Most of my career I have been learning and applying new industry standards to the work I do. I started many years ago with BS5750 the then new data center standard, this was superceeded by ISO9000 with TickIT. Within a period of four years it was ITIL, BS7799, ISO 17799, ISO 27001 and then more recently ISO20000. With all these new standards no wonder customers (who have real day jobs) cannot navigate through the minefield. On top of these dependent on the industry you are in we also have SOX, CobIT, SAS70, HIPPA, or even CFR21 Part 11.

So recently I started to look at our Managed Services portfolio with a view to clearly mapping our services to these industry standards. The more I have reviewed and compared these standards I have found that there are very few significant differences. Of course if you make money by producing training certification and publications to support these standards or best practice then of course you have a vested interest in convincing people your best practice is significantly different and will bring major market advantage to anyone who implements it.

Or perhaps I am just getting cynical in my old age......................