In most companies, ITSM tool selection is a big deal. Whatever you choose, you’re stuck with it for at least the next three years, and realistically even longer. You're probably going to have to change internal processes to fit in with how the tool works, and maybe even change the team. 

Given that IT tools have such an impact on the organizations that purchase and use them, a key part of any purchase decision should be how you can replace it - either because of the advent of improved technology, changing business requirements, or perhaps the tool simply not meeting its original objective. No tools are used forever, yet few organizations have a strategy for replacement at the time of purchase and even fewer make it one of their decision criteria. 

This model also applies where tools are to be integrated - it should be possible to replace different ITSM tools and continue to use the others - otherwise that organization has lost flexibility to adapt to a changing world.

Improvements to technology and work patters are making various tools obsolete, as well as other aspects such as security compliance, vendor consolidation and so on - all of which means that a flexible tool strategy can be a big positive for most companies. 

For example, ACME Corporation may have embraced virtualization throughout their data center - not just virtual servers, but virtual networking, storage etc - and their existing monitoring tools may not be up to this task. It should be possible for them to swap out these monitoring tools for equivalents which do fully support these environments without massive expense, and also possible to leave other tools that are meeting their needs such as service desks, Business Service Management tools and so on.  

When making tool and vendor selections, companies should consider:

• How easy would it be to remove this tool and replace it with an equivalent?
• What other ITSM functions that need to be integrated with this one? Can this tool integrate with not only the tools I have, but the leading alternatives?
• If I were to remove this tool, what would be the impact on other tools that I have in my environment?
• Will this tool force me to be so custom in a particular area of process, staffing, skill set or technology that it would make removal impossible?

These are not hard and fast rules and should be evaluated against other criteria such as necessary and desirable functionality, the vendor, other services and so on - but it is important to at least consider replacement even at purchase time. After all, three years really isn't such a long time.

Good university programs should not only prepare candidates who enrol in them for their chosen career, but also attract the best and brightest into that particular field. 

I do not think that today’s IT degrees adequately do that. 

It is my observation, that the mindset of 'IT = programming' is still alive and well in many programs -  Creating the perception outside the industry is to take an IT degree creates a transformation from a school leaver to an IT nerd with the pocket protector issued on completion. 

In working with many graduates, and hiring for a graduate program, apart from a knowledge of programming, and related technologies (such as networking, databases etc), there were few candidates who had a good knowledge of what ITSM really is, or the different careers it can offer. I don’t think this is the fault of the students, I think it’s that the generalist approach to IT education is letting them down. I have seen some schools that do offer more specialised programmes, but these seem to be in the minority. 

So what should change?

I think programming needs to be considered as a specialized discipline and not a mandatory part of an IT degree. Even so called IT/Business degrees are still often just a mix and match of a general business degree and some programming classes, and I just do think this is enough. 

I would like to see more cases of industry participation in these degrees. Where students can spend time working on assignments at various companies. And I would also like to see much more emphasis on problem solving skills and an understanding of business. More mechanical skills such as how to set up a database can be taught in a training class later, if the candidate has good problem solving skills. The business side is so important because all IT is driven to support some business need and there are too many people in the industry today who think of these system only in technical terms and not what purpose they have or why they were created in the first place. 

For example, I think the following would provide a good grounding for the new IT practitioner:

• Business Analysis Skills – understanding how to apply IT to business problems
• Problem Solving Skills – Basic problem solving skills are highly underrated and all the technical knowledge in the world is useless if it cannot be applied in the real world.
• Industry Knowledge – What is the industry really like? What careers are available? What are the different fields? What are some areas of further study and research?
• General Business Skills – How businesses work – not specialized skills like Accounting but more generalized skills
• General Law skills – Basic understanding of contract, copyright, corporate law
• Interpersonal Skills – Teamwork, Interviewing, Dispute resolution
• General Technical Grounding – The focus here is on technology and how it is applied to solve problems, innovation and less on rote learning a particular skill

There are many others, but essentially my point here is that these sort of skills would be far more useful – a good grounding here enables the graduate to easily pick up the more specific skills when and if he/she needs them, instead of being like most graduates and forgetting them 2-3 years after graduation.

One of the things that initially interested me about ITIL was that it was a best practices framework that had come out of real use and was not simply a smokescreen to sell products and services. 

While it had its own strengths and weaknesses it offered a good knowledge base to the IT practitioner, and make his/her skill set much more portable between organizations as different IT shops started to standardize on the core ITIL processes (e.g. Incident, Problem, Change etc). 

However, these days it seems to have more of a hollow cynical feel to it, with commercial interests no longer strengthening it, but starting to erode its value. 

Some examples I can cite include:

• ITIL v3 - The ITIL v3 update was touted at addressing some shortcomings in ITIL, which it did to a certain extent. But were the side effects worth the improvements? For example, one of the more attractive things about ITIL was its start from the business Mantra - but V3 started introducing concepts like Event Management, which flies in the face of all that - focusing on a bottom up, boil the ocean view of IT service management. I've heard some of the presentations by the authors that this is not their intention, but that’s not how the sections read or how those vendors market their tools to this material. I plan to write a full article on Event Management in a couple of months because I see it as a huge step back to include it.
• Software Certification - ITIL was always more about the process and best practice, not prescribing how things must be done. It's ironic that it’s the management vendors that end up being extorted by the consulting companies to meet some standard that they simply invented and imply is all part of ITIL. Certainly I’ve worked with companies who believe them to be a core part of ITIL and want to include them in purchasing decisions, forcing the vendors to pony up the $$ to comply with a standard that doesn't exist! Now it appears that a more official software standard is on the way - I guess the sell out is finally complete.
• ITIL Certification - The Quality of the certification process seems to have degraded significantly. Certainly from speaking to people who have taken foundation certification after it was upgraded to v3, the questions seem to be focused only on rote learning and not about actually understanding the processes, the more advanced certifications seem to be a dizzying array of different courses and an expense that is out of the reach of all except those who's employer can afford to pay.
• The Quality of the reference materials. I still find myself reaching for my ITIL v2 books more than the V3 when I am looking for a reference point. I find the v2 books to be more thorough, more useful and much better written.
• Conferences - Some of those same tired old vendor presentations from the same tired presenter on thinly veiled product presentations make me think of that Bill Murray movie 'Groundhog Day'.

This is not to say that ITIL is no longer relevant because it certainly is. But I do think now is the time for people who want a real best practices framework and not an extension of certain companies marketing campaigns to try and take it back. Vendors have an important place to be, but they shouldn't abuse their position (and not all do), and users need to step up and get more involved in order to keep ITIL relevant now and into the future, because they will lose out in the end if they do not.

Forrester recently published a report on Business Service Management, which was an update on their previous BSM wave, as significant changes had occurred in the BSM vendor landscape.

Like the wave, while the report was very comprehensive in that it covered a lot of solutions, it didn't really give much guidance as to which BSM solutions are suited to what purpose, and which are really doing something else, but are branded as BSM.   Indeed, they listed every solution they reviewed in the 'leader' quadrant during the wave, which reduces their credibility.

The criteria they also used for this report, was somewhat lacking as well.   Forrester take the view that a Configuration Management Database (CMDB) is an essential part of a BSM solution, and infer that it is even a prerequisite.    I think including the CMDB as a prerequisite misses the whole point.  Unless the BSM solution is being driven from the business and the top down, its going to be nothing more than Event Management on steroids.   The problem with relying on the CMDB is that invariably the solution moves from being a top down view of what the business needs, to a bottom up grouping of infrastructure into business containers.   

What would have been a more appropriate pre-requisite is end user experience monitoring.   Too many of the BSM solutions look at things through the point of view of the infrastructure and its vital to consider how the applications/business services are supporting their users. 

However, given that Forrester used such rose tinted glasses to rate the vendors, here are a few thoughts of my own:

The Big Four:

The big four solutions all lean heavily on the CMDB, which makes implementations extremely long, and replacement very difficult.   Take into account that if you go with one of these solutions, it will take significant time to implement (unless you already have much of it) and be difficult to replace later on.   Thats not to say that you can't get value from these solutions, but be aware of the downsides.   The upside is that these vendors have a tool for pretty much everything. 

HP Software - Probably the strongest of the Big Four in the BSM space.   HP have a good foundation with the combination of the Mercury and OpenView tools.   Their real end user experience solution (RUM) is a weak link in an otherwise good portfolio of solutions.    Like the rest of the big four they leverage the CMDB heavily and require many products all to be integrated together.   A good choice if the organization is predominantly HP, but be mindful of vendor lock in and long implementation times.  

BMC Software - BMC have exceptional marketing and thought leadership in the area of BSM, and have done some extremely good acquisitions over the last couple of years.   Their current direction would appear to be more around data center automation.   However, their approach is heavily leveraged on their Atrium CMDB, and the solution which actually provides much of the BSM functionality (Service Impact Manager) is the weak link in their portfolio.    BMC are a good choice for those companies who have already invested in Remedy and Atrium and already own a significant portion of the BMC 'stack' (which has been cynically branded as BSM).   BMC is not a good choice for those who are not fully bought into the Remedy/Atrium message as getting a CMDB stood up is a multi- year project for most, and the two significant holes (SIM, and a poor End User Experience offering) make other vendors look more attractive. 

IBM Tivoli - Not at the same level as BMC or HP when it comes to business service management.   Their event Management solution is particularly strong with the NetCool acquisition, but this hasn't really translated all that well into Business Service Management.   Likely only a consideration when Global Services are involved.  

CA - CA do not really market to BSM, and they are definitely the weakest of the big four in this area.   Their focus seems to be digesting the various acquisitions they have done over the last few years.   Their application performance solution (Wily) is completely separated from the rest of their business which makes providing an integrated solution far more difficult.  

More specialized vendors coming in part 2.