Gartner's ITIL Crystal Ball

Gartner, the research, advisory and consultancy giant, have recently weighed in with their own vision of ITIL's future. Curiously, it is not too dissimilar in some ways to the views outlined in an earlier post.

Quoted on VNUnet, Gartner's research vice president for IT management strategies states that "The appointment of APM Group has created a division in the IT service management community, with APM Group on one side, the original examination institutes on the other, and the community split between the two camps".

I would go along with that, although it is rather more complex, and I don't see too much support heading the way of APMG from the community. Maybe he meant a split and a splinter in support, rather than a split?

He goes on to state that "This will effectively create a parallel qualification scheme in competition with the official ITIL-branded APM Group scheme...". Indeed it will.

Equally interesting is the relative silence from APMG. Nothing yet through the press, and nothing through the major ITIL representative bodies or forums. Perhaps they are in a state of shock. At the very least they will now understand all too clearly that there is a world of difference between the ITIL market and Prince2.

And what of the OGC, who actually created this situation? I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for anything at all from them!

ITIL Refresh Timing - Could It Be Worse?

Whoever decided that the whole ITIL market should be restructured at exactly the same time as the refresh/republication of ITIL itself surely has a lot to learn.

This conjures many visions. In the context of the EXIN/BCS-ISEB competitor certification announcement, one such vision may be of a symphony playing on the deck of the Titanic whilst the ship starts to sink. That is clearly taking it to ridiculous lengths, but you see the picture.

Of course, it could be argued that this is just an unfortunate coincidence of timing, and that the two developments just happened to come together simultaneously. I don't buy that for one moment though. Both developments were pro-actively triggered by someone within the OGC. Timing was always under the control of those guys.

At this stage ITIL will simply have to survive the upheaval. But it may well come out at the other end of the process somewhat weaker in stature than it started.

Or does anyone believe that the timing is actually beneficial in some way? The comment facility below is open if you do!

ISO 20000 Is The REAL Daddy

It continues to surprise me that ISO 20000 is not yet given the exposure it merits. This will certainly change though, albeit gradually.

The strength of this standard in terms of its position in the market is clear:
- It offers CORPORATE certification. This in turn offers potential market leverage for the boys with the bucks (corporates)
- It over-arches the other frameworks, such as ITIL and MOF.
- It is truly international in every aspect, and with the ISO prefix demonstrably so
- It aligns with other international standards, such as ISO 9000.

Whilst individual frameworks (ITIL etal) jockey for position, ISO 20000 will prove to be the constant.

When it fully emerges into the market consciousness, it will be massive. As an old teacher used to say, "Mark my words".

ITIL's Bumpy Road - Part 1

A cocktail of civil servants and vested interests in a growing commercial market was always destined to end in tears, or at the very least take a very bumpy road. This was forecast by many commentators, and the latest developments tend to substantiate their predictions.

Civil servants are never likely to really understand market dynamics, and are consequently more likely to be swayed and influenced by those commercial forces in their proximity. Losing sight of what is in the best interests of their own methods and the tax payers is always a risk.

In the ITIL situation we have a massive international market and a very limited number of players circling around the OGC golden egg. APMG won that battle, but how equipped are they to manage an open rather than a closed market environment? Given that they were the chosen ones in the Prince2 market, it is not difficult to see why some people ask questions about the relative failure of Prince2 as a global force. The argument is that the Prince2 market is so tightly controlled, stitched up, and regulated that it simply doesn't work. It seems to run like a monopoly, but it isn't one. Hence Prince2 has not expanded as it should have done. Thus runs the theory.

Yet one of the major players in that situation is now at the core of ITIL? Yes, so no wonder some people think it could be a disaster.

THE FIRST ROCK
The first rock on the bumpy road has now appeared. EXIN and BCS-ISEB, the examination bodies for ITIL, whose licenses expires next year, have announced that they are to forge an alliance and create a new examination framework for ITSM, to embrace a number of methods, not just ITIL.

This is a truly significant development in this field, to say the least. A competitor certification scheme for ITSM is on the horizon to compete with ITIL. Given the relationship of both examination bodies with major players in the ITIL market, it is a development that APMG must be seriously pondering.

And what of the major representative bodies, such as the itSMF and the ITIL Community? Again there seems to be little coming from any of these to suggest that they have warmly embraced either the OGC's re-organization or APMG's rise to prominence.

It will be an interesting few months ahead, but at the time of writing, the future of ITIL looks far less assured than it has for a long time!

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