Something is bothering me.
When I first looked at the agenda for the 2013 itSMF UK conference in November, what stood out for me was a glaring omission: where is the IT Asset Management content?
First, let me state: It’s a really good agenda, full of really interesting speakers, and I will certainly aim to be there. I’ve been privileged to work in the the UK ITSM sector for the thick end of two decades, and many of the names on the agenda are people i feel lucky to have worked and interacted with.
If you can, you should definitely go.
However, the lack of any ITAM focus, across more than 40 presentation sessions, is strange. If we want to understand our business services, we have to have a grasp on the assets underpinning them. The nearest this agenda appears to get to that is an interesting looking session on Supplier Management – important, but only part of the picture, and again, something that doesn’t really work without a good knowledge of what we are actually buying.
It took ITIL a while to come to the realisation that an asset is relevant in more ways than being just a depreciating item on a balance sheet, but version 3 finally got there, and then some:
“Service Asset”, according to ITIL v3: Any Capability or Resource of a Service Provider. Resource (ITILv3): [Service Strategy] A generic term that includes IT Infrastructure, people, money or anything else that might help to deliver an IT Service. Resources are considered to be Assets of an Organization Capability (ITIL v3): [Service Strategy] The ability of an Organization, person, Process, Application, Configuration Item or IT Service to carry out an Activity. Capabilities are intangible Assets of an Organization.”
So… we consider our service-underpinning capabilities and resources to be our assets, but we don’t discuss managing those assets at the premier conference about managing the services? More importantly, we offer nothing to its increasingly important practitioners?
As long as ITAM is only discussed at ITAM conferences, and ITSM keeps up the habit of excluding it (this isn’t universal, mind: this presentation by Scott Shaw at Fusion 13 seems to hit the perfect message), then we risk looking disjointed and ineffective to CIOs who depend on the complete picture. To me, that’s pretty worrying.
(Footnote: I did submit a speaker proposal, but this isn’t about my proposal specifically – I’m sure lots of proposals couldn’t make the list)
Evolving ITSM 
Interesting insight Jon. I think this is a symptom of ITAM not representing itself better in itSMF.
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I think it’s probably a two way issue historically, but I know there are a bunch of very ITIL-aligned Asset Managers now, doing really great work in terms of positioning themselves as the CIO’s “trusted source” of information. Gartner are pushing this message pretty firmly now: The Asset Manager needs to be very proactive, cross-functional, and aware. The current round of US seminars definitely have more content on this, but the UK one doesn’t. So some really good ITSM people aren’t represented in this forum.
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I was disappointed when they lumped ITAM together with Configuration Management when it went to v3. I am an asset manager and a “service asset” is too broad a range of asset types. Being specific that ITAM is about IT assets and what its lifecycle is would have been beneficial to many of my clients. At each client I have to go through a whole presentation on the differences between ITAM and Config since they just muddied the waters in v3
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