Emerging Category, Same Mission: Oomnitza Included in Three Gartner® Hype Cycle™ Reports
By: Katherine McCleery
Gartner has included Oomnitza as a Digital Platform Conductor (DPC) Tool in three major 2025 Hype Cycle™ reports—a rare triple inclusion that signals a major shift in how enterprise IT challenges are being categorized and solved.
That’s big. But more importantly: it’s timely.
Because while the DPC Tools category may be relatively new, the problems it addresses—operational complexity, disconnected systems, and fragmented tooling—are anything but.
In this article, I’ll unpack:
- What DPC Tools are and how Gartner defines them
- Why the category matters now, especially for I&O leaders
- What the shift away from a standalone ITAM category means for buyers
- Why we believe Oomnitza is uniquely positioned to lead in this space
But first..
A Quick Lesson on Hype Cycles
Gartner’s Hype Cycle is a framework that helps IT organizations understand the maturity and adoption trajectory of emerging technologies. By seeing where a tool sits, IT leaders can make informed decisions about when to invest, how much risk to assume, and which vendors they can trust.
Innovations are mapped into five stages:
- Innovation Trigger – A new concept gains attention, often before productization
- Peak of Inflated Expectations – Excitement grows from early wins and hype
- Trough of Disillusionment – Hype fades, and adoption slows as challenges emerge
- Slope of Enlightenment – Successful use cases appear; tools mature
- Plateau of Productivity – The technology becomes widely adopted and normalized
This Hype Cycle has DPC Tools sitting in the Trough of Disillusionment stage, signaling that the category is maturing and buyers are moving past the hype and demanding proof of value.
With that background in mind, let’s look at what DPC tools actually are and why they’ve made a recent appearance within the Hype Cycles.
Defining Digital Platform Conductor Tools
By Gartner’s definition, DPC Tools “optimize the management of IT infrastructure costs, operations, and lifecycles by aggregating disparate data and supporting federated management across all environments and locations.”
In layman's terms, these tools connect data and workflows across IT systems—like cloud, infrastructure, devices, and apps—to improve how organizations manage costs, operations, and technology lifecycles. Without adding more complexity, they empower IT teams to make smarter decisions and drive more value.
DPC Tools is an overarching category that represents the shifting demand of enterprise IT needs, one that demands unified, policy-driven technology operations at scale.
We believe being recognized in three categories is a telling sign. Oomnitza is included in:
The Hype Cycle for I&O Automation
This Hype Cycle examines how technologies allow Infrastructure and Operations (I&O) teams to manage and automate their IT environments.
Focusing on platform engineering, service-level automation, visibility + control, and operational efficiency, it recognizes DPC Tools as emerging technology that enables I&O teams to coordinate across silos and reduce manual effort, orchestrate workflows, and enable full-stack visibility.
They allow I&O leaders to:
- Automate lifecycle processes
- Enforce policies across multiple environments
- Make infrastructure decisions based on business value
The Hype Cycle for Data Center Infrastructure Technologies
This Hype Cycle looks at technologies shaping the future of physical and hybrid infrastructures. It focuses on modular + hybrid infrastructure, sustainability + energy efficiency, automation + orchestration, and operational risk reduction as key factors in determining the strength of a tool.
Within this Hype Cycle, DPC Tools act as orchestration layers that sit above fragmented environments. They:
- Coordinate lifecycle changes across assets and environments
- Optimize infrastructure use through more strategic planning and policy
- Support modular control of increasingly distributed systems
The Hype Cycle for Infrastructure Platforms
This Hype Cycle examines the evolution of infrastructure platforms toward greater flexibility, automation readiness, and alignment with business value, highlighting DPC tools as key innovations that enable these platforms to operate as cohesive systems through automation, extensibility, and the coexistence of legacy and modern technologies.
Within this Hype Cycle, DPC Tools:
- Connect fragmented IT data from across infrastructure, cloud, and application layers
- Coordinate automation and lifecycle workflows across environments
- Make informed decisions based on performance, compliance, and cost
If you’ve followed Oomnitza for a while, you might be surprised to see us recognized under a new category. After all, we’ve long been associated with IT asset management. So what changed?
Well, just like enterprise IT needs are shifting, so is the way Gartner analyzes Market Guide and Hype Cycle categories.
Why are We Talking About DPC Tools versus ITAM?
Digital Platform Conductor Tools, as a category, is still a relatively new concept. It contains a diverse mix of vendors, with some focused on cost optimization, others on migration planning, application performance, or configuration management. We believe Gartner cast a pretty wide net when creating this category, reflecting how enterprise IT teams are rethinking operations.
While the market itself is still figuring out what “platform orchestration” actually looks like in practice, one thing unites the category: fragmentation. IT leaders are still struggling with siloed tools, inconsistent data, and a lack of control across their estates.
DPC Tools look to solve this by unifying domains and enabling real, cross-functional orchestration.
But does that mean ITAM just disappears? Yes and no.
Gartner Removed ITAM as a Standalone Category
Think about the current reality of enterprise IT organizations. IT owns devices. Security owns access. HR owns onboarding. Finance owns software spend. Cloud teams own infrastructure.
It’s a disjointed mess that means ITAM is everywhere and nowhere fully.
As a result, Gartner has slowly decentralized ITAM coverage over the last several years and axed the standalone category. This wasn’t an arbitrary or sudden decision. We have observed these changes over time:
- Disaggregation of Responsibility: ITAM split into Software Asset Management (SAM), Hardware Asset Management (HAM), Cloud, SaaS, and Identity, each with a different team owner.
- Overlap with Other Analyst Tracks: Various tracks, such as SaaS Management Platforms and DPC Tools, cover different aspects of ITAM.
- Shift Toward Outcome-Based Tooling: Buyers don’t just want the visibility provided by traditional ITAM. They want risk reduction, compliance enforcement, and lifecycle automation.
This all opened the door for Gartner to change the way they categorize tools that address ongoing IT challenges. In their 2024 Market Guide for DPC Tools, they say “DPC Tools address fragmented inventories, disconnected workflows, and the inability to show value across domains.”
Those are problems that we believe modern ITAM tools can solve. But as far as we know, Gartner doesn’t use that terminology—not when traditional ITAM tools only deliver inventory and audits, not the orchestration, automation, and governance analysts now expect.
However, there’s a comfort in solutions that fit the former ITAM category, a familiarity and maturity that eases worries that come with investing in something new. For this reason, we can’t help but notice a slight flaw in this category shift.
This fragmentation that the DPC Tools category intends to solve is only felt further without a single, updated ITAM category. The lack of market definition means vendors focus on building niche tools which leads to enterprises buying point-solutions that never unify asset intelligence, and IT ecosystems becoming that much harder to govern, audit, and automate.
I have to imagine this is unintentional, but it gives the impression that Gartner’s structure perpetuates the very silos that DPC Tools are meant to fix.
Still, DPC Tools hold unique power in solving the operational complexity that modern IT teams face every day—so long as they opt for solutions that actually address the challenges brought on by disconnected systems.
The Current Relevance of DPC Tools
In shifting from a standalone ITAM category to the DPC Tools category, Gartner gave strategic language to a class of tools that coordinate across platforms, environments, and organizational silos. Why? I believe they did this to directly respond to the “growing operational complexity and fragmentation across hybrid IT environments.”
While the way Gartner analyzes and categorizes DPC Tools is significant, so is the category’s placement within current Hype Cycles.
Remember that DPC Tools entered the Trough of Disillusionment in the following categories: the 2025 Hype Cycle for I&O Automation, the 2025 Hype Cycle for Data Center Infrastructure Technologies, and the 205 Hype Cycle for Infrastructure Platforms.
That means that the category is maturing. IT organizations have higher expectations as they move past the hype and excitement of new tools. They want proof of value right now. They won’t settle for theoretical promises. They demand to see real-world results.
Still, challenges continue and in the Hype Cycle articles Gartner warns that there are risks surrounding an investment in DPC Tools, especially when the category itself is only a few years old. More than that, in looking at the other vendors named in the DPC category, most come from narrow domains, focusing on singular endpoints that still leave execution gaps. To truly solve persisting challenges, IT teams need a tool that works for the entire IT landscape.
To that end, I’ll answer a few things that may have been lingering in your mind up until this point.
Are we worried about Gartner retiring the dedicated ITAM category as they expand coverage of tools like DPC? No. Because our inclusion in these three Hype Cycles under the DPC Tools category signals that we’re leading the next evolution of IT operations.
We’re delivering what ITAM was always supposed to be.
Oomnitza is Uniquely Positioned in the DPC Tool Space
As impressive as it is to see seven other vendors recognized in the DPC Tools category, most of them only solve for one layer of the IT tech stack. With this new category focusing on orchestration, governance, and lifecycle controls, they don’t address the entire IT landscape. We believe many current tools in the category fall short of that vision.
Oomnitza stands out in this category because we bridge Gartner's strategic vision with operational execution.
We deliver what second-generation infrastructure platforms are supposed to enable. We empower enterprises to govern the entire IT lifecycle, beyond simply spend optimization or asset visibility.
We circumvent the data quality and integration issues that still plague legacy solutions. And we don't require you to make massive tech stack changes or relinquish resources to make it happen. Our automations and integrations work with the ecosystem you already have.
Where Oomnitza Meets the Moment
While Gartner may no longer feature a dedicated ITAM category, we don’t see that as a loss. In fact, the emergence of Digital Platform Conductor Tools reflects the natural evolution of IT operations—and validates the outcomes we’ve been driving for years.
Each Hype Cycle Gartner included highlights a different dimension of this transformation. And in every one, Oomnitza stands out not just for what we automate, but for how we operationalize lifecycle governance across the entire IT estate.
In the Hype Cycle for I&O Automation:
Gartner calls for a shift away from reactive, ticket-based operations toward proactive, policy-driven automation. Most tools in this space automate within silos. Oomnitza orchestrates across them—delivering unified workflows and lifecycle automation that support service-oriented, scalable I&O.
In the Hype Cycle for Data Center Infrastructure Technologies:
As hybrid and modular infrastructures become the norm, governance is no longer optional. We prioritize lifecycle visibility and control—automating asset transitions, enforcing policy, and maintaining audit-readiness across complex, distributed environments.
In the Hype Cycle for Infrastructure Platforms:
This Hype Cycle calls for infrastructure platforms to become extensible, dynamic, and API-driven. Oomnitza delivers on that promise—not as a point tool, but as an orchestration layer that spans SaaS, cloud, hardware, and identity. We help IT teams govern platforms holistically, bridging the gap between legacy tools and modern infrastructure demands.
New to the Category, Not the Space
As Gartner further establishes the DPC Tools category as one decision-makers can rely on to justify investment, mitigate perceived risk, and align with analyst-backed innovation trends, other players in the space will pivot to better meet criteria.
Oomnitza won't have to pivot. We have been solving these problems alongside our customers for years already.
Our customers brought us here. They wanted full-stack-lifecycle automation, and we delivered. We have long recognized that governance—not just visibility or optimization—is the problem to solve.
We saw the need for I&O teams to use automation to drive operations and built a platform that allowed them to:
- Automate lifecycle workflows across the entire IT landscape
- Federate normalized data to eliminate repetitive manual tasks
- Leverage work-based controls to maintain continuous compliance
We recognized the existing challenges with data center infrastructure technology and offered a solution that:
- Automated hardware lifecycle processes
- Enforced policy and compliance standards without needing manual interventions
- Supported infrastructure transitions with accurate, normalized, audit-ready controls
We carefully monitored the evolution of infrastructure platforms and created a system that allows organizations to:
- Orchestrate infrastructure lifecycle activities across cloud, SaaS, endpoints, and identity
- Normalize and federate data to deliver platform-level visibility, control, and audit-readiness
- Bridge the gap between legacy assets and modern infrastructure demands
None of this is new to us. It has been our mission to deliver these capabilities to our customers since day one. And, with their success as our proof, we can clearly demonstrate how our platform goes beyond the hype and delivers real results, not just theoretical promises.
While the category may change, our commitment never will.
As enterprise IT organizations look to these reports to make decisions based on careful analysis and a proven track record of success, this recognition shows that in a category still defining itself, Oomnitza already defines the standards.
