For decades, the ITSM (IT Service Management) model—structured management of IT services through standardized processes—has enabled technology departments to maintain operational continuity, resolve incidents, and ensure service levels. However, the increasing complexity of infrastructures, now more hybrid, distributed, and multi-tenant than ever, has pushed traditional models to their limits.
CIOs can no longer settle for reacting to problems. They need to anticipate issues, correlate events, understand the impact of incidents, and automate responses. This is where observability is gaining traction as a critical lever in the evolution of ITSM.
Many organizations are already making this shift. According to Forrester Research, 2025 has marked the inflection point in the evolution of ITSM toward proactive models, where observability and automation are improving resilience, reducing operational costs, and strengthening the user experience. The same consultancy states that organizations incorporating observability and automation into their ITSM models reduce downtime by 64%, lower operational costs, and improve problem-resolution KPIs.
Source: From Legacy ITSM to Proactive Service Management, Forrester Research
ITSM and Observability: Are They Really Complementary?
IT service management relies on standardized processes: incident, problem, and change management; asset management; and SLAs—often with the added challenge that these functions depend on incomplete or fragmented data. Observability, on the other hand, as discussed in previous posts, goes beyond symptoms to uncover root causes. It provides real-time visibility, log analytics, full traceability, and metrics that enrich decision-making. No CIO can overlook this.
In short, when an organization integrates observability, it does not replace ITSM. It enhances it.
Integrating observability into ITSM enables organizations to:
- Reduce MTTR by identifying patterns and root causes more quickly
- Correlate events across layers (infrastructure, network, services, user)
- Predict critical failures using AI and machine learning
- Audit SLA compliance with traceable, objective data
According to an IDC study, complete observability platforms not only enable faster incident detection but also provide a proven path to achieving more competitive and sustainable business outcomes.
Source: IDC, Full Stack Observability Survey, March 2023.
In addition, the market reflects this trend: MarketsandMarkets reports that the global observability tools and platforms market will reach $4.1 billion by 2028, driven by the need to manage hybrid and multi-tenant environments with greater control and agility.
Source: MarketsandMarkets – PR Newswire
A Practical Example: Service Management with Real Observability
Consider an IT service provider supporting multiple public-sector organizations with complex infrastructures and demanding service-level agreements. In a success case documented by Forrester in its economic impact study on full-stack observability, after implementing an end-to-end observability platform, the organization achieved:
- Consolidation of monitoring for all clients into a single interface
- Automated proactive alerts for anomalies in key services
- Visualization of correlations between network outages, traffic spikes, and application errors
- A reduction in IT ticket volume by 60–70% and a drop in MTTR from 16 hours to just 15–20 minutes
This deployment—based on a real case analyzed by Forrester—demonstrates that observability not only optimizes technical efficiency; it also improves customer perception of service quality and reduces support-team turnover by freeing time for higher-value tasks.
Better-Informed Decisions to Prioritize Investments
Beyond the technical dimension, integrating observability into the ITSM ecosystem enables CIOs to make more informed decisions, prioritize investments, and reduce the hidden costs of IT support. With 70% of organizations engaged in digital transformation (IDC), having a unified solution for monitoring, traceability, and prediction is no longer optional.
Forrester again notes that in 2025, more than 60% of IT leaders will prioritize observability tools as part of their ITSM architecture to improve user experience and accelerate delivery cycles.
Observability Strengthens ITSM
As highlighted throughout the article, observability does not replace ITSM— it enables its evolution from a reactive to a predictive approach. By integrating observability, organizations reduce MTTR, ensure SLA compliance, and optimize resource utilization, freeing IT teams for higher-value work. The benefits are immediate: improved technical control, greater governance capabilities, and stronger alignment between service management and business outcomes.
