In June , the SIAM Foundation Body-of-Knowledge and accompanying certification got formally endorsed by the itSMF UK , and simultaneously the SIAM Foundation Architect Group won the Professional Service Management ‘ Thought Leadership ’ award . Enough reason to have a closer look at this publication and certification .
The term ‘ service integration and management ’ ( SIAM ) originated around 2005 from within the UK public sector . In 2010 , the UK Government launched their ICT strategy which included moving away from large prime supplier contracts to a more flexible approach using multiple providers and cloud based solutions . The term SIAM is a reference to an approach to help bring some control to the management of those multiple service providers . Other acronyms that are in use are :
• MSI ( Multi Sourcing Integration )
• SMI ( Service Management Integration )
• SI ( Service Integration )
• SMAI ( Service Management and Integration )
• SI & M ( Service Integration & Management ).
Despite the publication of white papers , blogs and twitter hashtag feeds , providing various flavours of commentary and opinion , until recently there has been no formalisation of the term SIAM , nor a standardised methodology . As such , practitioners were left lacking when looking for answers to the questions of ‘ what is
SIAM ?’ and ‘ can it help manage complex IT
environments ?’.
To try to bring commonality of purpose , Michelle Major-Goldsmith and Simon Dorst started conversations with Claire Agutter from Scopism , to initiate a project
that aimed to clarify SIAM practices and create content that could be offered to the community , free of charge . A plan was forged , and in 2016 a collective of IT consultants , trainers and practitioners ( now known as the ‘ the SIAM Foundation Architect Group ’) embarked upon creating a foundational Body of Knowledge ( BoK ) and accompanying certification for SIAM .
Claire Agutter , Director of Scopism said : ‘….”
The objective was to bring the giants of the SIAM world together and create a consolidated view of their knowledge and experience .
4 itSMF Bulletin — July 2017