Operational reflections on how modern IT Service Management is evolving under real-world pressure

Over the last year, I’ve reflected on what consistently differentiates organisations that operate technology well from those that struggle, often despite good intentions and capable people.

What follows aren’t predictions or hype-driven trends. They’re patterns I’ve seen repeatedly in live operational environments - under incident pressure, during major change, and when commercial or architectural assumptions are tested.

1. CMDB and CSDM maturity is becoming a quiet differentiator

One of the clearest indicators of operational effectiveness I see today isn’t the choice of tooling or even the level of automation. It’s the quality of the underlying service and configuration data - and, crucially, how well that data represents real business services and their dependencies.

Where CMDBs are treated primarily as static asset registers, familiar challenges follow: slower incident triage, higher change risk, weaker problem management, and reporting that struggles to move beyond surface metrics. By contrast, organisations that invest in a service-centred model - such as CSDM - tend to make decisions with greater confidence and consistency, particularly during periods of disruption.

What continues to surprise me is how lightly this area is often tested during procurement and ITT processes. Many providers can articulate ITIL alignment, automation ambitions, or AI roadmaps. Fewer can demonstrate, with evidence, a mature understanding of how infrastructure components relate to applications, business services, and ultimately customer outcomes.

This becomes especially relevant as AI-assisted tooling becomes more prevalent. These capabilities can add real value, but only when they are grounded in accurate, governed data. Without that foundation, the risk is not just poor insights but confidently delivered incorrect ones.

If I were assessing a service provider today, I would be looking for practical evidence of maturity, for example:

• A clearly defined and maintained service model aligned to recognised standards
• Measurable CMDB health metrics, with active governance and reconciliation
• Demonstrable use of dependency data during real incidents and changes
• Clear ownership and lifecycle controls to prevent model degradation over time

None of this is about perfection. It’s about whether the fundamentals are taken seriously and continuously improved.

2) Hybrid cloud is increasingly a considered end state, not a compromise

Public cloud remains a powerful enabler, and for many workloads it continues to be the right answer. At the same time, over the past year I’ve seen a noticeable shift in how organisations think about cloud placement - driven less by ideology and more by operational reality.

Two factors come up repeatedly in conversations with technology leaders.

The first is resilience. High-profile service disruptions across major cloud platforms have reinforced an important principle: even hyperscale environments fail, and when they do, the impact can be widespread. This isn’t a criticism of cloud providers - it’s simply an architectural truth that needs to be designed for explicitly.

The second is cost predictability. Many organisations are still working through the challenges of forecasting and controlling cloud spend, particularly as pricing models evolve and usage grows. In that context, hybrid approaches are often viewed not as a step backwards, but as a way to balance flexibility with commercial and operational control.

In practice, this leads to more nuanced design decisions:

• Stable, business-critical platforms with stringent recovery requirements may justify hybrid or deliberately distributed architectures.
• Highly variable, innovation-driven workloads often continue to benefit from public cloud elasticity.

What matters most is not adherence to a single model, but clarity on why workloads sit where they do - and confidence that they can be operated reliably over time.

3) Reducing dependence on single solutions is becoming a practical necessity

For many years, the appeal of consolidated, single-platform solutions was understandable. Integration was hard, data was fragmented, and operational overheads were high. In many cases, simplification delivered genuine value.

What I’m increasingly seeing now is a reassessment of that dependency, driven by a combination of commercial, technical, and organisational factors.

Market consolidation and ownership changes can alter product roadmaps, support models, and pricing dynamics in ways that customers don’t always control. At the same time, some automation and tooling offerings are reaching price points that prompt a more careful evaluation of long-term value.

Importantly, the integration landscape has also evolved. Modern integration patterns -and increasingly AI-assisted capabilities - make it more feasible to work across multiple systems, provided the underlying data is well structured and governed. This again reinforces the importance of strong service and configuration data as an enabler, not an overhead. Interoperability enables different solutions to utilise the strengths of various tooling, effectively creating a hybrid approach that maximises the benefits of each. By facilitating seamless interaction between systems, organisations can truly leverage the best of multiple solutions, enhancing their overall capability and resilience.

The direction of travel I’m observing is not a rejection of platforms, but a desire for optionality:

• Architectures that allow components to be changed without wholesale redesign
• Clear separation between data, tooling, and process where possible
• Explicit consideration of exit and portability as part of service design

This approach tends to support resilience, commercial leverage, and long-term adaptability.

A closing reflection

If there is a single theme running through all three of these trends, it’s that operational excellence is becoming increasingly data-driven and intentional.

Strong CMDB and service models underpin effective hybrid design. They also enable organisations to integrate tools sensibly and avoid over-reliance on any single solution. New technologies, including AI, can accelerate progress - but they don’t replace the need for solid foundations.

These aren’t headline-grabbing topics, but they are the areas where I consistently see the biggest difference made when systems are under pressure. For both customers and providers, they are worth sustained attention.

Our team at OneAdvanced can show you how our expert-led service management can improve user experience and ensure operational stability. Contact us today and find out how we can help your business thrive.