In my experience, V2 was the watershed for ITIL. Before V2, only the Europeans and a few of the largest and most forward looking shops wanted to talk ITIL. With V2, interest in North America went mainstream. Underneath it all, was a paradigm shift: IT practitioners began to realize that with ITIL they no longer need to re-invent the wheel every day as they evolve their practices. V3 is not a paradigm shift of that magnitude.

Nevertheless, I have been impressed with the response that ITIL V3 has generated. I was talking with one of those early ITIL, forward looking shops this week about their experience with ITIL and V3 in particular. This shop happens to be an outsourcer, providing IT functions to their customers. They pointed out that they frequently have to use non-ITIL terminology, like ‘ticket’ instead of ‘incident’, because their customers are uncomfortable with ITIL terms, but those same customers know and expect ITIL practices because they look for the ITIL focus on business-IT alignment. With that in mind, this outsourcer found the enhanced business focus of V3 quite attractive.

At the same time, the business emphasis of V3 will no doubt generate some culture shock among IT pro’s who have Computer Science degrees, not MBAs. I blogged on this sometime ago http://community.ca.com/blogs/itservice . Regards, Marv Waschke

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