For as much as everyone in IT knew about the importance of experience in previous years, 2021 really felt like the year where the true importance of it finally rose to the awareness of people working in all sectors of Enterprise IT. We could try and extrapolate why that is – 2021 was also the year where many employers started return-to-office initiatives, and the year where the true extent of our labor overhaul started to really sink in.

For as much as everyone in IT knew about the importance of experience in previous years, 2021 really felt like the year where the true importance of it finally rose to the awareness of people working in all sectors of Enterprise IT. Companies are implementing Experience Level Agreements (XLAs) at a faster pace, and 85% of organizations also self-report understanding the need to deliver a better employee experience, according to a study by AXELOS and itsm.tools.

Over the last two decades, we have seen companies move to the cloud in hordes and presently, the cloud is often the default option for almost all new enterprises. Only companies in a very narrow niche are sticking to on-premise solutions. And the trend is expected to continue. In 2021 alone, the end-user spending in cloud computing was around 482 bn USD.

IT Operations or ITOps have long been a key part of IT service management (ITSM) for organizations. It has played and continues to play an important role in maintaining organizations’ IT infrastructure up and running and making IT available to all employees. Unlike the service desk which directly communicates with the employees, the activities of ITOps rarely involve direct contact with the users they serve.

The process of looking for a suitable software to work with doesn’t involve its functionalities and integrations alone. It’s not limited to your company and your own needs, either. Finding a tool that does everything you want is the ultimate goal, but if the layout is confusing or if the learning curve is too steep, the dream can rapidly become a nightmare. For that reason, besides features and needs, you should also focus on the laws of UX.

Hardware and asset management is not easy even in relatively small organizations with 20 or 30 employees. As the size of the organization increases, it becomes difficult to keep track of all the laptops, printers, and other hardware used by the employees. This is where a detailed hardware inventory of IT assets becomes useful. A hardware inventory can help you keep track of all devices and equipment owned or used by your organization.

Just a couple of days after Google announced a high-risk zero-day vulnerability in Chrome, Apple disclosed two zero-day vulnerabilities affecting their operating system on both mobile and desktop devices. The company has already issued updates for its iOS and macOS users. The patched versions are as follows: As for the Apple zero-day exploits, they were reported anonymously.

It should come as no surprise that cloud-based ITSM solutions have become so popular. As we’ve explored in our comparative piece: they are easily deployable, they tend to be less costly as an upfront investment and they are highly customizable to fit different IT infrastructures and team functions when compared to their on-site equivalent.

Historically IT asset management (ITAM) is the practice that was forgotten about by IT service management (ITSM) practitioners because it wasn’t considered a “core” ITIL process. This changed with the publication of ITIL 4, and now ITAM sits firmly in the ITIL management practice section of the service value stream. Done well, ITAM can help organizations to manage, control and support their IT services.

If you’re an asset manager or an application administrator, you must have had - or are about to have - a lot of work since there’s a new Chrome zero-day vulnerability in the wild. Google issued an emergency security update due to the severity of exploit CVE-2022-1096. A few days later, Microsoft joined the recommendation, advising Chromium Edge users to update their browsers as well.