The growth of digital business and the Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to drive large investment in IT operations management (ITOM) until 2020, according to Gartner.
The primary driver for organizations moving to ITOM open-source software (OSS) is lower cost of ownership.
“While acceptance of OSS ITOM is increasing, traditional closed-source ITOM software still has the biggest budget allocation today. Moreover, complexity and governance issues that face users of OSS ITOM tools cannot be ignored,” Gartner’s research director Laurie Wurster said. “In fact, these issues open up opportunities for ITOM vendors. Even vendors that are late to market with ITOM functionality can compete in this area.”
Gartner believes many enterprises will turn to managed ITOM or ITOM as a service (ITOMaaS) enabled by open-source technologies and provided by a third party.
Gartner predicts that, until 2020, public cloud and managed services are expected to be leveraged more often for ITOM tools, which will drive growth of the subscription business model for both cloud and on-premises
ITOM. However, the firm adds that on-premises deployments will still be the most common delivery method.
“Customer demand has driven traditional software vendors to transform and adapt to the changing technology and competitive landscapes,” said Gartner’s research director Matthew Cheung. “Competitive pressure from cloud (SaaS offerings) and commercial OSS (offerings with a free license plus paid support) is forcing ITOM providers to move toward subscription-based business models for both cloud and on-premises deployments. This shift will eliminate revenue growth spikes as the large upfront investment seen in traditional models is spread out over time in a repeatable revenue stream.”
