Version 3 of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), a best-practices framework which should be in the lexicon of every CIO, was released this May without a great deal of fanfare. Seen primarily as an update to the popular and longstanding version 2, version 3 did not stir a great deal of excitement in the industry despite promises of significant changes in the framework.

CIO Magazine is now suggesting that it's going to continue to be less popular than its older brethren since the associated training requirements and costs for certification have gone up substantially-this despite the fact that the framework was supposedly simplified by a more holistic approach and slimmed from eight volumes into five.

Is this just a stab by publishers and trainers to drum up some business or are there real benefits to adopting version 3? Personally I haven't spent enough time looking at the new version to make a judgement on the matter, but I've never seen anything to suggest to me that version 2 could not be implemented holistically itself, and I have always felt that part of the draw of the framework has been in the flexibility it affords. This sort of flexibility in products often comes at the expense of their successors; if you're able to get what you need out of the precursor, why incur the cost and disruption of moving to something newer?

We've been seeing glimmers out of the IT industry that they are beginning to get this philosophy of late, most notably with regard to Vista and Office 2007; perhaps this is another sign that IT professionals are getting serious about weighing costs versus benefits in their procurement strategies.