The ISO ITAM Standards Committee concluded a very successful meeting at Aalto University in Finland last week.

We are grateful to Finland for the wonderful hospitality, and to all our experts who participated in person or remotely from many countries and organizations. We had exciting discussions about the future of ITAM Standards as impacted by the following (partial list only):

– Blockchain
– Virtual Containers
– Cybersecurity
– ITIL v4
– ITAM Data Structure orchestration
– IaaS/PaaS/CaaS/SaaS/FaaS
– Real-Time ITAM leveraging AI & Machine Learning
– ITAM as a Service
– IoT
– Network and Storage in a “Software Defined” world

A number of projects are currently under development at the committee, including the following:

Updating the published standard on Software Identification Tags (ISO/IEC 19770-2)
Updating the published standard on ITAM Overview & Vocabulary (ISO/IEC 19770-5)
New standard on Hardware Identification Tags (future ISO/IEC 19770-6)
New Technical Report on ITAM Data Structure Orchestration (future ISO/IEC 19770-7)
New standard on Mapping of 19770-1 (ITAM System) to Other Industry Frameworks (future ISO/IEC 19770-8)
New Technical Report on ITAM System Guidance (future ISO/IEC 19770-10)
New standard on ITAM Audit and Certification Requirements (future ISO/IEC 19770-11)

We are also expanding our liaison relationships with other ISO committees, specifically with those focused on Cybersecurity, Cloud, IoT, Blockchain, and IT Service Management.

Our committee members come from 24 countries with a cross-section representation of the ITAM ecosystem:

Technology providers/software publishers
ITAM/SAM tool vendors
Consulting & managed services firms
Audit firms
Industry bodies
Analysts & media
User groups
End-user organizations/companies

Our next in-person meeting is in Lisbon, Portugal this fall, then next spring in Okayama, Japan. If you are an ITAM expert who wishes to be at the cutting edge of our profession and make a difference, please reach out to me about joining the ISO ITAM Standards Committee!

What is the ISO ITAM Standards Committee?

The ISO ITAM Standards Committee (also known as “Working Group 21”) owns the ISO/IEC 19770 family of standards, which address both the processes and technology for managing software and related IT assets.

The objectives of the ISO/IEC 19770 standards are to enable organizations of all types and sizes in:

Minimizing risk associated with IT assets;
Reducing costs associated with IT assets; and
Supporting other IT processes that are dependent on IT Asset Management information (for example, information security).

At this time, 5 parts of the ISO/IEC 19770 series have been published:

ISO/IEC 19770-1: ITAM System (main standard);
ISO/IEC 19770-2: Software Identification (“SWID”) Tags;
ISO/IEC 19770-3: Software Entitlement (“Ent”) Schema;
ISO/IEC 19770-4: Resource Utilization Measurement (“RUM”); and
ISO/IEC 19770-5: Overview and Vocabulary.