I recently attended the Pink Elephant conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. Now in its 26th year, this annual event is globally recognized as the world's premier IT Service Management (ITSM) conference. Our booth drew quite a crowd. The main attraction, of course, was SMAX—our advanced ITSM solution.

Between live demos, one-on-one discussions, and even an entertaining magic show, I chatted with lots of attendees looking for better ways to do service management. While every situation is unique, some common themes began to emerge. Users expect smart, consumer-style service experiences. IT is still dealing with clunky legacy systems. And budgets are as tight as ever.

Here’s a summary of what I learned at the event:

• Everyone wants smarter, more engaging ITSM, but legacy systems pose challenges. Most attendees are focused on a two-pronged strategy: maximize the value of their existing ITSM solution while evolving to a more modern one. On that front, AI-enabled ITSM solutions were a hot topic. But modernizing has its own challenges. Companies must either replace legacy systems with newer solutions from their current vendors or try to operate co-exist strategies between two different vendor platforms as they migrate.
  
  
• Evolving to next-generation IT Asset Management (ITAM) and integrating ITAM and ITSM processes were top of mind for most attendees. The consensus is that best-of-breed ITSM and ITAM solutions deliver great results individually, but often cannot share processes and information across the two solutions if they come from different vendors. This meant many were challenged with maintaining two sources of “asset information” across ITAM and ITSM teams, leading to confusion and delays when working with assets and resolving incidents. Also, legacy ITAM solutions inherited from or managed by other teams have yet to achieve the ITIL-ideal of closely uniting their ITSM and ITAM functions.
  
  
• For service desk managers, routing tickets to the right teams or people for first-touch resolutions remains a persistent challenge. Most ITSM managers think that existing processes for escalating, routing, and resolving tickets are wasting precious time. They want to improve their success metrics by getting tickets to the correct teams faster.
  
  
• CMDBs are seen as necessary, but overly difficult solutions. This view comes from ITSM vendor strategies around configuration management. According to many attendees, CMDB is too closely aligned to ITSM vendor. Every time upper management moves to a new ITSM solution, their CMDB solution must be replaced. Some attendees are on their third or fourth CMDB. One ideal solution to the constant switching: a “Universal CMDB” that works across ITSM vendors. Interestingly enough, OpenText Universal Discovery and CMDB is seen as being closer to “universal” than any other CMDB on the market.
  
  
• Integrated platform approaches that combine ITSM, ITAM, and IT Operations are a desirable way to address multiple IT challenges. An overarching concern, however, is that an “all-in” platform approach would lead to “monolithic IT” again—resulting in vendor lock-in and lost agility.
  
  
• Open source is still trending. High interest seems to be driven by cost-conscious IT and by the immediate need for innovative solutions. Not surprisingly, charitable and educational organizations were particularly drawn to open source solutions because they offer low- to no-cost solutions to many of their IT operational challenges. While many were impressed by the speed of innovation that comes from the open source community, open source adopters were dealing with tool integration and tool proliferation problems.
  
  
• Most attendees said they wanted to get more value from their existing ITSM solutions rather than switching platforms. They saw snap-ons or add-ons—even those from third parties—as the best way to immediately address their day-to-day challenge of improving team performance and improving resolution metrics. Many were seeking for more innovative and informational dashboards for their service desk teams, or the ability to quickly add AI and analytics to their existing ITSM solution.

The buzz around the Micro Focus (now OpenText) booth made one thing perfectly clear: The long, rich history of the ITIL framework is still seen as a viable way to tackle all forms of service management delivered by IT to the business. Everyone wants to be “wowed” by their ITSM experience—from the agents using the solutions to the end-users trying to resolve their issues—proving once again that an intuitive, engaging digital experience is key to achieving better ITSM.