ITIL® services adhere to a set of practices and methods for any type of IT service. The British government developed ITIL® in the 1980s to ensure efficient and cost-effective IT services. Accredited ITIL® services involve several stages, including analysis, design, implementation, and day-to-day operation. ITIL® also offers a toolkit for managers to ensure compliant service.
An ITIL® service is any information technology (IT) offering that adheres to the Information Technology Infrastructure Library set of practices and methods. This can cover virtually any type of service that falls into IT, such as help desk, software development, network and systems administration, and so on. ITIL® has a customer oriented approach, where any IT offering, whether provided internally by an organization or a third party, can meet the requirements.
The idea for the ITIL® service was born in the 1980s when the British government noticed its growing reliance on IT. To ensure that government organizations, as well as third-party contractors who wanted to provide IT services to government, were efficient and cost-effective, they developed ITIL®. The books in ITIL® detail the best-known practices for implementing and managing IT environments.
The approach to creating an accredited ITIL® service involves several stages. The books detail the separate phases for analysis and design, as well as implementation and day-to-day operation, keeping an eye on the future of the organization’s needs. During the design phase, a service provider works directly with the client to ensure that the final services offered meet the organization’s requirements. In essence, any component of the service offering by the vendor, according to its agreement with the customer, is within the scope of the ITIL® service and must be properly planned prior to operation.
Resources such as computers, software or even personnel are counted as various aspects of the service offering and outlined during the design phase. In some cases, specific components of an ITIL® service may be further accredited. In the case of custom software, for example, a vendor can have their program officially evaluated for ITIL® process compliance by an independent third party. Service managers can also achieve various levels of ITIL® certification through a variety of educational programs.
As the offering reaches the implementation stage, the service provider is then responsible for maintaining databases that store information about the various aspects of the service, their configurations and their relationships to each other. This allows for quick recovery in the event of an unforeseen catastrophe, as well as detailed analysis of the costs of day-to-day operations and sound information to plan for future needs to meet the growth of the organization.
ITIL® also makes available a toolkit to help you get started with an ITIL® service. The toolkit gives managers an introductory look at what should be offered in a service level agreement or contract and what to expect from compliant service. There are also checklists and questionnaires that an organization can use to ensure that a service delivery meets the specifications detailed in the ITIL® volumes.
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