The importance of information technology service management, ITSM, is fully recognized today. All companies, regardless of their size, accept the role of IT services and products, as the main supports for decision and control activities. The present contribution aims to analyze the main steps in the evolution of ITSM and its evolvement as a well-defined domain. There are analyzed, also, the main economical and technical factors influencing its evolution - the increase of competition among the IT service providers, the technical progress in hardware and availability of digital technologies.