ITIL v3: What It Is and Why You Should Care
Abstract
The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is the proven way for IT organizations to align with the business, control costs, improve quality, and balance resource allocations. Research shows a dramatic increase in ITIL adoption over the last few years. A study in 2006 showed that about 30% of IT organizations were using ITIL; a 2008 follow-up survey puts the count at 80%. This white paper describes ITIL's benefits and history, as well as why you need to know about it, which types of IT organization can benefit from using it, and how to get started.
Sample
IT as a Strategic Resource
ITIL v3 is a collection of five primary volumes, or books. It is quite literally a library of best practices focused on managing IT organizations and the services these organizations produce and deliver. ITIL is now in its third generation, with the most recent edition (v3) released in May 2007.
ITIL describes how to manage IT as a business in order to deliver competitive advantage to the enterprise. Its guidance spans all IT activities from strategy to operations. The purpose of this comprehensive guidance is to deliver on four primary goals:
- Align IT activities and projects to business requirements
- Control IT costs
- Improve IT service quality
- Balance resource allocations
These are lofty goals, but ITIL has the experience to deliver. ITIL started in the late 1980s when the British Central Computer and Telecommunication Agency (CCTA), now called the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), made a decision to improve its IT management systems. The CCTA commissioned a study group to develop a new approach to managing IT. From this group came the ITIL version 1. ITIL v1, while similar in objective, was significantly different from today's version. This difference is what makes ITIL so powerful - since it is based on best practice, it is under continuous improvement from a worldwide community. ITIL adapts to meet the needs of IT as IT matures, making ITIL always relevant and useful.
The primary global organization driving the content of the ITIL is the IT Service Management Forum, itSMF (http://www.itsmf.net) an IT industry consortium dedicated to managing the cost and quality of IT service management. Members comprise IT organizations of all types, including government, military, profit, and not-forprofit. The itSMF counts many hardware, software, and services companies as members as well. Altogether the diverse members of the itSMF make up over 500 local chapters around the world.
Collectively, itSMF USA is the US branch of the international organization, and it represents those with a stake in IT service management. The itSMF is involved in two areas. First, the organization provides a forum to address technical and business issues that will enhance the benefits of IT management applications and services. Second, it educates the market about IT service management and its value-in effect, marketing IT service management.
Because ITIL had its start in the British government, ITIL adoption began there; it then quickly spread to nongovernment organizations within Britain. From Britain, ITIL moved to Europe and Canada, where it has seen heavy adoption. From Canada, ITIL finally made its way to the United States. The adoption of ITIL, by both government and non-government organizations within the US, is gaining momentum.
Vendors & Organizations That Have Adopted ITIL
Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, IBM, CA, BMC, and many others have used ITIL as a base for their own proprietary IT management frame works. Many of the chapters in the ITIL volumes were written by individuals from these companies, and some have created tools that align with ITIL:
- Microsoft offers Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF)
- HP offers IT Service Management Reference Model
- IBM offers IT Process Model
The adoption of ITIL is gaining momentum in the US. This is evident in the fact that as more of the IT tools have added the tag line "ITIL compliant" into their advertisements. The following list highlights just a few notable organizations which have publicly commented on their ITIL implementation, and its contribution to business success.
Caterpillar State of North Carolina Shell Oil Blue Cross - Blue Shield of Florida Procter & Gamble Blue Cross - Blue Shield of Texas Arizona Public Service LG&E Energy LLC Boeing United Health Group in Minneapolis US Army And many, many others State of California
What Makes ITIL Different?
Over the years, many of you have probably been involved in projects and/or exposed to theories related to IT improvement such as:
Project Management (www.pmi.org)
COBIT (www.isaca.org)
Balanced Scorecards (www.balancedscorecard.org)
Six Sigma (www.isixsigma.com)
ISO-9000 (www.iso.org)
TQM / Deming (www.deming.org)
Capability Maturity Model (www.sei.cmu.edu)
All of these programs provide methodologies that can be used to improve the processes that you have in place. However, these methodologies provide little or no guidance about which processes are required for IT to function well. The ITIL framework is a source of good practice in service management. ITIL provides a guide to the framework of processes required to run IT as a Business for the Business and the relationship between those processes.
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