TSO

Fresh out of the pan today, the Scope and Development Plan: ITIL® V3 Update is released. (Thanks Liz for the tip!) I'm getting ready to leave for the Pink Elephant conference in Las Vegas (see you there! Come to my sessions, or see me in booth 203), so I may not get time to comment on this document. We all welcome your comments - leave them here.

Is a British Government website inaccurate or is APMG TSO operating without a license?

TSO has appointed the four "mentors" for the ITIL Refresh Refresh (thanks servicesphere)

All you budding ITIL authors, now is your chance.

ITIL V3, PRINCE2:2009 (The-Framework-Previously-Known-As-Prince2), ITIL V3 New Edition... and now M-o-R:2010 and MSP:2010. Yes, OGC are calling for authors for Management of Risk 2010 edition and Managing Successful Programmes 2010 edition. Go on! How hard can it be? But you better hurry...

TSO and APMG both maintain websites "on behalf of" OGC. TSO also maintains their own commercial site with a confusingly similar name to their "on behalf" one. Neither of them provide any user community- that is left to itSMF to do. Page ranks of pages are [corrected:] 6 or less, while for purposes of comparison the less popular ISACA quietly maintains a page rank 8. The Wikipedia entry is rubbish. ITIL's online brand presence is a dog's breakfast - ill-conceived and poorly executed.

Who now controls ITIL? Who sits atop this multi-billion-dollar empire and calls the shots? The real power behind ITIL is still fragmented, although one wonders for how long. The IT Swami predicts!

I see the price of TSO's ITIL Live™ has fallen even further, in fact halved AGAIN. Since the £495 per annum fee now includes ITIL V3 Lifecycle Suite content - i.e. you get an online subscription to the books included in the price (normally £265 p.a. ) - some readers may now judge it worth considering, especially if the boss is paying. Quite a cut from the original £2,500!

Readers may have missed the comment a while ago that the ITIL portal was originally going to be "available to the ITSM community at no cost".

As predicted, they're doing it hard at TSO: ITIL Live subscription has been slashed BY over 60%, from £2,500 to £950 (not that's not for life, just for a year). Now it is just insanely expensive rather than hilarious. Given that we were originally promised it for free, I still think they have a damned gall.

And the itSMFUSA are peddling it for them with emails to all members. it is sold via the itSMFUSA shop, so hopefully itSMF thereby get a cut for all the free marketing. Wonder how the corporate sponsors of itSMFUSA feel about it.

We pointed out how silly the price was, compared it unfavourably with the McKinsey Quarterly subscription, and wondered how they hope to get any takers with such an invisible website. Now reality, and the recession, and competition, are finally biting for TSO.

Somebody let me know when they get below a hundred quid OK?