ITIL 2011
Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) 2011 is the current edition of the ITIL framework that has evolved since its creation in the late 1980s through the efforts of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office (HMSO) in the United Kingdom (UK) on behalf of the Central Communications and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA). ITIL is the most widely used best practice guidance for systematically designing, developing and delivering services to businesses using IT. ITIL was developed as a response to the burgeoning costs of acquiring and managing IT infrastructure, including hardware, commercial software and applications developed in-house.
The first version of ITIL was truly a library, consisting of
IT service management best practices spread across about 40 books or volumes. Gradually, the adoption of
ITIL by businesses (including IT majors like Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and others) contributed to its popularity worldwide and led to the formation of user groups like the IT Service Management Forum (itSMF). The popularity of ITIL stems from the fact that it is non-prescriptive and vendor-neutral, permitting its user community great flexibility to adopt and adapt the practices contained within to suit their varied business scenarios and contexts. The second version of ITIL, labelled as ITIL V2, emphasized a process-based approach to
IT service management and consisted of 10 processes (5 in Service Delivery and 5 in Service Support) along with the single function of Service Desk.
ITIL underwent a major improvement initiative called ITIL Refresh that resulted in ITIL V3 being published in 2007. ITIL V3 organized the best practices within the logical structure of service lifecycle, encompassing the five phases –
Service Strategy (SS), Service Design (SD), Service Transition (ST), Service Operation (SO) and
Continual Service Improvement (CSI) – as core books or publications along with an overarching, supplementary publication titled “The Official Introduction to the
ITIL Service Lifecycle”. In 2011, updated editions of the ITIL core books (not their next version) were published addressing user feedback, incorporating suggestions for greater clarity and consistency between the books
| SERVICE STRATEGY (5 Processes) |
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| SERVICE DESIGN (8 Processes) |
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| SERVICE TRANSITION (7 Processes) |
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| SERVICE OPERATION (5 Processes) |
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| CONTINUAL SERVICE IMPROVEMENT (1 Process) |
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| FUNCTIONS |
| Service Desk Function |
| Technical Management Function |
| IT Operations Management Function |
| Application Management Function |
Best practice guidance within the ITIL framework is implemented and being improved upon by its users - IT service providers, both internal and external, in various businesses and institutions across the globe. ITIL’s continued growing popularity as the one-stop reference for IT service management practices is proof of its effectiveness and value to business.
Author : Raghu Kamath