The IT Skeptic - Comments for "Is Microsoft attempting to patent CMDB?"

How secure is your technical career?

skeptic — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 18:51:47 +0000

You have obviously been on the receiving end of an unsatisfactory ITIL implementation. You have my sympathies. There are plenty of them but not all of them are that way.

I cannot agree that service is a thing of the past, or indeed that ITIL is B.S.

There are three kinds of people in this world:
the inner circle that make things happen
The ring around them that watch things happen
The largest outer circle who say "WTF happened?"

May I suggest you are not reading the winds of change in the IT industry. If you choose to remain a "techie through and through" then I put it to you that you are not serving yourself or your family. I refer you to a recent article "How secure is your IT technical career?". You can choose to throw rocks or you can choose to change with the industry. ITIL may disappear but service management is here to stay: I recommend you get with it.

Itil its just B.S right? & implemented by idiots!

Visitor — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 12:13:47 +0000

Im a techie, through n through.

I have seen Itil being implemented and Service 'improved' to the point of
no one competent on the helpdesk tha knows anything about the local set-ups. So they cant answer problems. Great.

Axing staff so the remaining cant cope with the workload.

Why is it we have to always put up with the non IT implementing impossible target based systems on techies that just want to do their jobs?

Service is a thing of the past fellas.

But im afraid anyone can come up with a good framework, (even better if you're IT literate and actually know what you're up to)

Common sense has taken a leap out of the window.

Im not convinced by it.

Whens the next fad?

"ITIL went from ignoring the

dool — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 23:30:59 +0000

"ITIL went from ignoring the two-thirds of the IT budget that is purchased from vendors, and a pitiful financial mini-note, to, with v.3, taking over procurement and all negotiations. Poorly, of course."

This is not clear. Please elaborate.

I've seen some of the new material but no more than 1/5th. I've come across no vendor bias and of the four tool vendors you mention, I can find evidence of only one involved in authoring V3.

I have replied to this on the blog

skeptic — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 22:03:33 +0000

Thanks for a most provocative comment. I have replied to this on the blog

I thought I was cynical

JamesFinister — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 21:35:26 +0000

I think ITIL 3 is set to be the least anglo centric version ever, there is certainly no sign of a British Cabal. Those who are familiar with the real history of ITIL will know there has actually long been a big Dutch and North American influence. I have done work indirectly with Microsoft via other ITIL vendors and I do think they and IBM sometimes give themselves more credit than they should for their involvement in it's development (On the other hand I highly rate Micosoft's Source Book for the HelpDesk which is now out of print but was a jolly* good book)

Having read the draft of ITIL 3 I can't see much vendor bias, either.

* Sorry for the very British term. BTW, we did invent ITIL, you know, so perhaps deserve some credit.

Microsoft is worse than ITIL?

kingmail53 — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 17:35:01 +0000

The Vendor and British ITIL cabal are busy redefining their closed, theoretical "framework" to include everything under the sun. And, they seem to be doing it for the express purpose of advancing the vendors sales performance.

Why would Microsoft be more challenging than are they? Your comment implies that Microsoft is more avaricious than HP, IBM, CA or BMC. You don't really believe that, do you? I would submit that any such suggestion is either astoundingly naive or indicates an anti-Microsoft bias.

ITIL went from ignoring the two-thirds of the IT budget that is purchased from vendors, and a pitiful financial mini-note, to, with v.3, taking over procurement and all negotiations. Poorly, of course.

What next? CRM and ERP are soon to be part of ITIL because these same vendors sell that software too?

on holiday

Charles Betz — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 23:39:18 +0000

It will be a bit, I am on holiday... happiness to you and yours.

-ctb

Hello! is there a patent lawyer in the house?

skeptic — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 18:56:58 +0000

So it may be some sort of defensive tactic in case someone actually copies their product? They can't be too serious about it if they are so sloppy in categorising it?

Hello! is there a patent lawyer in the house?

Not outraged

mummymonkey — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 11:55:05 +0000

Well it's cheeky that's for sure. Maybe I'm just annoyed that I didn't think of doing it first? It's vexatious in the sense of annoying I suppose but I doubt if it's vexatious in the legal sense. (I'm not a lawyer though).

It's interesting (maybe) that the patent application is classified in 707/200, which is database maintenace rather than 707/100, database schema.

There are thousands of existing patents for schema so it's hard to imagine they are all brilliant flashes of invention.

http://www.patentgenius.com/class/707.html

Original Concepts?

buzina — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 10:26:24 +0000

Yes, but MS description of a "radical new CMDB" is obviously just as "radical & new" as my description for changing a light bulb. Thanks for sharing this, I do need a joke or two to tell in a few upcoming meetings ;-).

Prior art

skeptic — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 18:31:52 +0000

Most of that stuff gets seen off by the principle of "prior art": your patent must be original. if it has been done before and you aren't doing anything new, you can't patent it. MS are trying to say (I think) that the concept of storing stuff in separate tables instead of columns in one table is a radical new concept for CMDBs.

Patent on "How to change a light bulb"

buzina — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 15:52:04 +0000

Changing a light bulb is a process which I can describe. So why shouldn't I go ahead and try getting a patent on it? Everybody has to pay me money to fix their lighting problems....

I must say US Patent office is the best place for real world sarcasm. But I must admit they seem to be either spending a hell of a lot of money or are organized quite well to keep up with all those nonsense patents they are receiving.

Lets all put up an open source IT Service Management framework with real best practice.

How about your outrage

skeptic — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 18:42:13 +0000

How about your outrage detector?

Can these ******s get away with this? Or is it vexacious?

The needle on my sarcasm

mummymonkey — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 13:33:51 +0000

The needle on my sarcasm detector just wrapped round its end stop.

With you on the case

skeptic — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 05:49:22 +0000

Thanks Charlie. With you on the case I know we'll get a rational and reliable analysis. Looking forward to your feedback

this is outrageous

charles betz — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 02:44:02 +0000

This is outrageous. I will be further analyzing. The core of it is a completely generic data model, well established industry art for decades.

I have been pointing out the evils of the overly generalized CMDB data schema for some time now starting here:

http://www.tdan.com/i025hy04.htm

Charlie

The only thing Microsoft standarise is their technique for corru

skeptic — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 18:46:12 +0000

Oh puhhleeese!!! The only thing Microsoft standarise is their technique for corrupting public standards. Name one "standard" that Microsoft is responsible for that isn't a proprietary product of Microsoft: Windows, VB, .NET.

Name one public standard that Microsoft have adopted without subtly bastardising it so theirs is incompatible: MS-SQL, LDAP, ITIL....

Did they ? That's a first.

Visitor — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 16:41:01 +0000

Did they ? That's a first. They do not standardize things, they widespread their own way of doing things and then people are forced into accepting them. That's an all different thing. They do however participate more and more in standard committee. But if all that is a front for patent application to be able then to sweep the carpet under everybody else's feet, then ...

This might be a good thing

Visitor — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 12:33:47 +0000

Where would we be if Microsoft didn't step in and help standardize things?