Official “ITIL Tool” endorsement by the OGC

Tool Compliance Discussion

1. Official “ITIL Tool” endorsement by the OGC
2. Bullshit Alarm: BMC awarded “ITIL(r) Process Compliant” certification
3. Even worse: CobiT Tool Compliancy
4. Will the SW Assessment Scheme ever be open?
5. OGC/APMG open up the SW Assessment scheme – more bullshit?

Ken Turbitt drops the bomb that some have been hearing for a while. The OGC will define a tool verification scheme for ITIL. Different companies may apply for a license to perform the assessments, Service Management Consultancy Group (SMCG) Ltd will be the first, while our big friend the APM Group will audit these licensees. There has been no open discussion within the IT service management community about this and there will not be any of it, since:

A pilot has already been completed with a major Vendor and we simply await the OGC’s last action.

So what are the impacts to the IT service management community? How about these:

• The vendor grip on ITIL will increase
  We all agreed that IT service management is not a tool issue. I do not mind vendors to form a group for standardization in technical areas, but why should the software development business dominate an area they know nothing (at least not much) about?
• The competition will be reduced
  It will be more expensive for new vendors to enter the market, thus reducing the competitive pressure on the existing large players. A vendor lock will not bring benefits to the IT service management tool market.
• The assessment criteria will allow any vendor to endorsed
  The assessment company (companies if additional assessors will join) will be interested in positive assessments. The vendors will be interested in positive assessments. APMG will be interested in many assessors, which will only survive if they positively assess many vendors and no one from the IT service management community will influence the assessment scheme. This means there is no real benefit in the endorsement scheme.
• Top management will ignore ITIL even more
  Since there is an officially endorsed standard for ITIL tools, top management will regard this issue as solved. They will force the organization to buy only endorsed applications and believe all to be perfect. Selling useful IT service management consultancy will be more difficult (my profession) and ITIL will be reduced in importance.

So what do you all think, is this another nail in the coffin for ITIL? Shall we all gather around the next promising framework (maybe CobiT & ValIT)?

Edit: Thanks to the itskeptic ITIL Software Endorsement Scheme dropped unsuspected for his post.