The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a customizable framework of best practices designed to promote quality computing services in the information technology (IT) sector. As an IT Service Management (ITSM) framework, ITIL provides a systematic approach to the provisioning and management of IT services, from inception through design, implementation, operation and continual improvement.The processes identified and described within ITIL are supplier and platform independent and apply to all aspects of IT infrastructure. Since the mid 1990s, ITIL has been generally considered a de facto international standard for IT Service Management. Source: Wikipedia
On May 30, 2007, the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) released the refreshed version of ITIL known as version 3. A key change to ITIL under version 3 has been a repositioning of the framework from the previous emphasis on process lifecycle and alignment of IT to "the business", to the management of the lifecycle of the services provided by IT, and the importance of creating business value rather than just the execution of processes. Consequently, it was rebranded ITIL® Service Management Practices in order to represent service management 'best practice'. It is a publicly stated aim of the refresh to include more reference to ROI.
"Overall, v.3 is a substantive improvement representing a good update of ITIL's tried-and-true best
practices, plus useful new content and much improved emphasis on services," notes Gartner, Inc in "ITIL v.3 Services Guidelines Expand Audience Through
Update", Ed Holub, et al. June 2007.
What can ITIL do for me?
ITIL v3 core volumes
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Service Strategy
Service Strategy focuses on the identification of market opportunities for which services could be developed in order to meet a requirement on the part of internal or external customers. The output is a strategy for the design, implementation, maintenance and continual improvement of the service as an organizational capability and a strategic asset. Key areas of this volume are Service Portfolio Management and Financial Management.
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Service Design
Service Design focuses on the activities that take place in order to develop the strategy into a design document which addresses all aspects of the proposed service, as well as the processes intended to support it. Key areas of this volume are Availability Management, Capacity Management, Continuity Management and Security Management.
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Service Transition
Service Transition focuses on the implementation of the output of the service design activities and the creation of a production service or modification of an existing service. There is an area of overlap between Service Transition and Service Operation. Key areas of this volume are Change Management, Release Management, Configuration Management and Service Knowledge Management.
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Service Operation
Service Operation focuses on the activities required to operate the services and maintain their functionality as defined in the Service Level Agreements with the customers. Key areas of this volume are Incident Management, Problem Management and Request Fulfillment. A new process added to this area is Event Management, which is concerned with normal and exception condition events.
Events have been defined into three categories:
- Informational events - which are logged
- Warning events - also called alerts, where an event exceeds a specified threshold
- Critical events - which typically will lead to the generation of Incidents
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Continual Service Improvement
Continual Service Improvement focuses on the ability to deliver continual improvement to the quality of the services that the IT organization delivers to the business. Key areas of this volume are Service Reporting, Service Measurement and Service Level Management.
ITIL v3 uses the word "continual" as opposed to ITIL v2's references to "continuous" service improvement (CSIP). Continual implies an activity that is undertaken on a phased, regular basis as part of a process. Continuous is more suitable for the definition of activities intended to operate without pause, such as the ultimate goal of availability.
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What can ITIL v3 do for me?
ITIL is a best practice that allows for management to improve the quality of service that it provides to the business. This means that when a business user has an outage with a database server the time in which the outage is solved is reduced. A priority is placed on this outage based on business need and once it has been resolved a root cause analysis is performed to determine why the issue occurred. Once the reason of the issue has been determined the fix is logged into a knowledge base on how to resolve the issue. If this issue requires a change to take place such as a software patch or more memory to be added to the server, a request for change is initiated and fulfilled by the technology implementors. This is what ITIL does best. Enforces principals that help technology professionals understand why an incident occurred, how to solve it, and what impact the change has on the rest of the enterprise.
Quantify the help...
- The International Data Group points to a recent January 2008 survey that enterprises using best practice frameworks such as ITIL save an estimated $200,000 in the first year.
- Capital One's senior VP of enterprise technology organization, Robert Turner, told CIO Magazine in 2008 that the implementation of ITIL was estimated to save 10 percent to 20 percent in technology support costs over a five-year period.
Ok, so why ITIL v3 and not v2? What's different and how can I capitalize on the changes? Where can I save my company the MOST money without jeopardizing quality of service?
Find out the answers in our whitepaper: ITIL v3 Simplified
