ITSM, or IT Service Management, is a hot topic and a critical capability for any corporation. But in today’s day and age, the key ITSM trends are constantly in flux. So what trends and topics should you watch out for this year?

Due to the ongoing digital transformation of our world, which was only accelerated by the global pandemic, it’s important to constantly reevaluate the suitability of your IT department’s or managed service provider’s (MSP’s) current ITSM capabilities. When you read the trends we’re about to share, you’ll see how true this is.

The Top 5 ITSM Trends of 2023

As you consider improvements and changes to your ITSM solutions this year, take a look at these top five trends that have been dominating conversations in this space. In order to stay up-to-date and relevant, it’s essential that you consider introducing some of these ideas into your department’s day-to-day services.

#1: Employee-Focused IT Solutions

In the past five years, ITSM needs have evolved incredibly quickly. With more and more companies allowing (or even preferring) remote work, technology is starting to be seen as a crucial aspect of employee success – not just of business success.

That’s the theory behind one of the hottest ITSM trends this year: a focus on employee experience management. Departments need to understand how IT services and support impact employees’ work, either negatively or positively.

Gathering data on employee experience can help you understand what matters most, any opportunities for improvement, and areas employees are struggling with. A robust IT ticketing system can be a huge part of cracking the nut on this trend.

#2: Data-Driven ITSM Operations

Data-driven ITSM is nothing new, but the emphasis on making data-driven decisions has only increased in recent years. We’ve said it once, and we’ll say it again: data, data, and more data. That’s what matters. And you need advanced reporting capabilities to truly analyze and present such data in the most compelling way possible.

Whether you’re using data to drive decisions related to new services, revised services, or operational improvements, it’s a crucial piece of the service management ecosystem that undergirds ITSM. One example of useful data here could be employee experience feedback. You’ll be able to identify not only issues but also root causes and, after the fact, the adequacy of any improvements you make.

#3: Intelligent Automation

Automation, as every IT professional knows, is a crucial part of ITSM. But now, with the onset of popular AI (artificial intelligence) integrations, this trend is being taken to the next level. The application of AI capabilities can take your ITSM to the next level.

In many ITSM use cases, AI integrations and applications have been able to improve employee experience, boost business outcomes, increase execution speed, reduce costs, improve decision-making, and boost the availability of services – even including 24/7 IT support. Basically, integrating AI smartly is a no-brainer with demonstrable value.

#4: Personalized Support

It’s probably already clear to you from the other elements on this list that experience management has taken center stage lately in the world of ITSM. This idea encourages IT departments and support teams to customize interactions they have with customers and employees, making service a more personal experience.

Sales, marketing, and research and development teams have been using these methods for years, and the idea behind it is that personalized experiences lead to higher levels of customer and employee satisfaction. There’s not one right way to pull this off, but it’s an important trend to explore as you focus on employee-driven ITSM this year.

#5: Value-Focused Initiatives

There’s an increasing focus lately on IT departments proving their value to the businesses in which they reside. While some alarmists have been predicting the downfall of the IT department for a decade or so, we don’t see that happening anytime soon. But it’s important to show how a successful IT department can improve the overall functioning of a company.

Being able to generate advanced reports and cost-benefit analyses is an excellent way to provide data-backed information to the people signing your checks. Using advanced IT solutions can help you generate these convincing reports to demonstrate your value.

Conclusion

While this list of 2023’s hottest ITSM trends isn’t exhaustive – if it were, we’d be writing an encyclopedia – we hope that it has helped you gain some awareness of the areas you may want to focus on within your organization and the IT operations it undertakes.

Our biggest takeaways? There is a clear emphasis on a few different areas, namely data, employee experience, and demonstrable value. In order for your IT department to remain up-to-date and highly functional this year, you’ll need to deliberately focus on these areas and the ways in which they can have a positive effect on business outcomes. You’ll need to make a strong case for the value proposition of everything you do.

This year, it’s essential that ITSM endeavors center around obtaining essential data to support data-based decision-making; which better enables employees to be their most productive selves; and optimizing operations, experiences, assets, and outcomes to better your company as a whole. Showing that your department has value is a crucial piece of this puzzle.

It’s also relevant to consider whether your ITSM improvement activities are focused above the process level. When you bring high-level problem-solving and strategic thinking into your ITSM planning initiatives, you’ll be better equipped to make visible changes in the fabric of your company, thus showing how important the role of IT really is.

Not sure where to begin? Check out some of Atera’s many ITSM solutions. Our offerings include automated patch management, network discovery, RMM (remote monitoring and management), ticketing, and plenty of helpful integrations.

Bringing your IT department into the modern age with these tools and resources is the first step toward staying aligned with the ITSM trends dominating the airspace this year. Interested? Get in touch with us here.

Every IT department must perform routine software deployment in order to ensure its end users are staying up to date on every program and application. Even if you’re calling it by another name, you’re probably already doing it. But what if you could do it faster, safer, and more effectively than ever before?

In this guide, we’ll be covering the ins and outs of software deployment as well as why it’s necessary for every IT department and managed service provider out there. Make sure that you’re setting up your organization for success with a strong software deployment program that’s made to keep your applications up to date while minimizing risk.

What is Software Deployment?

Software deployment refers to all of the steps, processes, and other activities required to make a software system or update accessible to its users. The process of software deployment includes steps like release, installation, testing, deployment, and monitoring. The terms “software deployment” and “application deployment” are often used interchangeably.

Most IT organizations and software developers in today’s landscape deploy software updates, patches, and new applications by combining manual and automated processes. There are many different types and methods of software deployment that offer differing levels of efficiency and risk. But overall, they all have the same goal – to make software available on devices or services for its intended users.

Stages of Software Deployment

There are five key stages that go into the software deployment process. Ensuring that your IT department follows these steps is an excellent way to ensure that your software deployment process will go smoothly. Setting up a streamlined process can also reduce mistakes and risk along the way.

Stage #1: Plan

The first stage in any effective software deployment process is to formulate a comprehensive plan. You’ll need to know what software or application you’re trying to deploy, how many end-users you have, and what risks are involved. A good plan will address these questions and many more.

Stage #2: Design

Once you have a comprehensive plan, you will need to design how the deployment will play out. Ask yourself what kind of deployment will minimize risk. Do end-users need to access software updates simultaneously, or would a slower rollout work? It’s important to conduct a cost-benefit analysis for each method here.

Stage #3: Test

To ensure nothing goes awry during the actual deployment, it’s a good idea to create a test environment. Use simulations and perform tests to ensure you can detect any hidden issues before the official deployment and fix anything that’s wrong. You want the software to be completely functional before you roll it out to users – that goes without saying.

Stage #4: Schedule

Project management comes into play in this step of the process. Break down your software deployment plan into manageable tasks. Then, either manually or automatically, create a schedule for task completion. Assigning and scheduling tasks are sure to streamline your software deployment process.

Stage #5: Deploy

Finally, the actual deployment! Deploy the software to your endpoints. If you’ve completed the previous four steps, the deployment should go to plan without any major hitches.

Why is Software Deployment Important?

Deployment is one of the key aspects of any software development process. It is the main mechanism that allows applications, updates, and patches to transfer from developers to users. Effective software deployment relies on developers using efficient methods to build, test, and deploy new code in order to respond to changes in customer preferences or other requirements.

If teams can streamline or automate the process of software deployment, they can respond more quickly to user needs. That, in turn, allows organizations to roll out updates faster and deliver new features more frequently, driving customer satisfaction and capitalizing on economic growth opportunities.

Software development and deployment have seen intensive innovation over the past couple of decades. Developers have created workflows that enable faster, more frequent deployment of software updates to the production environment – that is, where users can access them.

Benefits of Software Deployment

Thoughtful software deployment helps streamline the tasks required to ensure your software is available and running smoothly for all of your users. It comes with a number of different benefits, which we will explore in this section.

Save Time

Effective software deployment is a great way to cut down on time and become more efficient as an IT department. When set up correctly, the software deployment and patching process can take just a few hours. When you use automated systems, that time can be cut down even further, and you’ll be able to allocate your manpower and resources more effectively.

Improve RMM (Remote Monitoring and Management)

Software deployment enables you to exercise control in managing software and applications for end-users. In other words, you’ll be able to remotely monitor and manage applications no matter where you are physically. You will be able to rest easy knowing that your software is operating properly and without any issues.

Boost Security

More control over your organization’s endpoints equals more security. Deploying software in a structured manner, rather than counting on users to download and update the software themselves, means that you can ensure the security of one software application rather than tackling each device individually.

Smooth Installation and Patching

The primary benefit of software deployment is its effectiveness in installing or patching software on your network’s endpoints. That means that when your organization has an effective software deployment process in place, you’ll be able to facilitate smoother transitions from old to new software and fix codes more easily through patch management.

Final Thoughts

It’s essential for any IT department to have a robust software deployment system. There are many different benefits in play here, from saving time and resources to ensuring your organization’s security and preventing data breaches. There are plenty of different methods for software deployment, but no matter which one you choose, you need a clearly stated, streamlined process to make it happen.

When you adhere to a tried-and-true process for software deployment, you’ll be doing your team and your company a huge favor. It’s an excellent way to ensure that all of your end-users have the most updated versions of programs and receive all the necessary patches. Basically, smart software deployment is an essential function of any IT team.

Want to really take software deployment to the next level? Consider investing in a software deployment tool like Atera’s. Our system gives you monitoring for multiple sites, and its automated software deployment tool is helpfully integrated into a patch manager.

The tool runs on a schedule and can launch scripts alongside installers, enabling you to package environment preparation and reboot procedures. We also provide RMM, which allows you to inventory all endpoints on a network and ensure everything is up to date. Maintaining a current software inventory is an important part of software deployment.

With automated patch management and Atera’s best-in-class RMM the clear choice for anyone looking for a software deployment tool that will take their IT department to the next level. Software deployment is a crucial part of any IT team’s duties, and Atera can help you make the process more efficient, cost-effective, and risk-free. Get in touch with us today to learn more about our offerings.

With the recent popularity of ChatGPT, you’ve likely heard of its parent company, OpenAI. The company, which has a mission of ensuring that artificial intelligence (AI) benefits humanity, is the brains behind the internet’s trendy chatbot. But that’s not the only revolutionary AI innovation it has supported. 

OpenAI is also the parent of OpenAI Codex, another AI model that’s designed to turn instructions given in simple, natural English into code using over a dozen popular coding languages. Codex was created with the goal of supplementing the work of developers and increasing development teams’ productivity.

It turns out that it’s instrumental in the world of IT as well. Microsoft Azure has begun providing its enterprise customers with a limited access preview of OpenAI services, but they’re not the only ones. At Atera, we have embedded Codex into our platform as well.

In this article, we’ll explore everything we hope to offer with our OpenAI Codex integration. We’ll cover what it means, what it can do, and how it can increase day-to-day productivity and efficiency for any IT professional.

What are Atera’s capabilities powered by OpenAI?

Let’s start with the basics. We’ve integrated OpenAI’s advanced AI technology and language models into our platform, embedding the Codex within our product offerings. Why did we do it? We’re committed to empowering users to generate PowerShell scripts  .bat, .sh, or .ps1 file types at lightning speed. With our OpenAI integration, you can execute tasks even faster.

It all began with GPT-3 (which stands for generative pre-trained transformer three), a neural network machine learning model that uses deep learning and internet data mining to produce natural language text. Given an initial text-based prompt, GPT-3 can continue that prompt in a human-like manner through its autoregressive learning capabilities.

Since then, we’ve also added our Smart IT ticketing system powered by ChatGPT, that can summarize tickets, suggest replies and solutions, and then you can use it also to generate a solution for that particular ticket!

OpenAI Codex is a descendant of GPT-3, and it’s been trained with data consisting of both natural language and billions of lines of source code. Its source code comes from publicly available sources, such as GitHub repositories.

Tal Dagan, our company’s chief product officer, demonstrated how our OpenAI integration has allowed for an easy-to-use script-generating tool. He asked the tool to write a code that would create a restore point for a user’s computer.

Then he asked it to create a script that would reboot the computer from that restore point. This is just one of many use cases for the integration that can help automate common IT functions, including supercharging your helpdesk easily through Atera’s ticketing system.

But don’t worry – our OpenAI integration is by no means meant to replace the jobs of IT professionals.

The integration still requires users to be knowledgeable enough to improve the query in order to generate the script they’re looking for. Our goal is not to eliminate the jobs of hardworking IT professionals, but rather to provide a generative AI that can quickly generate codes or scripts for professionals to review and perform quality assurance checks.

In Dagan’s words, “It’s not replacing you… but it can speed up the process.” We see Codex and other AI models as productive additions to the suite of tools that IT professionals use to improve their day-to-day work. But it will never replace the human touch in an IT department.

What is the value of the OpenAI integration?

We’ve spent months fine-tuning our OpenAI Codex integration to ensure that it can provide value to our customers.

By typing in a set of instructions, whether they’re simple or complex, Atera users can now generate powerful scripts with just the click of a button. This level of automation provides the perfect combination of simplicity and sophistication, saving our users countless hours of manual coding and responding to helpdesk asks.

Plus, our Codex integration is simply unmatched. Because OpenAI Codex has much of the natural language understanding of GPT-3 but produces working code instead of natural language responses, you can issue simple commands. It is able to consider contextual information when performing tasks, making its output more accurate and relevant.

The Codex integration empowers computers to better understand user intent, which in turn helps Atera users create more accurate scripts on a much faster timeline. Having OpenAI integrated into the Atera system allows us to preserve functionality and user experience. You’re already familiar with where to go in order to upload or create a script, which dramatically improves the process.

Our OpenAI integration is just one of the many innovative IT automation solutions we offer. As an IT management software provider, we’re excited to provide our users with integrations and experiences that are at the forefront of our ever-evolving field.

What are some examples of scripts?

You might be wondering about the particulars of the integration and what kinds of scripts you can use it for. Here are a few examples of the types of scripts you could create using our Open AI:

• Delete temporary files for all users
• Flush the DNS cache to clear browsing history
• Clear all files from the recycle bin
• Run Windows cleanup to free up disk space
• And many more.

Our OpenAI Codex Integration allows you to automate the more mundane tasks your department is faced with in a much quicker and easier manner. That way, you’ll free up your team to focus their knowledge on more complex problems, best utilizing the talent you have available as seasoned IT professionals.

Where can I learn more?

We’ve put together plenty of resources to help users understand and utilize the capabilities of our generative AI script recommendations. To find out more information, check it out here.

When is it available for testing?

Our generative AI script recommendation tool is currently available as a beta feature for all our custimers. Because this tool is currently in beta, we recommend that you review all scripts that you generate in order to ensure proper functionality.

Join us and connect with your peers and colleagues, as well as industry leaders, for an exciting two-day virtual event tailored specifically for IT professionals. Ateraverse offers you a front-row seat to the latest innovations from Atera and a unique opportunity to learn from like-minded professionals.

The event will take place on May 3-4, 2023, and promises to be a unique opportunity for the Atera community to connect, engage, and grow together.

Our agenda is packed with inspiring sessions, workshops, and panels on the topics that matter most to IT professionals, including cybersecurity threats and changing market trends.

You can also add strategies to your arsenal that will help you remove redundancies and inefficiencies from your processes – something that all IT professionals can appreciate.

Some of the speakers you can look forward to hearing from include:

• Mike Massimino, former NASA astronaut
• Hether Ceylan, Zoom’s Deputy Chief Information Security Officer
• Itzik Tzalaf, Microsoft’s National Security Officer and Cybersecurity Expert
• Brian Kane, Malwarebytes’ Global MSP Cybersecurity Evangelist

The conference is built around the real-world concerns that IT professionals are expected to face in 2023 and beyond, such as mounting tech debt, increased cybersecurity threats, and growing workloads.

The “Year of Efficiency” has brought a focus on “lean and mean” IT operations, with organizations exploring redundancies and underutilized tools and processes. Ateraverse aims to provide attendees with ‌best practices and practical solutions for this evolving space. The two-day virtual event will feature eight sessions with industry leaders and peers discussing cutting-edge solutions such as intelligent automation, AI integrations, and zero-trust architecture.

Sponsored by Microsoft, Ateraverse promises to be an engaging conversation about the forefront of the IT field and help IT professionals transition smoothly into the new, automated age. The conference will also feature speakers who are thought leaders in the IT and cybersecurity space, as well as a surprise keynote speaker.