ITIL Service Management

28/01/2010

ITIL stands for the Information Technology Infrastructure Library and was originally a set of books detailing best practice in IT. In its latest form, ITIL v3, it creates a framework within which organisations can improve their Service Management, a critical task when virtually all modern organisations depend on IT for so many of their daily operations.
ITIL v3 looks at five key components of IT Service Management, namely:

Service Strategy (how to design, development and implement Service Management)
Service Design (how to design new or changed services and Service Management processes)
Service Transition (how to move new services smoothly into operations)Service Operation (how to deliver and support services)Continual Service Improvement (how to maintain and improve the above)

This holistic approach has great benefits for companies such as Datawright and their customers. One area where this is particularly visible is in the operation of the Service Desk, where ITIL’s emphasis on proactive management, communication and measurement of incidents helps makes continuous improvement happen. For instance, from version 9 onwards, Kingfisher looks to detect the possibility of an incident occurring in the future and take action before anyone is inconvenienced. This is just one very clear alignment with ITIL with obvious benefits for all our customers.

It is very easy in the day-to-day workload to make decisions at a very local level from expediency without sufficient thought into how this might affect other parts of the organisation or even whether this decision will create further problems in the future. The ITIL v3 framework gives a structure and a means to think of the operational judgement within a strategic context. Decisions are not taken in isolation but with the supporting structure of ITIL’s best practice.

At Datawright we always look for ways to improve our service. It is our people who make that change happen but ITIL is an essential part of the process.