is itsm relevant in the current economy?

David Cannon's name alone drew a good crowd for the monthly meet of ITSMF USA's - New York LIG. The weather was aweful.

The topic for tonight's discussion was "Is ITSM relevant in the current economy?" An effective presentation indicating why is ITSM not only relevant but also effective. Some practical tips and suggestions helped the presentation worth while. He did bring up Majid's slide on Service Strategy. He also brought up a slide on a topic that I was a Teaching Assistant on - "Enterprise Architecture as a Business Strategy" by Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill, David Robertson.

IMHO, ITSM is relevant for parties interested in realizing the complete potential of IT. I have seen environment where businesses abdicate from their responsibility of making IT as a service successful. Such environments are relatively hopeless. This is where the pitch for a Service Manager comes in. Think about it.

It felt good to be back to these LIG meetings. I used to attend those until Nov 07 and thereafter started my travel projects. Now, I will be attending these on a regular basis as I am working locally and can control my timelines.

After the presentation meeting, the organizers, myself, and David decided to go out for socializing. We had a few drinks at Connolly's in midtown Manhattan after the presentation was done. This took me back to the CMU days. The last I met David Cannon was at Walnut Grill in Shadyside, (Pittsburgh, PA) in early '07 while he was guiding us for the CMU SMO Student Interest group.

I regularly keep updated via various sources. One of the most under-rated and relatively unknown source in the developed world is the Infosys blog on ITSM - ITSM Service Matters!

PE firms must deploy ITIL v3 in their portfolio companies

Recently, an article of mine was published on thinkingstreet.com here.


ITIL v3’s business service management approach makes it the best fit for adoption by private equity (PE) firm for deploying in their portfolio companies in order to enhance the value of their portfolio.

The prime objective of a PE firm is to obtain controlling interest in a target company and restructure the target company over a period of 3-7 years such that its value enhances and sell it once the market value is more. It can be reasonably concluded that the value of the PE firms is a function of value of their portfolio companies.

This objective is achieved by deploying best management practices and cutting on flab in the operations of the target company. Usually, in a PE firm, a partnership’s investment activities can be divided into four stages: selecting investments, structuring investments, monitoring investments, and exiting investments .

ITIL v3 fits well at the stages of structuring investments and monitoring investments. The PE firms can leverage the best practices in the only written IT Operations’ guide. The beginning of a v3 project is resource intensive. However, it starts yielding benefits within 6-12 quarters depending on how it was deployed.

The prime reason that v3 is a good fit for PE is due to its business service management approach for the IT services. Besides, v3 introduces the much needed dimension of Financial Management and portfolio approach, a dimension that was missing from the earlier versions but was of high significance. The address to value creation, value capture, and value networks makes it well-aligned with the objectives of the PE firm.

The concept of market spaces discussed in V3 helps the IT department think beyond the immediate internal customer. If the IT arm of a particular portfolio company can start providing services to external customers, the value of the portfolio company will be enhanced.

Also, V3 adopts a lifecycle approach, which is pragmatic as compared to the earlier modular approach, which discounted the fact that the business place is constantly evolving and that IT needs to adapt. When a portfolio company is being restructured by a PE firm, there are significant changes, which can be addressed on the IT side only by a lifecycle approach.

On one hand, most of the IT shops find V3 abstruse and hence, either delay the adoption and/or are too busy putting out fires in order to adopt it. V3 will act as a shaman between those who worlds. The resistance is easier to overcome in case of a PE portfolio company than in case of a regular company. The structuring of the organization is in such a way that the partners can exert significant pressure to get initiatives off the ground quickly. Besides, the managers of the portfolio companies must not oppose the adoption of v3 in these environments as they gain an experience, which sells for a higher rate in the market, if they can prove a successful deployment.

If I were a stakeholder in the third version (popularly known as v3), I would pitch it to the PE firms, in order to have increased adoption for my Operations’ guide.