SERVICE SPACE 2026
Program preview
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE FOR SERVICE MANAGEMENT
APRIL 14, 2026. VIENNA.
International
Meet international
ITSM experts
8 CPD
Collect
Peoplecert CPDs
26
Sessions
in 4 streams
Networking
Expand your
ITSM network
Space Night
As always, the best is saved for last!
Why take part?
Service Space brings together people who work in service management and share their experiences. Our international speakers address topics that – as we know from many years of experience – will soon be on the agenda here too. You will find out which approaches have proven successful and which have not, and get ideas in presentations, workshops and discussion rounds that can actually be implemented in your working environment.
AI & automation
Service Design & Modeling
From portfolio to catalog
Enterprise Service Management
Mastering compliance
ITIL, DevOps
& Co
This and more awaits you at Service Space 2026
Digital Responsibility & Corporate Digital Responsibility – Karin Dietl (Keynote)
AI, data and networked systems shift who bears responsibility for what on a daily basis. Digital ethics provides the compass for this – from transparency and data protection to fairness and the traceability of algorithmic decisions.
The presentation shows how you can practically anchor corporate digital responsibility (CDR) in your strategy and processes instead of letting it run alongside as a loose resolution. It deals with typical areas of tension between regulation and everyday life as well as criteria that can be used to identify and address risks at an early stage.
You take with you structured guidelines that work in IT service organizations – realistic, testable, compatible with existing governance.
The goal is not “perfect”, but resilient and effective: responsibility that lasts in the company.
Language: German
Gatekeeper AI – why AI strengthens your service team – Dominik Hagen, Senior Business Development Manager and Benjamin da Silva Moreira, Team Lead Technical Specialists (TOPdesk)
Artificial intelligence has long since arrived at the IT service desk.
At TOPdesk, we don’t rely on isolated experiments, but on practical innovation: AI acts as a gatekeeper, intercepting routine inquiries, answering them and ensuring that only the really complex cases end up with your team. This takes the pressure off your service desk and enables a consistent shift-left approach: the proportion of simple, recurring tickets is reduced and employees gain time and space for challenging tasks and personal development.
AI does not replace anyone. It relieves the team of monotonous work so that people can concentrate on what they do best: thinking creatively, acting empathetically and driving innovation.
In our presentation, we will show how generative AI can already support your service desk today and how you can turn “firefighters” into innovators and a figurehead of excellent service.
Language: German
Balancing act between law and everyday life:
How compliance becomes an enabler instead of a brake pad – Armin Leinfelder,Lead Product Manager (baramundi)
Many see regulations such as DORA, NIS2 and NISG, including the security effort, as the natural enemy of convenience and productivity. But that doesn’t have to be the case.
The presentation shows how Next-Gen Endpoint Management brings security, compliance and user-friendliness together instead of playing them off against each other.
Specifically, it is about practical steps: defining the target status, standardizing configurations, controlling exceptions and automatically generating evidence. In addition, there are tried-and-tested procedures and typical stumbling blocks from practice – such as shadow IT or overloaded policies – and how to pragmatically mitigate them.
In the end, you will know how to reliably comply with established, current and future requirements without compromising operations or productivity.
Language: German
Zeros make Heroes – Autonomous IT with AI – Thomas Seiberl, ServiceNow Senior Architect and Stefan Zengel, ServiceNow Senior AI Consultant (agineo)
With AI to Zero Incidents, Zero Outages, Zero Asset Issues, Zero Strategy Drift.
agineo presents a vision based on four pillars and demonstrates an IT organization that is proactive, intelligent, autonomous and self-healing.
Take the next step in your AI journey through the intelligent use of agentic AI in IT support, predictive & self-healing AI operations, AI-supported optimization of the use of your assets and AI-supported strategy focus.
Language: German
From Design Philosophy to IT Service Reality – Six Principles for Human-Centered IT – Mark Smalley and Rudolf Greger (Workshop)
Design thinking has reshaped innovation, but IT service delivery often struggles to translate its core principles into daily practice.
This interactive 90-minute workshop bridges that gap: Rudi Greger introduces each principle in its universal form, then Mark Smalley maps it to concrete IT service applications.
Working backward from real business needs, we examine how design breathes soul into products, turns unfavorable situations toward an ideal, improves people’s lives, and underpins economic success-why it belongs at the center of strategy and how to foster company-wide design-mindedness.
You leave with a philosophical foundation and practical frameworks for human-centered IT, including tools to balance desirable, feasible, viable, and ethical considerations. Target audience: IT service managers, ITSM professionals, and digital transformation leads who want technology to serve human needs-not the other way around.
Format: bilingual (DE/EN), with short inputs, group discussion, and shared takeaways for post-conference use.
From onboarding to oil changes – How service management is secretly conquering the world
– Frank Helm, Partner Manager & Sales Consultant (KIX Service Software)
Service management is often traditionally associated with IT. This has not been the case for a long time.
If you take a more abstract look at service processes, you quickly realize that the same or similar handling of service management practices can also be applied to building services, vehicle fleets, medical devices or industrial store floor equipment. Due to ever-increasing networking, IT and non-IT services are growing together and finding their way into the asset database, the service catalog and ultimately into the service processes themselves.
The presentation explains what all this has to do with the onboarding of new employees or broken bicycles in a large city using very practical examples and customer scenarios with the open source service management software KIX.
Language: German
NIS2 implemented in practice: DataGerry as an integrated solution for CMDB, ISMS and attack detection – (OpenCelium)
NIS2 presents many organizations with the challenge of not only documenting security requirements, but also implementing them in a measurable and effective manner.
In this presentation, we will use a specific practical example to show how vulnerabilities from Wazuh are automatically transferred to DataGerry with the help of OpenCelium, where they are linked to a central CMDB. On this basis, both the risk assessment and the NIS2 compliance analysis are carried out directly within DataGerry.
The result: end-to-end transparency of assets, vulnerabilities and risks, fewer manual processes and a reliable basis for audits, prioritization and security decisions.
Practical, integrated and auditable – this is how NIS2 is transformed from a mandatory program into an operational security strategy.
HaloITSM: From ticket system to business platform – without an imperial budget– Niklas Rößler, Team Lead ITSM Pre Sales (Bechtle AG)
Many companies still believe that the path from ITSM to ESM must be expensive and complicated. HaloITSM takes a deliberately disruptive approach: an all-inclusive license model makes it possible to flexibly extend services across the entire company – regardless of size or maturity level.
What can ESM really cost? In this presentation, we will show how customers can use HaloITSM to develop their existing ITSM platform step by step into a genuine business platform. You will learn how new departments can be connected quickly, how projects remain lean and how service management delivers measurable added value for the business – without additional license jungles or oversized programs.
Language: German
Make IT feel as good as it functions
– Mark Smalley (Keynote)
Digital experience has evolved over the past decade. Today, it is a business priority. We know that emotions drive behavior – and digital experiences create emotions.
This matters for people and organizations. Good digital experiences build trust, loyalty, and make organizations stronger. Poor experiences create hidden problems: frustrated users, lower engagement, and people who stop using your systems. These problems make it harder to manage incidents, solve problems, and implement changes.
Here’s the key point: You are already designing experiences, whether you plan to or not. In this session, the Lead Author of the ITIL Experience book gives an overview of the book and explains why investing in digital experience makes sense: operationally, strategically, and ethically.
Mark is a writer, coach, and bridge-builder at Smalley.IT, helping IT professionals understand service with a keen focus on progressive management of IT systems and services. He has contributed to many industry bodies of knowledge, served as lead editor for ITIL 4 High-velocity IT, and delivered presentations at hundreds of events across more than thirty countries.
Language: English
How will AI reshape IT Service Management?- Rob Akershoek (Keynote)
The AI market has rapidly evolved, with ITSM vendors embedding advanced AI capabilities in their IT management tools. Yet many organizations are still navigating the fundamental questions: What is the real value? Where are the tangible benefits? And where should we begin?
This presentation explores the practical application of AI and Agentic AI across the IT Service Value Chain — from plan, build, and deploy to run and optimize digital products and services.
We examine real-world use cases such as:
• AI-assisted design and development (e.g., Co-Pilots)
• AI enabled support (e.g. self service)
• Autonomous CMDB maintenance
• AIOps for proactive anomaly detection
• AI-driven security operations and automated remediation
• AI support decision making (for continuous improvements)
Beyond the hype, this session focuses on the art of the possible today:
• What are the highest-value AI use cases in ITSM?
• How will AI reshape roles, processes, and ways of working?
• How can organizations start their AI journey in a structured and value-driven way?
A practical and strategic perspective on transforming ITSM from reactive support to intelligent, predictive, and increasingly autonomous service management.
Language: English
Do IT Operating Models Matter? – Martin Goble (Keynote)
We’ve all seen IT Operating Models, a bunch of boxes on a slide created by a team of consultants, but what do they mean to Service Management?
Originally highly sceptical of and frankly baffled by IT Operating Models, Martin has spent much of recent years translating these models from slideware into real world solutions. In this presentation Martin Goble discusses how IT Operating Models can be leveraged to bring value to IT as a whole and IT Service Management in particular.
Language: English
Change Mood On! Dealing with uncertainty and transformation together – Fee Kalter (closing keynote)
We are living in times of profound change. Many things are in flux at the same time. Certainties are crumbling, new answers are still missing. Uncertainty is becoming a permanent state for many.
This interactive keynote focuses on how we can deal constructively with precisely this uncertainty. Psychologically sound and solution-oriented, it is about developing inner stability, even when external clarity is lacking. Not through repression or control, but through conscious self-control and orientation.
The focus is on questions such as:
- How do I remain capable of acting in uncertain times?
- How can transformation be actively shaped instead of overburdening?
- Which helps to strengthen clarity, self-efficacy and connection.
The lecture combines scientific findings with concrete micro strategies that can be applied immediately. It creates space for reflection and shows ways to understand uncertainty not as an obstacle, but as a malleable part of change.
Because uncertainty cannot be avoided. But you can learn how to deal with it.
Language: German
MORE THAN A CONFERENCE
This was Service Space 2025: concentrated ITSM knowledge and lively exchange – all in one place.
Questions about Service Space
“Service Space is the industry’s class reunion.”
(original quote from a participant)
If that’s not enough for you:
Service Space is the meeting place for all those who shape and develop service management.
Here you will receive impulses from practice and research, meet colleagues from a wide range of industries and exchange experiences that are often neglected in everyday work.
Whether you are looking for inspiration for current projects, want to take away new ideas for future projects or simply want to spend a day talking to people who know your topics – at Service Space you will find the right setting for this.
- Service design and modeling on demand
At Service Space, you will gain concrete insights into the modeling of services and the use of the CMDB. In the partner area, theory becomes tangible practice – talk directly to experts who work on implementation on a daily basis. - From service portfolio to service catalog – clarity instead of chaos
Services, products, solutions, systems – we (and ITIL) bring order to the world of terms. In exciting sessions and discussions, you will find out how Value Stream Management can be used specifically in ITSM. - AI and automation: what really works today
Whether chatbots, automated workflows or predictive maintenance – the range is huge. At Service Space, you will hear first-hand which AI applications are already working, where automation actually works – and where hype and reality diverge. - Service management – more than just ITIL
Identity and access management, ticket bridging, multi-provider management, DevOps and lean – topics that only work together. Service Space brings these perspectives together. - Tackling compliance before it becomes critical
Laws and regulations such as NIS2, NISG and DORA present many service providers with new challenges. Get tips from professionals who are already in the middle of implementation – and take the opportunity to ask your questions directly. - ESM beyond IT
Best practices and concrete examples show how service management also works outside of IT – comprehensible, economical and applicable in everyday life. Exchange ideas with pioneers who have successfully established service management practices in various areas of the company.
The first highlights of our program have already been announced and we look forward to presenting them to you one by one on our program page. Stay tuned and check back regularly for the latest information about Service Space 2026.