Building a bridge between the business mission and technology is at the heart of the ITIL framework, which is ubiquitous in much of Europe. With a revised version released in May, more U.S. organizations are taking a closer look to determine where the process improvement model might improve their IT efforts. Here’s an overview of ITIL and recommendations for getting started.
If you haven’t heard of ITIL — Information Technology Infrastructure Library — you soon will. Originally developed by the United Kingdom’s Office of Government Commerce (OGC) as a framework of best practices for IT Service Management, ITIL is beginning to catch on in the United States. In fact, an entire industry has sprung up around ITIL, including training, certification, consulting services, software tools and trade associations.
OGC launched ITIL in the late 1980s as a series of books describing best practices for managing IT services collected from top companies. All contributing companies, including IBM, HP, Microsoft and EDS, subsequently adopted the framework. Activities are grouped under two broad categories: service support and service delivery. By homing in on critical business processes required to deliver services, ITIL provides a maturity path for IT that is not based on technology.
So what is driving the increasing popularity of ITIL, making it the de