The Daily Network Monitor

A former colleague called me this morning with a variety of gossip news on the industry and mentioned that ITIL v3 is scheduled for release next week. You probably have the same experiences dealing with colleagues who mention an acronym or other catchy slogan without any real knowledge of the term.

I succumbed to the need to be inquisitive and asked my former colleague an innocent question, “What Does ITIL Mean and Why Is It Important?” After a few seconds of odd silence, he noted, “Well I have to go to a meeting.”

Fancy or not, we have so many acronyms and terms to deal with it is no wonder no one knows what the acronyms stand for. To ensure I am not one of the cases we make fun of the blog one day; I went to Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.com) and re-read the definition for ITIL.

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL®) is a framework of best practice approaches intended to facilitate the delivery of high quality information technology (IT) services. ITIL outlines an extensive set of management procedures that are intended to support businesses in achieving both high financial quality and value in IT operations. These procedures are supplier-independent and have been developed to provide guidance across the breadth of IT infrastructure, development, and operations.

ITIL is built around a process-model based view of controlling and managing operations often credited to W Edwards Deming. The ITIL recommendations were developed in the 1980s by the UK Government’s CCTA in response to the growing dependence on IT and a recognition that without standard practices, government agencies and private sector contracts were independently creating their own IT management practices and duplicating effort within their Information and Communications Technology (ICT) projects resulting in common mistakes and increased costs

ITIL is published in a series of books (hence the term Library), each of which covers a core area within IT Management. The names ITIL and IT Infrastructure Library are Registered Trade Marks of the United Kingdom’s Office of Government Commerce (OGC).

When describing the relative performance adoption of ITIL over the past couple of years it is useful to use Aesop’s fable of the hare and the tortoise as an analogy.

After a huge burst in interest and commitment by enterprises spanning all verticals to implement an ITIL strategy, it appears that the number of prospects following through have dwindled during the first part of 2007. It almost seems like participants fell asleep under a tree, while the slower steady upward climb of virtualization and SOA implementations took over and outperformed.

Enterprises generally invest in technologies that can increase revenue and profits and eliminate a pain point or two but they also invest in new and cool technologies that solve a problem they didn’t even know they had or think they have. One only need look at the number of $500k SAP investments made that were and are on Year 5 of their now multi-million dollar SAP investment. In contrast, SMB’s or SME’s invest almost exclusively in pain relief focused solutions that help the business run well and meet the need of value-based solutions.

Will ITIL have a place in SMB/SME’s? I don’t believe so. It’s too big, it’s too complex and its too costly for most. But, I do believe their will be plenty of good practices that make their way from the volumes of ITIL binders to the planning board of network administrators, systems professionals and business line managers responsible for the network that runs the business. V3 for example will focus on services and delivering services and I am certain there is information that can be shared and examples that can be modeled in SMB’s and SME’s across the globe.

Only with a smaller piece-by-piece strategy will ITIL be digestible for most businesses. In Aesop’s fables, the hare wakes too late to beat the tortoise in their race. Luckily, technology is a continuing race for long-term returns that don’t simply stop at the end of the day. Perhaps there is still time to shake the hare awake and send him racing off after the tortoise