ITIL Overview
The IT Infrastructure Library is a set of books with good practice processes on how to manage IT service delivery. The library consists of many books and CD-ROMs.
The core set of material is the following set of seven tightly coupled areas:
- Service Delivery
- Service Support
- Security Management
- The Business Perspective
- Applications Management
- ICT Infrastructure Management
- Planning to implement Service Management
The Service Support, Service Delivery and Security Management manuals are regarded as the central components of the framework.
These books cover the processes you will need to delivery customer-focused IT services according to your customers’ needs, demands and wishes.
They help the IT group to be flexible and reliable enough to ensure consistent IT Service Delivery. The other core books in the library support these central components.
ITIL overview
History of ITIL
During the late 1980’s the CCTA (Central Computer and Telecommunication Agency) in the UK started to work on what is now known as the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL).
Large companies and government agencies in Europe adopted the framework very quickly in the early 1990’s and the ITIL framework has since become known as an industry best practice, for IT Service Management.
ITIL has become the de-facto standard in delivering IT Services for all types of organisations. Both government and non-government organisations benefit from the process driven approach, regardless of the size of the IT department.
ITIL is used globally. ITIL has no geographic boundaries. It is used extensively throughout Europe, Australia, Canada, USA, United Kingdom and many emerging countries in Asia.
In 2000 the British Treasury set up the OGC – Office for Government Commerce – to deal with all commercial activities within the government. All activities formerly under the control of the CCTA (Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency) were also taken up by the new department. Even though the CCTA no longer exists, it is noted that they were the original developers of the ITIL framework.
In 2000, Microsoft used ITIL as the basis to develop their proprietary Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF).
In 2001, ITIL version 2 was released. In this version the Service Support Book and the Service Delivery book were redeveloped into much more concise volumes.
ITIL is a pseudo Public Domain framework. ITIL is copyright protected. Copyright is owned by the OGC. However, any organisation can use the intellectual property to implement the processes in their own organisation. Training, tools and consultancy services support this. The framework is independent of any of the vendors.
EXIN and ISEB are the examination bodies that organise and control the entire certification scheme. They guarantee that the personal certification is fair and honest and independent from the organisations that delivered the course. Both bodies accredit training organisations to guarantee a consistent level of quality in course delivery.
At the time of writing the only generally recognised certification is awarded to individuals There is no independent tool certification or organisational certification.
People and organisations that wish to discuss their experiences with ITIL Service Management implementation can become a member of the IT Service Management Forum. The itSMF, just like ISEB and EXIN, aim to stimulate & encourage the best practice component of ITIL and to support the sharing of ‘war stories’ and to further the development of the framework.
There is an itSMF chapter in every country that is actively involved with ITIL Service Management.
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