Last week at SupportWorld Live 2025, I got on stage to talk about something that keeps most IT support and service management professionals and even marketing folks like me up at night. No, it wasn’t shadow IT or an accidentally deleted CMDB: It was agentic AI.
While the talk sparked a lot of curiosity, the feedback from the attendees and the rest of the event revealed something telling about the service management industry: While AI is no longer a future concept, most teams still don’t know where to begin.
After speaking on stage about real-world AI use cases in IT (and hearing from countless leaders afterward), here are three key themes that I observed.
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While ServiceNow or BMC Remedy continues to be the default for many, it’s increasingly seen as a heavyweight solution in a world that’s demanding speed and simplicity. If I had a penny for every time an attendee came up to me and said that they use an industry leader but that they wish they didn't have to, I’d have at least a dollar by now.
While powerful, these legacy platforms are expensive, complex, and often slow to adapt, especially when it comes to integrating emerging tech like agentic AI.
With tighter budgets and leaner teams, IT leaders are thus actively exploring modern, agile alternatives that deliver faster time-to-value and require less overhead to manage. If your current stack is feeling like a burden, you’re not alone. That same discomfort is becoming a catalyst for change.
AI dominated conversations, but not with the confidence you might expect. Many attendees admitted they don’t fully understand how AI works, or how to differentiate between technologies like chatbots, automation scripts, and true AI agents.
There’s a clear desire to adopt AI in ITSM, but also a lack of education around how it fits into existing IT strategies. Teams have been told to “start using AI,” but without specific guidance or examples, it’s difficult to know where to begin. Concerns around data privacy, compliance, and model transparency only deepen the hesitation.
Perhaps the most important shift is psychological: unlike even a year ago, most IT professionals now see AI as inevitable. There’s a recognition that AI is going to reshape IT service delivery and leaders know they need to be part of that change, and not mere spectators. This mindset change is huge and often the trigger to phenomenal transformations at enterprises.
What’s missing is enablement. Most teams aren’t looking for hype; they’re looking for how. How to evaluate next-gen AI tools, how to narrow down initiatives, how to implement them responsibly, and how to drive meaningful outcomes with humans and AI collaborating.
This is where the role and scope of tech partners broaden. Clear education on how to leverage AI in modern workplaces, transparent architectures, and practical, real-world examples will go much further than flashy claims.
SupportWorld 2025 made it clear that while the IT community is ready for AI, they need more support in navigating the path forward. The conference highlighted the gaps between aspiration and execution in IT.
As IT and tech leaders, now is the time to demystify AI for your teams, audit the tools you’ve been relying on, and lean into the tech transformation with clarity and intention.
Count me in if you want to have more honest conversations about making AI a reality in your ITSM processes :)
