A decade ago, I took on the task of leading the team responsible for launching Atlassian’s IT service management (ITSM) solution. Initially called Jira Service Desk, it is now known and loved as Jira Service Management.

At the time, the ITSM landscape looked very different from what it does today. Dozens of vendors provided niche solutions that addressed specific parts of the continuum—from alerting to ticketing to asset management and more. IT leaders struggled to stitch together disparate solutions. Tool sprawl and data siloes were begrudgingly accepted as tradeoffs for being able to simply respond to issues quickly.

I’m happy to report we’ve come a long way since those dark days. We’ve seen significant consolidation in the space as vendors look to deliver a holistic platform experience by developing, acquiring, and integrating specific capabilities into their solutions. Atlassian is no exception, acquiring companies like Opsgenie for alerting and on-call management, Percept.ai for AI-powered virtual agent technology, as well as Mindville and AirTrack for robust asset and configuration management.

Today, Jira Service Management is trusted by more than 55,000 organizations to deliver exceptional service experiences at high velocity. It’s been a privilege to lead and win in this new market for Atlassian.

Not just the musings of a proud product leader. Forrester agrees!

Forrester’s Charles Betz and Julie Mohr are deeply engaged and committed to observing the evolution of the IT Management space. Their recent report, “Vendors Move To Dominate IT Management Software”, is a must-read for anyone evaluating their current service management platform.

Their conclusion? All eyes are on Atlassian…and another vendor whose name rhymes with the noise my cat, Simon, makes :wink:.

In the report, they write:

IT management tools, referred to as the IT control plane, have been consolidating for years. A bipolar market is emerging, centering on ServiceNow and Atlassian, which have achieved critical mass that competitors will find hard to match.

They go on to say:

If you are thinking, “ServiceNow just sells IT help desk, and Atlassian just sells agile project management software,” you haven’t been paying attention. Through organic growth and acquisition, both companies have assembled comprehensive portfolios covering broad swaths of enterprise (not just IT management) functionality. These acquisitions signal vendors pursuing thoughtful strategies to encompass greater and greater portions of their respective markets, building on their positions of strength and expanding into logical adjacencies, including non-IT workloads (especially those involving knowledge work).

We built Jira Service Management to stand apart from legacy ITSM solutions by prioritizing:

  • Fast time to value: Our platform is not stuffed with costly features that ultimately aren’t deployed or used. It can be rolled out faster and for less than other providers.
  • Connection between IT Ops and development: With our roots in agile software development, no one connects IT Ops with developers like Atlassian. This gives dev teams the autonomy to ship faster while staying aligned with IT Operations to mitigate risk. Win-win.
  • AI-powered service management: Over the past year, we’ve unveiled new AI-powered advancements across every service management use case that help our customers accelerate productivity and deliver exceptional service to their employees and customers.

Check out the full report

Download a complimentary copy of the report, “Vendors Move To Dominate IT Management Software”, below. Cheers!

Forrester: Vendors move to dominate IT management software