Big announcement: The Service Portfolio and Catalog Language

We are making a big announcement today: the formation of a industry standards group to define standards for the exchange of service portfolio and service catalog information between different systems and vendors. This standard will be known as the Service Portfolio and Catalog Language (SPACL)

ITIL v3 introduced service portfolio, catalog, and request processes which have generated great excitement and a number of projects. In fact, in ITIL v3 the catalog is the beginning of the ITSM journey. 

Unfortunately, ITIL v3 does not provide specific schemas or models.  This creates significant confusion, waste and rework among end users.  They struggle with questions such as:

What should be documented in a Service Portfolio / Service Catalog?

How will this information be used with other IT functional areas?

What operational attributes should traverse different systems?

How can I interchange catalog information between different systems?

How can I be assured that my catalog can be made actionable with in a multivendor environment?

How can I bring in my supplier’s or managed service provider’s catalog into my own?

The end result is that customers spent a lot of money and effort to document services that cannot be used inside any toolset. Everyone has a different framework, structure, concept; interoperability is non-existent. 

Thus the urgent need exists for a standard.  This standard will support the growth of the industry by establishing a basic Service Portfolio and Service Request schema  that is implementation-independent, definitional and open.  This model should map to ITIL v3, be rigorous enough that tools can consume it,  and extensible to support specific needs of vendors and customers, but still remain interoperable.

We are opening a forum for questions at:  servicecatalogs.com

See announcement below

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Service Catalog Community Announces Service Catalog Standards Initiative

Interested Parties Invited to Attend Initial Meeting February 20th in Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS, NV – February 19, 2008 - The Service Catalog Community announced that it is hosting a forum on Wednesday, February 20th – at the Pink Elephant IT Service Management Conference – for interested parties to discuss formation of Service Catalog industry standards.  A recent survey of community members showed that 70% of IT organizations plan on deploying a Service Catalog in the next 12 months. But the survey also showed that organizations are struggling to achieve their Service Catalog objectives due to the lack of standardized structures, elements, content, implementation guides, and clarity on how to use their Service Catalog across different systems.

To address this issue, representatives from leading Service Catalog providers, IT Service Management industry associations, systems integrators, consultants, and the Service Catalog user community have been invited to meet at the Bellagio Hotel, Cezanne Room 1 in Las Vegas starting at Noon on Wednesday, February 20th to initiate the formation of the Service Portfolio and Catalog Language (SPACL) group.

“IT organizations are looking for guidance on what should be documented in a Service Portfolio and Service Catalog.  With version 3 of ITIL, the Service Catalog and service definition are central to a successful ITIL program. These service definitions live in the Service Portfolio, in financial systems, in provisioning systems, and a myriad of other systems. Until now there hasn’t been a common definition that can traverse these systems,” says Rodrigo Flores, CTO of newScale and chairman of the Service Catalog Community editorial board. The Service Portfolio and Catalog Language (SPACL) proposal provides a standards-based framework that will allow Service Catalog information to be shared with other IT functional areas and to promote the exchange of Service Portfolio and Service Catalog content among multiple vendors.  The goal of this initiative is to establish a working technical group within 60 days to define the standard.

Parties interested in learning more about SPACL can register on www.ServiceCatalogs.com. Alternatively, you can contact the chairman directly.  With more than 4,500 members, the Open Source Service Catalog Community is the most popular forum worldwide for IT practitioners to leverage best practices and proven examples as they get started with their Service Catalog initiatives. The vendor-neutral community includes areas for members to download Service Catalog templates, and encourages members to upload their Service Catalog examples to share among the community. The site also includes free resources, articles, community forums and links to relevant blogs.

Membership to the community is free and open to everyone, to encourage cross-industry collaboration and an open dialogue among ITIL experts, practitioners, and novices.

About The Open Source Service Catalog Community
This community is dedicated to the creation, sharing and distribution of Service Catalog and Service Portfolio best practices. The community is created, managed and maintained by independent IT practitioners committed to helping you deliver greater IT value and to foster better IT-business alignment. As an Open Source community – your contributions are critical to building and fostering a vibrant forum to achieve our goals. For more information, please visit the Open Source Service Catalog Community web site at www.servicecatalogs.com.