Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2024.  Read them in this 16th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

IT Operations Will Modernize Technology Management and Cross-organization Workflows in 2024

By Arthur Lozinski, CEO and Co-Founder, Oomnitza

The rapid growth and dynamic nature of SaaS apps, often driven by line-of-business managers, have made the challenge of technology management for IT more complex and hyper-distributed than ever. In 2024, we predict companies will focus on modernizing their approach to technology management and use AI-driven automation tools to help eliminate tickets as the "go-to" for cross organization workflow management. 

1.  As we transition into a world of hybrid-everything, new issues related to technology sprawl and lack of oversight have risen. IT teams struggle with the increased complexity that comes with managing technology assets across hybrid (cloud, on-prem and remote), hyper-distributed corporate environments while supporting both in person and remote workforces. These risks had been mounting for a while, but they reached critical mass due to the pandemic. We believe in 2024, companies will innovate their approach to ITAM from an asset focused model to one driven by lifecycle management and workflow automation encompassing hardware, SaaS, cloud and other digital infrastructure. One data point that supports this is that Gartner is tracking the emergence of a new management layer that connects and automates business processes across siloed tech stacks, which it calls Digital Platforms Conductors (DPC). More on DPC tools can be found here.

2.  In 2024, enterprises will make significant gains in reducing the use of tickets for managing services and driving business processes related to asset lifecycle management. Generative AI and LLMs will enable deeper, more conversational chatbox implementations that together with IT automation tools can significantly reduce ticket volume. AI is central to enabling this sea change because it can ingest and analyze the massive volumes of ticket histories, knowledge bases, Slack channels, and other information that are already being used in the enterprise. The data that flows across those channels can be used to create these deeper, more conversational and specialized LLMs. In 2023 we saw early first steps with our partners in development, and in 2024 these early efforts are going to materialize into a rapidly growing trend.

3.  Our belief is that global labor markets will remain unsettled and we will see more tech layoffs in 2024 due to high interest rates and uncertainty driven by multiple macroeconomic and geo-political events. Companies will have to adapt to the impact of these events, both in terms of reducing workforce in certain groups, divisions and geographies, while at the same time, adding employees to support business realignment and growth in other areas

As the CEO of an enterprise software company that helps companies automate their technology lifecycle processes, what I can say is that since the start of the pandemic, one of our top use cases has been automating the processes that drive employee onboarding, offboarding, moves and business reorganizations.

We're seeing companies of all sizes, across all sectors and geographies prioritize offboarding process automation to address efficiency, security and cost considerations. It could indicate that they understand the fluidity and unpredictability in today's business environment and want to be prepared to offboard securely at scale, if needed. Additionally, workforce adjustments are always made for holiday and seasonal work, shifts in demand or business strategy, and to address higher than anticipated voluntary turnover. So, no matter what, high rates of personnel change are the new reality.

##

ABOUT THE AUTHOR