06/07/2006
Next phase in ITIL poker game
Posted by Al Schultz
Jun 07, 2006.
Source: ITSM Portal
OGC have announced the selection of preferred bidders for the exploitation of ITIL. APM Group and TSO win, and ITSMF is out of the game.
As we’ve informed you before, the exploitation of ITIL (and other OGC frameworks like Prince2) will be outsourced to new parties by the end of the year, and the involved parties seem to be involved in a poker game. OGC now announced that they have selected two parties to negotiate further on ITIL rights. The biggest news is that ITSMF is not amongst these parties.
It has become clear that OGC has two faces; the one is responsible for the ITIL product and has been so from the original start in the late eighties; they have a long relationship with ITSMF and have a mutual understanding and respect. “This” OGC has made clear that ITSMF has to be the one party that should be involved in the update of the ITIL documentation in the ITIL Refresh project, and should endorse all new ITIL books before they will be published. The ITSMF International Publications Committee (IPESC) has been put into position to take care of this.
“The other” OGC is managing OGC’s finance and is responsible for the CAR project – and it seems that both departments do not communicate much ("the two (projects) are not logically linked"). How else can one explain the fact that OGC is doing final negotiations on ITIL rights with a party that has no relationship with the targeted community, and no relationship with the user organization of that community? APMG (the APM Group Limited) is known in the field as a company that has been set up to manage Prince2, and has no business with ITIL. APMG follows a commercial approach towards the accreditation of trainers, resulting in a protective and closed training and examination community – something that is perceived as very contra-productive in the ITIL world: the global success of ITIL is attributed highly to the fact that commercial service providers have been able to use it on a very open base. You can find all kinds of ITIL-based products and services all over the world, and many providers have made it their business, without the burden of a having to pay a fee to the owners. The fact that OGC is now negotiating ITIL rights with APMG furthermore neglects the crucial role that has been played by the current accredited exam bodies ISEB and EXIN in marketing ITIL all over the world.
Another threat emerges from this decision: the international ITSMF community is highly involved in the development of ITIL Refresh. But will they continue to do so if a commercial party would own their result? Will all these volunteers be willing to spend their time on a product contributes to the profit of a commercial party? Or will they be compensated? And will they then still choose to spend their time on this instead of on their regular business? And will the result be just as good if a number of the core players would turn away from the project?
It seems that there are a few dark clouds hanging over ITIL’s future. The January statement “that there will be one and only one acceptable outcome of the CAR bidding: the future management of ITIL will have to be an organization lead by the international ITSMF organization - not an organization where ITSMF is participating as an advisor, but one where ITSMF makes the decisions “might prove to be false now, and there’s no saying where this will end.