My ITIL v3 books arrived a couple days ago, so now I can start posting about this important material. First comment: ITIL has restored Data and Information Management as an element of the Service Design volume. This is not a new topic for ITIL; the ITIL version 1 Data Management volume was (and is) an excellent piece of work. For some reason it got lost in version 2. The v3 treatment is much briefer, but at least it's there.
This makes ITIL more compatible with COBIT; one of the most obvious ITIL v2 gaps was that COBIT calls for defining an information architecture ("Plan and Organize" control objective #2 - very prominent), where ITIL v2 was mute.
It's also a vote of confidence for the data management community (the folks who hang out at dm-discuss, belong to DAMA, and go to the Dama/Wilshire conferences.)
Charlie
