Information Technology Service Management, or ITSM, is a catch-all term that covers every aspect of providing IT services to customers. It includes everything from planning to implementation to support, with a focus on processes rather than technology.
There are many platforms that handle ITSM, including Jira Service Management JSM , Zendesk, and ServiceNow. These include a wide variety of tools and features. They offer much in isolation, but even more together.
ITSM integration is the process of connecting service management tools, ensuring data flows smoothly between them. Companies increasingly use a broad spectrum of services to run their affairs, making the interplay between them critical. An effective ITSM integration lets you maximize the benefit from each system, allowing all to contribute to the wider organization.
To help with ITSM, many organizations use the ITIL framework, a set of best practices to help them achieve their business goals.
But frameworks and tools can only take you so far. Think of your IT team that constantly jumps between two platforms just to close that one ticket. Or your service desk team that escalates a critical incident, only to wait hours for an update because data isn’t synced between the systems they use. These arenʼt edge cases. Theyʼre common headaches that grow over time unless solved. ITSM integration is the means to solve this.
There are various kinds of integration, some of which overlap.
A system-to-system integration involves directly connecting ITSM tools to other similar systems or third-party software vendors.
For example, a JSM to Zendesk integration.
A data integration involves consolidating data used by different ITSM systems to enable reporting or analytics. For example, connecting multiple service portals to enable real-time incident management responses.
Process integration is where you use different tools to manage the steps of a process or workflow. For example, connecting multiple ITSM tools to route tickets to the correct destination, thus creating smarter workflows.
UI integration is where you connect user-facing services to another platform to deliver additional information. Perhaps a chatbot could integrate with your scheduling platform to help customers book calls.
Here are some of the advantages ITSM brings.
Don’t wait any longer to maximize the potential of your ITSM tools
An integration can bring in data from multiple sources to a single place. For example, if your developers handle maintenance for several products and use Jira Service Management to track issues, you could synchronize their tickets to various support tiers, or even different teams running Zendesk.
You can also create integrations between teams running the same platform. For example, offices in different regions or countries could synchronize their ServiceNow instances to use common data.
Weʼve also seen large government organizations that need their internal IT teamʼs Jira instance to talk directly to their vendors using ServiceNow. Without integration, every ticket had to be manually mirrored by an admin. It wasted hours.
Integration is a complex business, and there are various factors to consider when deciding precisely what you want from it.
You should consider its compatibility with your existing systems, along with other factors such as scalability, security, and how easily it can be customized. You should also consider how easy it is to work with, as well as the support available. Costs should be considered, too, though these should be set against the potential savings, which can be very high for an effective ITSM integration.
Exalate was designed with all these things in mind. Itʼs a highly robust tool that lets you synchronize data between ITSM platforms. It takes a decentralized approach, making it extra reliable and ensuring security for platform holders on each side of the synchronization. Its Groovy-based scripts are powerful, and it includes AI assistance to help everyone get the most from it.
However, the right integration experience isn’t only a feature checklist, it’s about knowing someoneʼs done it before.
Thatʼs why working with experienced integration solution providers and their partners makes a difference. For instance, bit2bit Americas has supported many organizations in designing robust ITSM syncs tailored to unique integration needs and operational environments. The value of the experience they bring often outweighs the tool alone.
At Exalate, we have seen many ITSM integration use cases closely.
A few of them that stood out are:
To get the most out of your ITSM integration, here are a few tips:
Plus, build for partnerships, not just solutions. Collaboration with experienced vendors, implementation consultants, and solution partners is what eventually builds long-term integration success.
An ITSM integration can reap huge dividends for your organization, improving data use and enabling fast, efficient workflows. When setting one up, itʼs critical to make the right choices.
With Exalate, all your needs are covered. Itʼs reliable and secure. Take a look or get in a call, and see how it can help you build the best ITSM integration possible.
2025 © bit2bit Americas.
What are ITSM processes? ITIL version 4 recently went from recommending ITSM “processes” to introducing 34 ITSM “practices”. Their reasoning for this updated terminology is that “elements such as culture, technology, information and data management can be considered to get a holistic view of ways of working”. This more comprehensive approach better reflects the realities of modern organizations.
Here, we will not concern ourselves with nuanced differences in the use of practice or process terminology. What’s important and true, no matter what framework your team follows, is that modern IT service teams use organizational resources and follow repeatable procedures to deliver consistent and efficient service. In fact, leveraging practice or process is what distinguishes ITSM from IT.
Change management ensures standard procedures are used for efficient and prompt handling of all changes to IT infrastructure, whether it’s rolling out new services, managing existing ones, or resolving problems in the code. Effective change management provides context and transparency to avoid bottlenecks, while minimizing risk. Don’t feel overwhelmed by these and the even longer list of ITIL practices.
Problem management is the process of identifying and managing the causes of incidents on an IT service. Problem management isn’t just about finding and fixing incidents, but identifying and understanding the underlying causes of an incident as well as identifying the best method to eliminate the root causes.
Incident management is the process to respond to an unplanned event or service interruption and restore the service to its operational state. Considering all the software services organizations rely on today, there are more potential failure points than ever, so this process must be ready to quickly respond to and resolve issues.
IT asset management (also known as ITAM) is the process of ensuring an organization’s assets are accounted for, deployed, maintained, upgraded, and disposed of when the time comes. Put simply, it’s making sure that the valuable items, tangible and intangible, in your organization are tracked and being used.
Is the process of creating, sharing, using, and managing the knowledge and information of an organization. It refers to a multidisciplinary approach to achieving organizational objectives by making the best use of knowledge.
Is a repeatable procedure for handling the wide variety of customer service requests, like requests for access to applications, software enhancements, and hardware updates. The service request workstream often involves recurring requests, and benefits greatly from enabling customers with knowledge and automating certain tasks.
It’s simply not enough to have an ITSM solution – you need one that actually accelerates how your teams work.
Atlassian’s ITSM solution unlocks IT at high- velocity by streamlining workflows across development and operations at scale. Meaning what was once many siloed teams with different ways of working, are now integrated and much more collaborative than ever before.
ITSM benefits your IT team, and service management principles can improve your entire organization. ITSM leads to efficiency and productivity gains. A structured approach to service management also brings IT into alignment with business goals, standardizing the delivery of services based on budgets, resources, and results. It reduces costs and risks, and ultimately improves the customer experience.
