What's next for ITIL and IT Service Management
Ron B Palmer
7/25/2006
The ITIL community is in a state of confusion at the moment. No one seems to be quite sure what the OGC is attempting to do with this move. I personally am not sure what all of this is going to mean for ITIL. What I do know is that IT Service Management is here to stay and it is up to the ITSM community to keep it alive and grow it into a respected professional discipline.
ITIL is a good collection of best practice but it does not introduce any specific new concepts or ideas. All of the recommendations within ITIL are based on pre-existing knowledge. The IT Infrastructure Library combines this knowledge into one set of books, and expresses the concepts in a specific fashion.
What is important in the marketplace is that businesses are intent on purchasing “ITIL” training and consulting. It will be a good thing if this interest continues and even increases provided that credible players in the market are treated fairly. My company, an EXIN accredited training company, has been issued official Trade Mark and Copyright licenses from The Lords Commissioners of Her Magisty's Treasury as represented by the Office of Government Commerce. This gives me some confidence that training organizations are being treated fairly. What is particularly unclear at this point is what the future holds for EXIN, ISEB, and itSMF in relation to ITIL.
All of this interest in ITIL, COBIT, SIX SIGMA, etc. leads me to believe that the market is looking for IT to mature into a Services based organization. The market will expect that this mature organization is run by a cadre of professional service managers. Professional managers are ultimately going to be created by the colleges and universities of the world. It is my sincere belief that academia must pick up on the basic concepts expressed in the IT Infrastructure Library and mature them into comprehensive IT Service Management programs.
This effort is actively underway in the US and being discussed across the world. In the US the University of Dallas has an active Graduate Program in IT Service Management that includes ITIL material and much more. The itSMF-USA has created an Academia Committee that works to help other universities develop their own programs.
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This website is dedicated primarily to advancing the academic knowledge base for IT Service Management. Here you can expect to find analysis of the key concepts that underpin the ideas of IT Service Management and ideas to more clearly define IT Service Management as a profession.
Current ITIL news can be found at the ITSM Portal.
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