"Deep in the heartland of America an experiment is under way. ITIL, a set of best practices for IT service management, has begun to take root in the United States...", starts this excellent article highlighted to us by regular reader Rob Roy (Thanks Rob, any relation?)Funny thing - Rob also 'stars' in the article he highlighted to us ;>
Here's the bit Rob's in...
"Rob Roy is an ITIL consultant and one of only a handful of Americans certified an ITIL "master." Until very recently, he said, companies and the government were extremely reluctant to force IT to produce."The IT department saved the world with Y2K," Roy said. "They did such a good job, people thought the whole thing was smoke and mirrors.
Then in 2001, we had an economic downturn and business was looking for places to cut. For years IT had been the fat cow. Well, people started asking, 'What have you produced? What is a cost-benefit analysis?' IT couldn't answer - so they started to get cut. So IT had to find ways of doing with less but producing more - the same thing every other department has had to worry about." Doing more with less - the age-old paradox that is foisted upon business and government in times of famine. ITIL offers IT organizations a way to manage that paradox.
In fact, ITIL can help IT departments do substantially more than most would believe, which is why, over the last three or four years, ITIL has started to catch on in the United States.
However, the United States has a long way to go to catch up."I've been working with ITIL for about six years, which is about five and a half years longer than most folks," said Roy. "I took my foundation class in Quebec, and I was the only American in the class.
"Roy said he thinks some good old-fashioned American pride played a part in ITIL's slow acceptance in the United States. "I think it has taken so long to catch on here because we didn't invent it. It's been going full-guns in England for 10 years as in the Netherlands. Most of Europe, too. We're about the last holdout."
So, you could say that American ITIL is now "auditioning" in a town near you - right now.
Like American Idol winner Carrie Underwood (pictured above (c) Fox Broadcasting) you've got to promote it - to succeed!
The rest of the article, published on www.govtech.net goes on to cover:-
- ITIL history (what it is and why it's here)
- ITIL adoption in the US (Coming to America)
- ITIL success (Gaining ground in Government)
Perhaps the most compelling reason for ITIL is the simplest, Roy says,
"ITIL is the most uncommon thing in IT: It is common sense."
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