has not invested in any of the ITSM infrastructure disciplines. 

• ITSM business Value (ITIL 4/PE): The vendor has shown limited investment in certification for ITIL 4 ITSM business value disciplines. To date, it has certified only measurement and reporting in this category. 

• Asset discovery: Discovery of assets is available within this solution. However, it is offered at an extra cost through a third-party provider.  

Purchase Considerations

SysAid offers flexible deployment options to meet the needs of all organizations. It can be purchased as an on-prem, hybrid, or SaaS solution hosted in the cloud by SysAid.

It has three basic pricing and licensing plans: Help Desk, ITSM, and Enterprise. Each plan has different feature sets to meet the needs of an organization's size and scope. ITIL-focused organizations will want to purchase the ITSM or Enterprise plan. Pricing for the Enterprise plan is available upon request.

SysAid also offers various add-ons to enhance the functionality of these plans, such as SysAid Copilot for end users and agents, advanced analytics, additional assets, and remote control.

Use Cases

SysAid ITSM is a general-purpose solution that can be used in any vertical market. The vendor has experience in the MSP, education, government, financial, and healthcare market segments. 

SysAid supports a wide range of use cases across various departments and industries. Use cases include ITSM and ESM, corporate legal management, customer service and support, and digital supply chain management. 

TOPdesk: TOPdesk ITSM

Solution Overview

TOPdesk is a privately held company founded in 1997 and headquartered in Delft, the Netherlands. The company targets midsize enterprises with its fully SaaS-based ITSM solution, which is sold as a single product: TOPdesk ITSM. The vendor gears its offerings to organizations that perform best with an easy-to-use solution. In doing so, it makes many out-of-the-box templates and workflow configurations available. 

The TOPdesk self-service portal is intuitive and easy to use. It integrates with Microsoft Teams to support self-service and resolution. The company has updated the UI as part of its modernization efforts. Automation is built into the solution and leverages chatbots to support knowledge management. TOPdesk now incorporates generative AI using EbbotGPT integration. More AI integration is planned for the future, thoughtfully aimed at risk avoidance and agent productivity. 

The solution is deployed with the support of a consultant who guides the implementation process. Following this effort, the customer assumes responsibility for its management. It is a no-code solution that is easily configurable by the user. A REST API interface is available for any external solution integrations that may be required. 

TOPdesk is positioned as a Challenger and Fast Mover in the Maturity/Feature Play quadrant of the ITSM Radar chart.

Strengths

TOPdesk scored well on a number of decision criteria, including:

• Knowledge management: The solution provides automated processing of knowledge articles and was recently updated to incorporate AI. It includes a searchable knowledge base accessible via the self-service portal and within service modules. Permissions control content creation and editing, allowing authorized users to manage knowledge articles.

• ITSM essentials (ITIL 4/PE): Nine of the ten ITIL 4 ITSM essentials disciplines have been certified with PeopleCert, making the solution one of the strongest certified solutions for core ITSM functionality. 

• ITSM business value (ITIL 4/PE): Business value for ITSM is supported for five of the eight disciplines in ITIL 4. These include service financial management and service continuity management.

Opportunities

TOPdesk has room for improvement in a few decision criteria, including:

• ITSM infrastructure (ITIL 4/PE): Within the ITIL 4 ITSM infrastructure category, the solution is certified only in event management and monitoring, leaving buyers focused on understanding infrastructure impacts to seek that insight outside of the ITSM solution.

• Asset discovery: The solution does not directly populate asset information. Instead, asset details and discovery require the use of an external tool that can be integrated only with extra effort and investment by leveraging an API and external inventory tools.

• Business process integration: The solution enables business process integration through open APIs, webhooks, and a marketplace of standard connectors. It could be strengthened with specific integrations to support common business process engines out of the box. 

Purchase Considerations

TOPdesk can be purchased as an on-prem or hosted SaaS solution. It is licensed by named users and provides a site license option. TOPdesk's packaging includes varying features geared to meet specific buyer needs and is labeled Essential, Engaged, or Excellent. This approach allows buyers to start small and expand only when they are ready. 

Data centers are located across the EU (including Germany and the Netherlands), as well as in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Norway, the UK, and the US. Where a customer’s data is hosted is entirely up to the customer and its geographical needs. TOPdesk uses subprocessors, or partners, that are certified annually. The location of the data is verifiable through the company’s service portal. Service availability is guaranteed at 99.9% annually. Due to the company’s approach to product delivery and attention to support, it is known for the solution’s maintainability.

Pricing is publicly available on the company’s website. 

Use Cases

TOPdesk’s presence is primarily in Europe, with a focus on government, healthcare, and manufacturing organizations. 

TOPdesk supports the deployment of ESM, typically guided by the assistance of a TOPdesk consultant, though customers are able to implement ESM independently with standard functionality. ESM offers the opportunity to standardize similar processes from different organizational departments and significantly increase service quality in the long term. Examples of ESM case studies have included HR, facilities, project management, security operations, legal management, contract management, finance management, customer service management, and field service management.

The platform enables organizations to centralize ticketing, manage assets, automate workflows, enable self-service, and monitor service performance. Typical use cases include incident resolution, request fulfillment, asset tracking, facilities requests, and process improvement.

USU: USU IT Service Management (ITSM)

Solution Overview

USU, a German company, serves the midsize-to-large enterprise market and MSPs with its USU ITSM solution. The company also offers a comprehensive ITAM solution and an IT monitoring solution that integrate closely with ITSM. These solutions can be purchased individually as needed.

USU IT Service Management (ITSM) provides all common ITSM modules, supporting order and fulfillment management and reporting for incidents, orders, and services. The knowledge base can display known errors, qualified workarounds, and articles to assist users via NLP and decision trees. USU Bot Universe is included as a free open source bot communication protocol that uses JSON to support any type of chatbot and USU’s self-service portal. 

Thoma Bravo acquired a majority stake in USU in 2024 and moved it to a private company status. It is operating independently and has separated its product and services business to better meet customer needs. In 2025, the company acquired saasmetrix, expanding its adjacent portfolio and signaling further expansion. Recent product investments have included an updated UI and AI enhancements for predictive ticket handling and automated summary to ease technician workloads.  

USU is positioned as a Challenger and Fast Mover in the Innovation/Platform Play quadrant of the ITSM Radar chart.

Strengths

USU scored well on a number of decision criteria, including:

• ITSM infrastructure (ITIL 4/PE): The toolset has certified six practices within the ITSM infrastructure category, including availability management, capacity and performance management, deployment management, monitoring and event management, release management, and information security management, representing strong capabilities in ITSM infrastructure disciplines for ITSM.  

• ITSM business value (ITIL 4/PE): The vendor demonstrates strong support for ITIL 4 through its broad-ranging certifications. For the ITSM business value category, the vendor has certified five practices, including service financial management, service continuity management, supplier management, measurement and reporting, and relationship management. Additionally, the company recently added support for the Technology Business Management (TBM) framework to show the business value of IT services. This is a standout capability among ITSM solutions. TBM defines tools, processes, data, and people necessary to manage the technology business and provides a means to articulate the value to the CxO office.

• Asset discovery: Robust, tightly integrated, and automated asset discovery is available within the vendor’s ITSM solution.

Opportunities

USU has room for improvement in a few decision criteria, including:

• Workflow automation: The toolset offers a basic low-code visual workflow. However, it is not as intuitive or modern as its competitors’. 

• ITSM essentials (ITIL 4/PE): While the solution has strong certifications for ITSM essentials, it could be strengthened by adding certification for the ITAM discipline within ITIL 4.

• Agile ITSM: Functionality related to agile ITSM is available, albeit limited to Kanban boards within the solution.  

Purchase Considerations

USU offers both SaaS and on-prem models with a licensing model based on the number of modules selected and the size of the company. This remains consistent throughout the life of its use. However, USU offers other licensing models on customer request. Maintenance fees apply for on-prem deployments but are included in SaaS licenses. Modules are included and not separately billed, ensuring predictability in pricing for its products. Pricing is available upon request.

ITSM-supportive functionality, such as IT monitoring and SAM, requires multiple SKUs, which adds cost and complexity to the purchasing process. Professional services are necessary for a complete solution.

Use Cases

USU has deployed within midsize and large enterprise environments. It supports many verticals and departments through preconfigured tools. USU has a prepackaged ESM solution for HR, facility management, finance, corporate, marketing, legal, and customer experience initiatives. 

USU use cases are aligned with 19 ITIL 4 disciplines, ranging from problem and incident management to service financial management. 

Xurrent: Xurrent ITSM

Solution Overview

Xurrent is a private company with roots in Europe that is expanding its presence in North America. The solution is offered as a singular platform called Xurrent ITSM, which serves the needs of both ITSM and ESM. Xurrent is a multitenant SaaS platform built and delivered natively in the cloud.

The vendor has strong ITIL 4 support, covering 19 certified disciplines. It provides self-service with out-of-the-box templates to reduce time to implementation. The company offers eight fully developed self-service designs as part of its solution, incorporating Xurrent Workflow Automator. This approach is in keeping with Xurrent’s philosophy to provide samples for ease of deployment. 

Xurrent maintains an acquisition for growth posture. The company acquired StatusCast to expand its ITOM solution. In 2025, it acquired Zenduty to close the loop between operations and service with the goal of automating incidents and tickets seamlessly.  

Recent developments include the launch of Sera AI, an embedded "AI fabric" that replaces basic chatbots with intelligent, proactive support. Other changes include a modernized UI and improved data fabric. Xurrent also achieved the rigorous C5 attestation, strengthening its data protection credentials for European and government sector clients.

Xurrent is positioned as a Leader and Fast Mover in the Innovation/Platform Play quadrant of the ITSM Radar chart.

Strengths

Xurrent scored well on a number of decision criteria, including:

• ITSM infrastructure (ITIL 4/PE): Certification of ITIL 4 disciplines for ITSM infrastructure is robust, with six out of eight disciplines already certified. The solution is certified in availability management, capacity and performance management, deployment management, infrastructure and platform management, monitoring and event management, release management, and information security management. This leaves only infrastructure and platform management and service validation testing as areas of growth. 

• ITSM business value (ITIL 4/PE): The vendor received high marks across all ITIL 4 certification categories. For business value, the vendor has certified six disciplines, including service financial management, service continuity management, measurement and reporting, and relationship management. This leaves portfolio management, project management, workforce and talent management, and supplier management as areas for growth. 

• Enterprise service management (ESM): The toolset provides a complete solution that covers ITSM and ESM, jump-started with examples and templates. The solution enables departments leveraging ESM to design and manage their own service portals independently. Additionally, the company uses its own solution for ESM internally for operations, sales and marketing, customer success, and security management. 

Opportunities

Xurrent has room for improvement in a few decision criteria, including:

• Asset discovery: Asset details are imported or discovered from external systems such as Microsoft SCCM or Lansweeper. Information is added to the CMDB, and while this serves many customers' needs, it does not provide the tightly integrated functionality that exists within many ITSM solutions. 

• Workflow automation: The solution provides drag-and-drop workflow tools enhanced with AI and natural language capabilities, eliminating the need to code automations. Actions are streamlined with the use of AI.

• OpenTelemetry-informed ITSM: The solution provides a telemetry feed from limited internal application monitoring and does not support the OpenTelemetry standard.

Purchase Considerations

The company operates in Europe and the US, targeting companies from 1,000 employees upward and offering scalability to support larger enterprise deployments. The solution is offered as a multitenant, cloud-based offering that serves ITSM and ESM requirements. 

Only SaaS-based licensing is available from Xurrent. The company strongly believes that on-prem deployment will not deliver the same user experience or the frequency with which to address new features or correct issues that may arise. Weekly updates are provided for this SaaS-based solution. Licensing is annual, based on the number of specialist roles required. There are no licensing costs for business users or additional application modules.

The vendor has a policy of not publishing a standard, granular price list on its primary website. Its pricing is tailored and transparent, often providing specific figures through public sector frameworks or partner-led documentation.

Licensing is available in three packaging types: Starter, Corporate, and Enterprise. The price is per user and transparently available to buyers. ESM is available primarily in the Enterprise package for customers looking to use the solution outside of IT. 

Use Cases

Customers include the public sector, universities, small businesses, and global corporations. Most customers are in Europe. New investment is targeting greater presence in the US and North America. The vendor has a strong focus on MSP support that extends to service and time tracking. 

Within the ESM domain, Xurrent services HR, facilities management, telecom, and legal services, as well as security, finance, and marketing teams. A significant percentage of its customer base utilizes Xurrent ITSM for IT and at least one additional department.  Users can also develop service catalogs and management for any corporate domain seeking tighter control over its business service delivery.

The use cases for Xurrent are aligned with 19 ITIL 4 disciplines, ranging from problem and incident management to service financial management.

ITSM is a mature market with many competing solutions, and it is often characterized as a slow-growing domain. Yet it continues to evolve and align itself with adjacent technology segments such as ITAM, ITOM, security, and FinOps.  

GigaOm challenges the notion that ITSM is a mature and static domain. Rather, we suggest that ITSM is the heart and soul of IT services and is critical to demonstrating their business value. When this concept is extended to ESM, the reach of service delivery value extends to every department, agency, and subagency that uses a disciplined approach to defining, provisioning, and measuring service delivery for all types of enterprise services. The ITSM orientation around business processes, workflows, automation, and use of emerging technologies all come together to represent the work of IT in delivering business value. Most vendors report and can demonstrate the use of ITSM products for diverse service applications, from manufacturing to museum applications to healthcare services. This is becoming a core requirement for ITSM offerings. 

Two ITSM vendors have invested in incident management solutions over the past year, signaling greater interest in the connection between ITOM and ITSM. This integration enables automatic generation of service desk tickets based on operational events without any human interaction in real time. Once created, these tickets also enable correlation and collaboration with ongoing events that cross the lines between ITSM and ITOM. 

New entrants have been entering the ITSM market. Emerging technologies, such as incorporating OpenTelemetry and business process integration, are becoming increasingly important. In addition, vendors are increasingly inclined to incorporate agile methods into ITSM solutions, gaining efficiencies through a collaborative approach and aligning services more closely with development teams. Security will continue to be important for the access and delivery of services across geographically dispersed service users. 

To be an innovator in a mature market is quite different from being an innovator in an emerging technology space. Best practices like ITIL are crucial for maturing organizations and the vendors that support them, yet these require more evolution to add and demonstrate business value. Generally, an ITSM solution may represent tried-and-true technology in support of ITIL best practices, but innovation can be found around the edges. This report captures those edges where self-service and automation take the lead using AI/ML, as ever-increasing numbers of vendors employ AI across knowledge management, ticket resolutions, and self-service to reduce the pressures on technician workloads. More predictive problem identification and resolution is anticipated as AI matures and becomes more prevalent.

The ITIL certification landscape is largely weighted with vendors certifying their solutions with PeopleCert. At the same time, many vendors are remaining committed to Pink Elephant’s PinkVERIFY certification that parallels ITIL 4. Organizations can continue to invest in training and professional development for their ITSM teams during this timeframe. 

As of early 2026, ITIL 5 has been announced by PeopleCert. ITIL 5 represents the evolution of service management into the era of autonomous operations, shifting focus from human-led processes to AI-driven orchestration and self-healing systems. It integrates real-time data streaming and ML to ensure digital services are not just stable but adaptive to shifting business demands. While this version is not yet adopted, it will be monitored during the next research cycle.  

For organizations ready to purchase a solution, an effective approach looks at the ITIL 4 practices most important to their organization’s application of ITSM and compares them with vendors that align with those priorities. This analysis will support the development of a short list of solutions for review. This foundation can then be paired with consideration of forward-looking advanced features that are pertinent to the company for fine-tuning expectations and helping to select the right solution. As we move through and beyond this year, ITIL 5 will reintroduce the evolution of the ITIL standard.

To learn about related topics in this space, check out the following GigaOm Radar reports:

• GigaOm Radar for IT Service Management (ITSM) v4.0

• GigaOm Radar for IT Asset Management v3.0

• GigaOm Radar for Cloud FinOps v.4.0

*Vendors marked with an asterisk did not participate in our research process for the Radar report, and their capsules and scoring were compiled via desk research.

For more information about our research process for Radar reports, please visit our Methodology.

Lisa is an accomplished, results-driven information technology and non-profit strategist with a history of guiding executives in making critical strategic and operational decisions. Her experience is that of a practitioner, strategist, analyst, and writer in the enterprise software industry and as a hands-on executive and consultant for non-profit agencies. Specifics include IT operations, R&D, alliance/partnership development, marketing, and sustainability planning. She is driven by innovation, a global perspective, and the power of strategic partnerships to improve the broader health, social and environmental condition.

GigaOm provides technical, operational, and business advice for IT’s strategic digital enterprise and business initiatives. Enterprise business leaders, CIOs, and technology organizations partner with GigaOm for practical, actionable, strategic, and visionary advice for modernizing and transforming their business. GigaOm’s advice empowers enterprises to successfully compete in an increasingly complicated business atmosphere that requires a solid understanding of constantly changing customer demands.

GigaOm works directly with enterprises both inside and outside of the IT organization to apply proven research and methodologies designed to avoid pitfalls and roadblocks while balancing risk and innovation. Research methodologies include but are not limited to adoption and benchmarking surveys, use cases, interviews, ROI/TCO, market landscapes, strategic trends, and technical benchmarks. Our analysts possess 20+ years of experience advising a spectrum of clients from early adopters to mainstream enterprises.

GigaOm’s perspective is that of the unbiased enterprise practitioner. Through this perspective, GigaOm connects with engaged and loyal subscribers on a deep and meaningful level.

GigaOm provides technical, operational, and business advice for IT’s strategic digital enterprise and business initiatives. Enterprise business leaders, CIOs, and technology organizations partner with GigaOm for practical, actionable, strategic, and visionary advice for modernizing and transforming their business. GigaOm’s advice empowers enterprises to successfully compete in an increasingly complicated business atmosphere that requires a solid understanding of constantly changing customer demands.

GigaOm works directly with enterprises both inside and outside of the IT organization to apply proven research and methodologies designed to avoid pitfalls and roadblocks while balancing risk and innovation. Research methodologies include but are not limited to adoption and benchmarking surveys, use cases, interviews, ROI/TCO, market landscapes, strategic trends, and technical benchmarks. Our analysts possess 20+ years of experience advising a spectrum of clients from early adopters to mainstream enterprises.

GigaOm’s perspective is that of the unbiased enterprise practitioner. Through this perspective, GigaOm connects with engaged and loyal subscribers on a deep and meaningful level.