Today Jack Probst presented to the itSMF Higher Education Special Interest Group (SIG). The presentation is to be posted on the SIG web site. The CMDB and the service catalog are very closely related. The CMDB starts with services anyways, and the service catalog is the list of services. Potential service catalog categories:

• Application Based Services (e.g. Customer Support Services)
• Hosting Services (e.g. Data Center services)
• Desktop Services (e.g. mobile devices)
• Shared Services (e.g. data LAN)
• IT Professional Services (e.g. Service Management, Procurement)

On Wednesday, February 4, 2009, the ITSMf USA Higher Education Special Interest Group held its first event on the campus of UC Santa Cruz. We attended the event online. Although we were not physically in attendance, I thought it was noteworthy that we attended the very first meeting of this SIG. Many of groups representing best practices have been around for decades. It is exciting to say that we took part in the initial event of a SIG that has the potential to transform the use of information technology in higher education.

Below are notes from today's itSMF USA Higher Education SIG round table conversation.

The itSMF USA Higher Education SIG is holding its first meeting today. We are attending virtually.

David Cannon, one of the authors of Service Operation, presented on "ITSM on a Shoestring."

He talked about how IT cost cutting can be misdirected, such as how IT shops are now running into "virtualization sprawl" from virtualizing servers for immediate cost without considering the longer-term costs of managing virtual machines' configuration.

Jim Haustein and Vick Dean of Cornell University delivered a presentation titled “Process Improvement in Higher Education” that discussed the process improvement program. Since mid-2007, Cornell has been using ITIL as a framework to create a more process-focused and service-focused organization. This was an excellent presentation filled with lessons learned and tips for people to take back to their institutions.

Here are a few quick points worth repeating:

Continuous management support is key to success.
Change Management was their first win.

Some of the EDUCAUSE 2008 presentations are now posted online. Presentations include the three general session presentations as well as an number of featured speaker presentations.

Here is a link to an index page where you can hyperlink to the presentations:

http://net.educause.edu/e08/

Check them out!

ITSMf USA has a Special Interest Group devoted to Higher Education. You can join the group by visiting their website and submitting an email request.

Go to http://www.itsmfusa.org/higher-education-sig for more information or to join.

The ITSMF USA site mentions that the Higher Education Special Interest Group plans to have its first public meeting in early 2009.