Friday, September 17, 2010

Why can't we all just get along?

My response to:

Clouderati vs. ITILista. My response to Skep


Why is it in America everything has to be at one extreme or the other?

You are either a Democrat or Republican.
You are either a Terrorist or a Patriot.
You are either a Clouderati or an ITILista.

I have to agree with Skep, partially because he is on a different continent, but mostly because he's right!

Rodrigo, you experienced the worst part of ITIL. This idea that one must hit every step and dot every i before moving on to the next step. People who create process for sake of producing process and making themselves seem indispensable while doing so. These people will always exist and they use ITIL as a blueprint and excuse for doing so. This isn't unique to ITIL either. CMMi, COBIT, ISO xxxx, none of them are bad on their own. It's the damage you can inflict in their name that makes people run screaming when they hear another four letter acronym attached to the word process.

Skep summed it up in his first statement: "we aren't anti-automation, or dismissive of automation. Process-geeks understand that you have to fix the process before you automate it, else you'll be accelerating backwards. Automation makes bad process faster. Automation is one of the later stages of refinement once you have something worth automating."

Why does it take longer? One can assume that the process in place now about to be automated, outsourced, or both, has room for improvement. Automation does not improve a process, it only makes it faster. Outsourcing a process does not improve a process, it only makes it cheaper. So, a cloud implementation of a process without reviewing its' merits or benefits will allow you to do it cheaper and faster, but the customer will see no improvement. Cheaper and faster benefits the IT department, not the user. It should not take 12-18 months to improve a process. If it takes longer than 3 months (1 financial quarter). You are doing it wrong.

Rodrigo, your original article had a comparison chart of ITIL and Cloud. You categorized, ITIL as being focused on customers and Cloud being focused on infrastructure. I think this clearly makes ITIL the winner, as infrastructure is meaningless if does not meet the needs of the customer.

ITIL results in cloud implementation. Cloud is a natural outcome of ITIL. The two need one another and are not mutually exclusive.

1 comment:

yajur said...




Thank you for the info. It sounds pretty user friendly. I guess I’ll pick one up for fun. thank u




Cloud Implementation