ITAM Trade Body progress report

ITAM Forum – Introduction

In November last year I announced the launch of a new trade body to push the ITAM industry forward.

See: New Global trade body announced to push the industry forward

“ITAM Forum” is being formed and will formally launch next month. Learn more at www.itamf.org.

This article provides an update on progress so far.

Objectives

As a quick recap, the aim of the ITAM Forum, a member driven, not-for-profit organisation, is to:

1. Be a caretaker of the new organisational certification program to enable organisations to demonstrate the quality of their ITAM practices
2. Educate and evangelise – to encourage more companies to embrace ITAM and also to attract new professionals into the industry

But why?

Why would an ITAM team want to quantify the quality of their ITAM practice? Because ITAM teams are increasingly reporting into the C-suite and face significant scrutiny and pressure from regulation, audit, security, service management, or operations to do outstanding work. Certification is a way of both of alleviating the pressure and demonstrating good governance.

See this paper on The ITAM Standards website for the relevance of ITAM in the 2020’s and the business benefits of certification (No registration required):

http://www.itamstandards.org/2018/01/26/itam-in-2020s/

ITAM Forum also provides a great opportunity for ITAM professionals to connect and collaborate. It is a member driven organisation for the benefit of members.

ITAM Forum – End user Trustee Board Announced

To ensure the trade body is relevant, practical and useable, it is overseen by a trustee board of end user ITAM professionals.

I am pleased to announce the end user trustees are now listed on the ITAM Forum website. Thanks to these eight professionals, leaders in their field, who are going to oversee the next step in the evolution of the ITAM industry. Please join me in congratulating them and thanking them for their efforts.

ITAM Forum End-user Trustees

http://itamf.org/trustees/

In order to be representative of the whole ITAM industry, the trustee board will also include independent consultants, tool providers, resellers and partners, and an audit firm. Further board trustees and sponsors will be announced in due course.

Banking Working Group  

The first Banking working group was held last week and banks from five countries participated. A summary of the meeting is as follows:

“The first meeting was designed as a relaxed discussion whereby attendees could introduce themselves and try to identify common ground. Attendees discussed their most pressing problems and what they’d like to gain from an ITAM in Banking working group. The purpose of the working group is to identify common best practice for ITAM in Banking, and in particular, how could an organisational certification for ITAM alleviate some of the burden of Financial Services regulatory compliance regarding the management of IT Assets.”

Topics for discussion during future working groups include:

• Executive sponsorship
• Risk management
• Security
• Working with stakeholders
• Cloud first strategies
• Tooling

If you are an end user working in Financial Services and want to get involved, please reach out using the ITAM Forum website.

Get involved

Stay tuned to the ITAM Review newsletter for updates. To get involved please make contact via the ITAM Forum website. www.itamf.org