What is ITIL?

ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) emerged in the 80’s, initially under the supervision of the British Office of Government Commerce (OGC) that started in 1988 to release a series of books giving guidance on quality IT services. The OGC’s objective was to formalize and share acquired experience as Best Practices. These publications deal with various different processes such as Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, SLAs, etc.

Today, ITIL embodies structuring practices, which offer a modular approach and constantly develop to promote increasingly greater efficiency. In this approach, past ideas and experiences of those confronted by similar difficulties are analyzed so as to apply its valuable and relevant points to another entity experiencing its own specific difficulties.

The objective of such an approach is to increase quality of service both to internal and external "clients", which implies a more efficient operation of IT departments.

ITIL practices provide the foundation to:

• A greater understanding of your clients’ IT requirements and demands and therefore the capacity to meet them.
• A greater focus on the services really needed by the company. The priority is given back to the company, as opposed to the technology.
• A higher Return Of Investment (ROI) and an improved use and efficiency of all your resources, thus avoiding action repeats.

Further reading

• ITIL and Best Practices for Service Desk and Infrastructure Resource Management
• PYTHEAS Service Desk: Full ITIL-compliant control of your service desk (helpdesk)

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