IT Service Management (ITSM) is critical for change management but it has become an important component of offering internal and external customers the products and services of IT via a self-service catalog. More than ever consumers of IT are expecting a cloud-like experience and the ability to request capabilities on demand from a service catalog.
Traditionally, ITSM has provided a framework (such as ITIL) for controlling how IT services get offered and delivered to customers. This includes processes for Change Management, Incident Management, Problem Management, Task Management, Asset and Inventory Management, Configuration Management Database (CMDB), and much more. ITSM is incredibly important for ensuring proper governance of IT assets and processes. In an increasingly automated, just-in-time world, ITSM is sometimes an afterthought or isn't properly integrated into the automation frameworks being created in IT. Automation without proper service management creates governance issues down the road: you need end-to-end automation to properly track and govern your software and hardware assets. You need frequently updated configuration items and CMDB in order to be able to do things like event correlation and impact analysis.