Last month, two IT service management experts from Pink Elephant were selected to form part of the ITIL refresh project PINK ELEPHANT is no new kid on the block. This international company has been actively involved in the ITIL project since its inception in the late eighties, and today specialises in ITIL education and consulting services globally, including South Africa and Africa.

Today, its PinkVerify certification is recognised as one of the foremost programmes for granting ITIL compatibility in the IT service management industry.

I caught up with Neil Petford, director at the local office of Pink Elephant, to look into the big news that two of its employees were selected to write part of the refreshed ITIL best practices.

Petford says it all started with an open competition organised by UK government agency, the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), which owns ITIL. The competition pre-selected candidates based on their knowledge of ITIL, their track record, professional standing in their own fields and their ability to write well. So it came that Pink Elephant`s George Spalding and Gary Case were snatched up to form part of the refresh project team.

Labelled as seasoned educators, consultants and writers, not to mention accomplished speakers at major IT conferences, both executives hold top industry certifications, including ITIL Service Manager - considered to be the `holy grail of ITIL certifications`, says Petford.

He says Spalding and Case, based in Canada, have led and managed extensive IT service improvement initiatives in global companies and public entities over the past twenty years.

OGC has announced that Spalding and Case will exclusively write about continual service improvement - one of the five volumes in ITIL version three.

In a statement, OGC said it expects to refresh ITIL every three to five years to ensure it reflects the requirements of users in the UK public sector - requirements that have globally spilled into the private sector as governance becomes top-of-mind for CEOs in the US and the UK.

So what are the objectives for the refresh? OGC says the purpose is to ensure that ITIL remains the most current global best practice, that is, subject to international review by ITIL experts. The framework is moving towards a lifecycle approach, and, its owners hope, will remain the framework that meets the needs of businesses who wish to ensure that services that support the business are delivered and managed in the most effective, efficient manner.

Locally, Petford says, ITIL`s momentum continues to grow. "With the need for effective corporate governance high on the agenda, ITIL recommendations are geared to help conformity from a technology perspective."

However, other than in financial institutions (Absa/Barclays) and companies with global footprints (Sasol, Multichoice, 3M), he says local uptake has been slow, and bureaucracy and red tape are stalling the uptake of ITIL, as it is a mammoth task and there is no real immediate return on investment, other than compliance. However, the conformity to ITIL is inevitable as US and UK operations are aggressively spending on governance and risk management strategies and procedures, and `out-of-sight, out-of-mind` is simply not the solution, Petford says.

He hopes that in the next ITIL refresh, South African consultants will be part of the ITIL thinking pot. "As you can imagine we have significant governance knowledge, and as we continue to grow, will definitely want to be part of the process."

Source: Pink Elephant