Were you asleep earlier this year and missed the announcement that ITIL has been updated?  I know from my recent discussions with enterprises many have no idea that the guidance many of us use for service management has gone through an update cycle.  Over the next few blogs I will deal with each book in a digestible form.

In summary the guidance reads more easily, processes are more readily linked together and the roles and role definitions are clearer for the traditional service manager. 

Interestingly, the guidance defines just about everyone's role in the IT Operations area as a "service manager." I'm not sure that is true or of much value, although it highlights the number and variety of roles required to effectively deliver IT-enabled business services and reminds me of the number of opportunities for automation.

As I read through the guidance, I was concerned by the lack of direct guidance around cloud computing (other than hidden away in an appendix). I know that the author team will argue that the guidance is applicable "to the cloud" or organizations choosing to leverage cloud, and it is. Supplier and vendor management are well covered, as is incident, problem and change, but in a multiple cloud provider environments, these will transform from the guidance and require considerably more thought to effectively implement. In my opinion the authoring team have simply missed the point that if the direction is cloud computing then users want simplicity not five huge volumes that take hours to filter through to derive any substantive value. With my rant complete, I am certain that some "cloud" guidance is just around the corner.

On the plus side, the rewrite -- sorry update -- to the Service Strategy book is fairly good, the new and updated processes are more relevant to service managers and are easier to digest. 

More on Service Strategy and the remainder of the volumes to come!