I've posted my two cents as a blog post: ITIL and ITSM still matter in a world with external providers

I think this OMG site has the potential to become the hub for all management discussions, great work!

A question about the mechanics of the discussions. Where do we discuss a topic? John's post is a good example. The available options are:

• add a comment to John's post (as Ben did)

• post a reply in the forums (like this one)

• write a blog post of your own

There can be a good reason to use any one of these options, the trick is how to keep the discussion in tact? Is there a way/best practice, using tags, etc. ?

"One final thought. If you're writing a blog post and you want to open a

discussion around it, why not create the discussion and link to it from

your post."

This makes sense to me, may be a variation may be to post to forums if there is a comment.

May be the Jive folks have some suggestions ...

ITIL awareness is increasing, as more large enterprises take the plunge to require Foundation level training. Usually, ITIL is focused on the Support team with it seeping out to Ops, Release and CAB. Vendors have been incorporating ITIL into their pitches, which has added to the awareness. All of this is goodness, if IT organizations can glean some repeatable processes to improve quality and consistency in services. While I find the ITIL books to be over-priced, which usually puts them out of reach of the rank-and-file that need them, and lacking in the details of the process models and devoid of any prescriptive processes, they are nonetheless better than nothing.

I found a lot of interest over the last couple years in the CMDB and Application Mapping. It seems, to me, very fundamental that you should have a central repository that provides consistent and up to date information on assets and their state(s). This is analogous to the data warehouse in a Business Intelligence architecture. After the Service Desk, the CMDB seems like the next essential system/application. We used CMDB to support initiatives in consolidation, virtualization, compliance and disaster recovery as all require an accurate record of current state.

John Willis writes "This kind of future could normalize IT to the status of electricity that is a true commodity" as an ill-concealed reference to Nicholas Carr and Does IT Matter.

The road to making IT a commodity is paved with best-practices such as ITIL. ITIL prevents IT departments from spending vast resources inventing their own practices and processes. It makes job descriptions and recruiting easier, makes it easier to enter into customer service agreements, makes it easier to outsource, and insource, and makes it easier to understand how resources are spent in IT. ITIL is a common language for IT. One day IT will be commoditized and the basic ITIL practices will be assimilated and then fade into oblivion. Hopefully together with most self-appointed ITIL specialists out there.