Gartner analyst David Cappuccio, in a report released at the at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo here, said that despite the emergence of best practices over two decades, "IT service desks still struggle to provide adequate IT support."

The is declining with the diversity of tools in businesses and the use of consumer-based applications and services. "Business user demand for customer satisfaction is far outstripping the IT support organizations supply," said Cappuccio.

Libenson was on a ServiceNow-sponsored panel that considered the changing role of service desks in an organization. Similar to Salesforce, ServiceNow offers a type of service that growing numbers of users feel comfortable getting as a software-as-a-service. While important, it is not as critical as something like logistics planning, he said.

ServiceNow is not the only company offering cloud-based service desk. , for instance, announced a new cloud-based service desk.

The fact that this market appears to be growing, speaks to the underlying point made by Gartner analysts: Upgraded help desks are needed to meet the demand created by the consumerization of IT. It's a point with which Libenson agreed.