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What is ITIL?

ITIL® is the most widely adopted approach for IT Service Management in the world.  It provides a practical, no-nonsense framework for identifying, planning, delivering and supporting IT services to the business. 

ITIL: Overview and Benefits

ITIL advocates that IT services must be aligned to the needs of the business and underpin the core business processes. It provides guidance to organisations on how to use IT as a tool to facilitate business change, transformation and growth.

The ITIL best practices are currently detailed within five core publications which provide a systematic and professional approach to the management of IT services, enabling organisations to deliver appropriate services and continually ensure they are meeting business goals and delivering benefits.

The five core guides map the entire ITIL Service Lifecycle, beginning with the identification of customer needs and drivers of IT requirements, through to the design and implementation of the service into operation and finally, on to the monitoring and improvement phase of the service.

Adopting ITIL can offer users a huge range of benefits that include:

  • improved IT services
  • reduced costs
  • improved customer satisfaction through a more professional approach to service delivery
  • improved productivity
  • improved use of skills and experience
  • improved delivery of third party service.

For further information on the ITIL Service Management approach and its benefits, see ITIL: The Basics White Paper (pdf).

ITIL Users

ITIL has been adopted by thousands of organisations worldwide, such as NASA, the UK National Health Service (NHS), HSBC bank and Disney™.  ITIL is also supported by quality services from a wide range of providers including examination institutes, accredited training providers and consultancies, software and tool vendors and well known service providers such as IBM, Telefonica, HP and British telecom (BT).

A comprehensive qualifications scheme offering a variety of training courses and certifications has been developed against the guidance.  This scheme can help organisations to effectively implement ITIL, achieving success by ensuring that employees have the relevant knowledge, skills and techniques, but most importantly, ensuring the entire organisation is using a common language and are fully invested in the process.

ITIL Best Practices also underpin the foundations of ISO/IEC 20000 (previously BS15000), the International Service Management Standard for organisational certification and compliance. Organisations can therefore implement ITIL to achieve organisational certification.

Further ITIL Resources

Further information on ITIL, its practical application and benefits can be downloaded from the Best Management Practice website.  See the links below to access this information:

An Introductory Overview of ITIL (pdf) - a free to download publication published by TSO in association with itSMFi.

ITIL Technical and White Papers - a series of papers on ITIL and its alignment with other service management approaches.