Rounding up our time at SITS 25!
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Rounding up our time at SITS 25!
Phill Fox
23 May 2025
7 min read
Phill Fox
23 May 2025
7 min read
Find out what we got up to at the UK’s premier event for IT and service desk professionals – and all the trends people couldn’t stop talking about.
This year, SITS (Service Desk and IT Support Show) took place on 14–15 May at Excel London, and we were excited to be part of it. Packed with industry leaders, practitioners, and ITSM innovators, it was the perfect opportunity to explore the latest trends and share our expertise.
For those who couldn’t make it, we wanted to give you a little taste of what Adaptavist had to offer attendees, including a talk on the main SITS stage with one of our customers, as well as the big talking points at this year’s event.
Trends we couldn’t stop talking about
Attending SITS isn’t just about what we bring to the table – it’s also really interesting hearing what themes come up time and again talking to customers and attending panels and presentations. This year, the chatter was centred around three big ideas: AI, security, reporting and people.
Artificial intelligence
AI is having a significant impact on ITSM. Here are our big takeaways:
- Automation is on the rise, but many organisations are still unsure how AI can be used to support processes across their service desk.
- Agentic support was a hot topic – many businesses are embracing the power of virtual agents to support their IT teams to carry out low-lift tasks.
- Senior leaders are unsure how their people are using AI, especially outside IT. Many employees are leveraging it to help them achieve everyday tasks, with and without the business knowing.
- AI is great at pattern matching allowing it to quickly identify patterns of behaviour both in current events but also to match historic events vastly surpassing the ability of humans.
70% of employees are using AI tools despite understanding the risks involved.
30% of employees are using AI because their organisation hasn’t provided the tools they need to work efficiently.
Security
With security threats on the rise, the matter of how to keep ITSM processes and data safe was a primary concern for lots of people we spoke to. Discussions across the event explored how organisations need to be proactive in securing their critical assets and operations. With the ongoing challenges facing UK retail organisations happening outside of the event, much talk was around how to detect, mitigate and resolve such security risks to every organisation.
Reporting
As all the information buried with the ITSM systems becomes ever more crucial to business support the need to have accurate, up-to-date reports to help decision makers with making the right decisions. Whether this be as simple as which of your service desks has currently got challenges or the more long-term review of which problems recur on a regular basis the need was clear - everyone needs to spend less time looking for information and more time reacting to the results.
People
Beyond how your people might be using AI, there were two employee-centric talking points that kept popping up.
- How can we encourage and drive employee development? If we want to keep employees motivated, we need to level up their skills. This isn’t just great for your teams – it adds real value for the organisation too.
- How can we take good care of our employees’ mental health and wellness? Initiatives need to go beyond ‘lip service’. Approaches to improving and protecting mental health should be embedded into your organisation’s culture and an important part of your wider people strategy.
Best of the Adaptavist booth
Thanks to everyone who came to say hello, chat about all things ITSM, and hear our experts share their knowledge at the Adpatavist booth. It’s always great to catch up with familiar faces and meet new ones too. It’s a brilliant way of connecting with our customers and learning more about the issues people are facing on the ground – so we can help solve them.
This year we had a full schedule of lightning talks and Q&As at our stand’s own mini-theatre, including:
- The chicken and eggs of service management – Phill Fox, Principal Customer Success Advocate at Adaptavist, explored practical ways to adjust your current practices to drive improvements, including how Atlassian’s AI tools can help you break free from the ‘chicken or egg’ loop.
- Reimagining ITSM with AI: trends, use cases, and what’s next – Priyanka Nagaraju, Service Management Practice Team Lead at Adaptavist, explored how AI reshapes ITSM with practical implementations.
- Mastering ITSM challenges with ITIL: issues and insights – Andrew Johnston, Strategic Advisor at Adaptavist, and Roman Zhuravlev, Senior ITIL Architect at PeopleCert, discussed the top challenges organisations are facing across the IT landscape.
- Atlassian's team field: powering teamwork across your organisation – David Meredith, Senior Solution Engineer at Adaptavist, took a closer look at the Atlassian Team field and its role in enhancing work ownership, visibility, and collaboration.
Glueing it altogether
Phill Fox, Customer Success Advocate at Adaptavist, was invited to speak on the SITS main stage for his talk: Service management, the glue that keeps value streams delivered? He was joined by Paul Atfield, Data Analytics and AI Lead at The Education Outcomes Trust that Adaptavist along with Atlassian Foundation have been helping to improve their ways of working.
Using real-world examples, they discussed how you can use best practices in service management alongside the delivery of value streams, boosting efficiency and enhancing customer satisfaction in the process. The talk really emphasised how the interconnected nature of service management practices can bring your entire business together.
And Phill, alongside Vijay Ramamurthy (Principal Technical Consultant), also delivered many Jira Service Management demo on the Atlassian stand. As you can imagine, the whole event was packed with tips and tricks that attendees could immediately apply to make positive change in their organisations.
Let’s do it all again in 2026!
SITS 2025 lived up to expectations and then some! There were some really engaging talks, demos, and customer stories – as well as lots of fun to be had. We’re always proud to showcase the amazing ITSM work we’re doing for our customers, and share our knowledge and favourite tools. We’ll be back at the show on the 14-15 May2026 and hope to see you there.
If this round-up has got you hyped for how you can step up your service management offering – or if you want to follow up with our experts about anything you learned at SITS 25, we’re here to help. You can check out our ITSM services here or click below to have a chat.
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Written by
Principal Customer Success Advocate