ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library)

Information Technology Infrastructure Library, commonly used the abbreviation ITIL (sometimes a concept of IT Infrastructure Library is used).

ITIL is an internationally recognized and widespread de-facto standard for IT services management and administration, which was developed by OGC in the 80’s of the 20th century. ITIL is distributed in the form of publications, CDs, trainings, consultations and it has got a developed set of recognized certifications. ITIL comes from the best experiences (actually, it is a summary of the best practices), it represents the framework for handling the IT management in an organization, it deals with a complex of IT services, it focuses on a continual measurement and quality improvement of delivered IT services, both in terms of business and from a customer perspective. This orientation is the main cause of global ITIL success, and it contributed to the widespread use and the key benefits, gained by those organizations that have applied these techniques and processes in their structures. ITIL is not a standard, ITIL contains recommendation and the best practices.

The British standard BS 15000 is based on ITIL, and also the later standard ISO 20000.

Use of the ITIL in practice: ITIL is used for setting and management of IT processes and services. Its practical applicability and extension has made it de-facto standard for IT management over the entire range of responsibilities of the IT manager (CIO).

Selected benefits of ITIL usage:

• Increased user and customer satisfaction with IT services
• Improved services access that directly leads to higher profits and sales of the business
• Financial savings resulting from the reduction of repetitive work, lost time, improved management and resources utilization
• Shortening of the time for launching new products and services on the market
• Improvement data for decision making and risk optimization

The current version of ITIL V3 gives greater emphasis on service and management, unlike the previous version. The current vision is oriented on IT services and provides the conceptual reference models (how the IT service management processes should look like) and recommendations how to manage services and processes. The basic ITIL publications do not contain specific recommendation and deployment methodologies. These are the subjects of expertise consulting and other related publications. The basic ITIL V3 publications are:

• ITIL Service Strategy
• ITIL Service Design
• ITIL Service Transition
• ITIL Service Operation
• ITIL Continual Service Improvement

Note: ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark of AXELOS Limited