It has been a while since Professor Maarten Looijen came up with the tripartite division of technical management, application management, and functional management. Since that we have modified the terms a bit and we speak of IT infrastructure management (IT-IM), application management (AM) and business information management (BIM). While not everyone agrees, many also say: ITIL is the service management framework for IT-IM. After ITIL, ASL has been developed as model for AM and BiSL for BIM. But every now and then I have the feeling that we are still missing something. It is time for CSL?

Not very long ago files and databases were one-to-one associated with an application. Therefore, the management and maintenance of the data structures are also logically part of AM (and so ASL). In addition, IT-IM includes building and storing the files and within BiSL we can find processes for data requirements and content management. So far so good! But nowadays one can see that files and data exist separate from a single application. A database is no longer one to one associated with an application. In ITIL and ASL data and files come second place. But the importance of data grows.

The reason for the development of ASL in addition to ITIL, was because the subject “management and maintenance of software” not well defined in ITIL. The maintenance of software is a different game than managing the technical production infrastructure. But the same actually applies to data. Employees of organisations bring their own Apps and devices and use the data in their own environment. Developments like Cloud, Smart devices, Apps and Big Data are not clearly addressed in the three IT service management domains by Van Looijen.

My feeling: it is time for CSL (Content Services Library). If you say A (SL) and B (iSL), you must also say C (SL).

Do you have any ideas or views: please come forward.