ISACA

With seemingly everyone gouging the ITIL user these days, is there an alternative for those of us who can't just (or just can't) get the boss to pay the exorbitant prices? You bet.

The long awaited ITIL V3 - COBIT V4.1 mapping white paper is available ... for a price. This is the final paper in a long-awaited series that answer the question left unanswered by the ITIL V3 books - how does ITIL relate to the standards and frameworks around it? The answer is that ITIL is very much a subset of COBIT's more comprehensive coverage.

itSMF exists as a marketing arm of the ITSM industry, by definition. An open market is a wonderfully self-levelling system: money flows where the potential money is. So itSMF forms a very good indicator of where the interest or 'action' is in ITSM at the time. Right now it is ITIL. But what about the future?

This post has been podcast

If you missed this month's edition of the Skeptical Informer, you missed some scuttlebutt about why the itSMF International website has hastily gone off the air. The circus continues - all part of an endless litany of mis-management, spats, dodgy deals and mis-governance through 2007.

By way of contrast, it is interesting to reflect that in the past two months ISACA has, for me personally as a member, done the following:

ISACA and itSMF can do more together. There is a great deal of synergy between our organisations and very little overlap.

Nations get the government they deserve, and so too do organisations. If members don't mind the itSMF being the OGC's pet monkey or a carnival of prancing vendors, then they can just leave it to slide. If the people don't rise up and say "enough" then it gets worse.

A reader asks What is it you wish members to do [about itSMF]?

A recent comment said "Why is everyone banging on about the commercial aspects of this refresh?...it's been commercial for years."

Indeed ITIL has been commercial for years. But it has beeen a slow boiling of the frog. The unseemly scrabbling around version 3 has made obvious a trend that has indeed been going on for longer.