Since its creation, ITIL has grown to become the most widely accepted approach to IT Service Management in the world. However, along with this success comes the responsibility to ensure that the guidance keeps pace with a changing global business environment. Service Management requirements are inevitably shaped by the development of technology, revised business models and increasing customer expectations. The latest version of ITIL has been created in response to these developments.

ITIL service management practices are based on a solid framework of concepts, processes, functions and activities that exert positive outcomes on business value. One of the constant features of these practices is the objective to improve in maturity and therefore service excellence in every possible way.

IT service management (ITSM) is concerned with delivering and supporting IT services that are appropriate to the business requirements of the organization. ITIL provides a comprehensive, consistent and coherent set of best practices for IT service management processes, promoting a quality approach to achieving business effectiveness and efficiency in the use of information systems. ITIL service management processes are intended to be implemented so that they underpin but do not dictate the business processes of an organization. IT service providers will be striving to improve the quality of the service, but at the same time they will be trying to reduce the costs or, at a minimum, maintain costs at the current level.

Developed in late 1980’s, ITIL is a set of guides on the management and provision of operational IT services. In the mid-1990s, ITIL was recognized as the de facto standard for IT service management. It was revised in 1999 – 2001 (ITIL V2) and once again in 2007 (ITIL V3). The set of best practices are non-proprietary, publicly available and vendor neutral. While ITIL V2 provided a process-based set of best practices for IT Service Management, ITIL V3 embedded these processes into a service lifecycle concept and provided a stronger connection to converging frameworks relating to IT Governance and Business-IT Alignment.

Although Version 3 of the ITIL framework, considers services as strategic assets with a defined lifecycle, most of the same disciplines which were considered in Version 2, apply equally to Version 3. In Version three, the disciplines are explored in detail in the Lifecycle phase in which they first appear, or during which they play a major role.

Service Management - ITIL®
ITIL is the most widely accepted approach to IT service management in the world. Providing a cohesive set of best practice guidance drawn from the public and private sectors across the world, it has recently undergone a major and important refresh project. IT Service Management (ITSM) derives enormous benefits from a best practice approach. Because ITSM is driven both by technology and the huge range of organizational environments in which it operates, it is in a state of constant evolution. Best practice, based on expert advice and input from ITIL users is both current and practical, combining the latest thinking with sound, common sense guidance.

ITIL: Overview and Benefits
ITIL provides a systematic and professional approach to the management of IT service provision. Adopting its guidance offers users a huge range of benefits that include:

• reduced costs;
• improved IT services through the use of proven best practice processes;
• improved customer satisfaction through a more professional approach to service delivery;
• standards and guidance;
• improved productivity;
• improved use of skills and experience; and
• improved delivery of third party services through the specification of ITIL or ISO 20000 as the standard for service delivery in services procurements