Geoff Harmer, PhD is an independent consultant specialising in IT governance and best practices for IT service management based on COBIT, ITIL, ISO 20000, ISO 38500 and other lesser-known frameworks and standards. He is the principal and founder of Maat Consulting Ltd (www.maatconsulting.com) and a Fellow of the British Computer Society (FBCS).
Since 2001 he has specialised in communicating and developing ideas and approaches around standards and frameworks for information technology through courses, workshops, seminars and consultancy. He is an accredited lecturer in ITIL, COBIT and ISO 20000 and he has been an associate lecturer in Technology with the UK Open University since 2000.
Over 29 years he has worked as network manager, technical trainer, consultant, training manager and presenter of courses, workshops and seminars in 25 countries.
Since 1986 he has been known to hide his identity under the pen-name Deaf-Llama; a name he was given by delegates from a well-known investment bank when overnight they changed everyone’s name-card to a “sounds-like” name.

• 03/05/2012 ITIL Master is here but with strong competition
  The ITIL Master qualification is at last available (April 27 2012).  Those holding the ITIL Expert certificate now have an opportunity to prove their expertise in implementing ITSM best...
• 19/04/2012 COBIT 5 Miscellany
  In order to present a 1 day COBIT 5 Update seminar on Friday 13th April, just 3 days after the launch of COBIT 5, I had to make a detailed study of the newly released materials and couple it with my...
• 04/02/2012 BYOD - Bring your own didgeridoo?
  I first came across Bring Your Own (BYO) on a visit to Sydney, Australia in 1987. You probably know that it’s a common approach in Australia and New Zealand to the provision of alcoholic drinks in...
• 27/12/2011 ITIL 2011 and The Beatles
  A holiday challenge. Can you name the Beatles songs used to explain ITIL 2011? ITIL 2011 It seems like years since it’s been clear It’s getting better all the time It’s a thousand pages, give or...
• 02/12/2011 Should CIOs report to the CEO or the CFO?
  The Forrester Community for CIOs has been debating during the past two months whether the CIO should report to the CEO . Its small group of contributing CIOs agreed 100%..  Earlier this year,...
• 04/08/2011 ITIL 2011 Edition Miscellany
  The ITIL 2011 Edition books arrived today (1st August 2011). Here are some interesting points I found in my half-day perusal of them. Roles The role of Product Manager that was only defined in the...
• 21/06/2011 Is 100% pass rate for Foundation exams on the horizon?
  The world of IT training has improved significantly over the past 30 years. Training qualifications have been standardised by the introduction of independent qualification boards that define syllabi...
• 19/04/2011 COBIT 5 Update – it’s almost ready
  On 12th April 2011, I attended an enlightening evening lecture in London on COBIT 5 presented by Dr Derek Oliver (co-chair COBIT 5 Task Force at ISACA). He explained the new concepts, the core...
• 01/04/2011 ITIL invented 27 years earlier than thought
  Contrary to official Office of Government Commerce (OGC) publications, it now appears that ITIL, the IT Infrastructure Library, the IT industry best practice with world wide adoption, was created...
• 02/02/2011 Lesser-spotted ITSM frameworks - 10
  A new industry standard for the assessment of IT service providers is set to appear in final draft in April 2011 with formal issue by the end of the year. It is called the Common Assurance Maturity...
• 04/01/2011 2011 – a prime year for Continuing Professional Development (CPD)
  If you have made a New Year’s resolution to continue developing your career in ITSM then you may wish to gain new qualifications. This column is intended to give you some suggestions on relevant and...
• 30/11/2010 At last, a top-class ITIL V3 book
  There has been much discussion about the ITIL V3 core books since they were published in May 2007 and clearly some people have been disappointed with these publications judging by the statement made...
• 23/11/2010 Availability-3: Measuring service availability
  In my last two columns (Availability-1 and Availability-2), I discussed how to plan for availability.  In this final column on availability, I am going to discuss an approach to measuring...
• 07/10/2010 Availability-2: How parallel components can provide high availability
  In my last column (Availability-1) I looked at availability calculations for service components that were in series. Now I’m going to explain how to deliver high availability by using components in...
• 06/09/2010 Availability-1: Calculating planned availability is flipping easy!
  In this short set of columns that I’m titling Availability, I will provide explanations of availability calculations that I hope will be easy to understand. I’ll start by providing an analogy with...
• 23/06/2010 Waltzing with the elephant
  A personal review of a recent book on the corporate governance of IT:Waltzing the Elephant: A comprehensive guide to directing and controlling information technology by Mark Toomey published in...
• 11/05/2010 ITIL is not the only fruit, although it is low-hanging!
  A few months ago in the ITSM Portal forum , the question was posed: “It’s awfully quiet about ISO 38500. Is the interest in IT governance over?” No, the interest in IT governance is growing. I...
• 22/03/2010 Lesser-spotted ITSM frameworks - 9
  An interesting report was published recently on IT outsourcing.  The report, titled IT Outsourcing Statistics 2009/2010, from Computer Economics Inc. is based on a survey of 200 companies in the...
• 23/02/2010 Lesser-spotted ITSM frameworks - 8
  Are you seeking to gain certification for your organization for two or more of these standards at some stage over the next few years? ISO 20000 (IT service management) ISO 27001 (information...
• 18/01/2010 Lesser-spotted ITSM frameworks - 7
  Very big businesses are involved in Lesser-spotted frameworks – 7 (IT-CMF) – a framework for optimising the business value from IT investments.  This will be a framework to watch in 2010. The...