Was Gartner right or wrong?

An article published in November 2006 quoted Simon Mingay, research vice president for IT management strategies at Gartner "...appointment of APM Group has created a division in the IT service management community..." and "will effectively create a parallel qualification scheme in competition with the official ITIL-branded APM Group scheme and marks the end of effective negotiations between APMG and EXIN/BCS-ISEB".

Of course, at the time Simon could not have foreseen that in January 2007 the three organizations would resolve their differences; seeing Exin and BCS/ISEB offering the APMG ITIL v3 exams to the training partners.

So in that regard Simon was incorrect; but he did go on to say "...important for IT organisations to be aware that they will be faced with two competing training schemes..".

What is being referred to here is the genuine ITIL certification program (owned and operated by APM Group) and a spin off certification scheme loosely term IT Service Management (owned and operated by Exin and BCS/ISEB).

As mentioned Exin and BCS/ISEB now do offer the genuine APMG ITIL exams, but they also have their own IT Service Management programs. What the long term future is for certification programs that don't use the term ITIL remains to be seen. However, as the global community starts to come to understand who and what is involved I predict that ITIL certification will dominate.

To think otherwise is to assume that the market has a loyalty to the past, rather than a desire for the future.

What news of the alliance?

December 2006 Exin and ISEB announce their alliance in what appeared - at the time - to be a direct snub of the APM Group (however, recall that in January 2007, both Exin and ISEB signed on with APM Group).

BUT - what of the alliance? I searched both Exin and ISEB web sites today and the only reference I found to the alliance was copies of the press release relating to the alliance announcement.

Neither features the others logo or courses and there does not appear to be anything that would actually suggest that the alliance has gone further than just a statement saying that there was one !

Maybe I am missing something, but can someone tell us what the flow on benefits to the industry has been as a result of the alliance.

The press releases indicated "other alliance members" - did anyone hear any more about that? On the ISEB web site there was talk about a launch event in Q1 2007. Again nothing on the web site and no major news stories have broken that I have seen.

For one, I feel that after 8 months surely there should have been some further announcement. If the alliance lost it's puff after both signed on with APMG then so be it. That is the nature of business, but it may be time to remove the press releases if there is nothing more to add.