IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)

What exactly is ITIL? Learn why an Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is important for your business and how certification may help you and your firm in this article.

What exactly is ITIL stand for?

The abbreviation for Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is Information Technology Infrastructure Library. The name was initially used by the British government’s Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA) in the 1980s, when it recorded and printed hundreds of best practices in IT service management. ITIL is now a stand-alone phrase, not referring to the “Information Technology Infrastructure Library.”

What exactly is an ITIL?

ITIL is a collection of best practices for managing information technology services and enhancing IT support and service levels. One of ITIL’s key aims is to guarantee that IT services are aligned with business goals, even when those goals change.

Since its introduction in the late twentieth century as a set of books spanning more than 30 volumes, ITIL has evolved tremendously. The second edition of ITIL, released around 2000, condensed these publications by arranging them into sets that corresponded to various components of IT administration, services, and applications. Around this time, Microsoft adopted ITIL as a standard to aid in the development of its Microsoft Operations Framework.

The configuration management database (CMDB), which offers the central authority for all components—including services, software, IT components, documents, people, and hardware—that must be managed to deliver an IT service, is one of the most important pieces of ITIL. All of these assets and processes, as well as their qualities and links to one another, are tracked in the CMDB, along with their locations and modifications.

Following ITIL principles ensures that you can get to the underlying cause of problems in your environment as fast as possible, and that you have the necessary insight into the systems and people to prevent future issues.

Foundations

AXELOS is in charge of maintaining and updating the ITIL framework. The current version of the standard is ITIL version 3, which was issued in 2007. Version 3 of ITIL adds process improvement, a stronger lifecycle perspective, and more procedures for aligning business and IT to the previous version.

At the time of writing, AXELOS is revising ITIL to version 4, which will focus on digital transformation, AI, cloud computing, and DevOps. Some ITIL 4 modules have already been issued, with the rest scheduled to be available in 2019. ITIL 4 certification at the Foundation level is now accessible, and the remainder will be available in the second part of 2019.

There are five important steps to consider

1. Service Strategy

This stage explains how to plan, develop, and implement IT Service Management using the ITIL service lifecycle. It entails the following steps:

• IT Services Strategy Management: Assessment and measurement of IT strategy
• Defining and documenting IT services is part of service portfolio management.
• IT Service Financial Management: Estimating and budgeting for IT services
• Demand Management: Projecting future IT service demand and allocating resources.
• Business Relationship Management: Managing feedback and IT service improvement

2. Service Design 

This stage explains how services and procedures should be designed. The following are examples of processes:

• Management of Service Catalogs: Define the services that are offered in a service catalogue.
• Processes for managing and monitoring IT services are referred to as availability management.
• Information Security Management: Developing, managing, and evaluating information security services.
• Service Level Management (SLM): The process of creating, managing, and providing feedback on service level agreements (SLAs).
• Capacity Management: Keeping track of and improving service capacity.
• Design Coordination: Process and policy designs must be coordinated.
• Vendor Management: Vendor selection and management, as well as performance tracking
• IT Service Continuity Management: BC/DR service development, installation, and maintenance

3. Service Transition

This stage shows how to handle the transition of a new or updated service, with an emphasis on making sure that all service management procedures are in sync. It entails the following steps:

• Transition Planning and Support: In charge of getting a new service up and running.
• Change Management: Overall responsibility for change requests as well as change risk management.
• Change Evaluation: Assess the impact of a change and whether it improves or degrades performance.
• IT Service Update Lifespan Management: Documents the lifecycle of IT service updates.
• Asset and Configuration Management for IT Services: Tracks the asset lifetime of IT services and related gear.
• Validation and Testing of IT Services: Validates and tests the effect and benefit of an IT service prior to its release.
• Knowledge Management: Responsible for the documentation and curation of IT service support documentation.

4. Service Operation

This stage instructs you on how to guarantee that services are supplied and operated smoothly and consistently. It contains the following items:

• Access Management: Manages the rights of persons in regard to data and physical access.
• Event Management: Collaborates with incident and issue management to ensure that the entire event runs well.
• Service Request Fulfillment: Manages a service request’s lifetime, from definition to completion.
• Incident Management: Identifying and resolving specific service disruptions.
• Problem Management: Identifies and addresses root cause issues by defining causal linkages between episodes.

5. Continual Service Improvement

This stage focuses on how to re-align IT services when business requirements evolve. What can and should be measured; acquiring, processing, and interpreting data; and presenting and using information are all covered by the seven phases of CSI.

Problem management

“Incident management” and “issue management” are two terms used in ITIL. The specific problem that your users are dealing with, such as an offline printer, is known as incident management. Problem management entails determining the fundamental cause of a problem, as well as what can be done and which resources can be used to prevent it from recurring.

The following are some of the steps involved in problem solving:

• Raise a problem management case
• Categorize and prioritize issues
• Systematically investigate (root cause analysis)
• Work with Change Management to identify and address changes that need to be made.
• Verify the problem resolution
• Close out the problem

Management of incidents

An ITIL incident is an unforeseen service outage that requires incident management to resolve. An incident would be created if a network node failed and caused a reduction in throughput. The purpose of incident management is to get service back up and running as soon as feasible.

The underlying cause of an event is the focus of the incident management approach. If numerous occurrences occur at the same time, incident management can assist decide whether they are all part of the same issue or separate incidents.

ITIL Incident Management can assist you in improving service levels and meeting service level availability standards or a specific service level agreement (SLA).

IT Service Management

ITIL It is a compendium of best practices for IT service management that stands for Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITSM). Several ITSM technologies that combine the ITIL procedures stated earlier are available; these systems automate the service management process and give analytics so you can observe your service levels and change resources to achieve your SLA. ITSM technologies may also assist firms in managing enormous volumes of data and changing environments.

Certification

ITIL certification is required if you wish to apply ITIL in your firm. Through key partners, AXELOS provides ITIL certification training and testing. The ITIL foundation credential is the very minimum requirement for evaluating and implementing the ITIL framework in your organization. ITIL certificates have a three-year expiration date and must be updated through an AXELOS certified partner. Each ITIL test will set you back around $300.

ITIL certification can increase your job chances in addition to making you a more useful resource for your employer. ITIL is a well-respected framework, and employers seek for IT workers who have studied the technique and have passed a series of examinations to demonstrate their understanding.

Certification levels

ITIL v3 has five levels of training and certification, each one more sophisticated than the one before it:

1. ITIL Foundation: The ITIL framework’s essential principles, parts, and terminology are covered.
2. ITIL Practitioner: Covers organizational change management, communication, and measurement and metrics, as well as the Continual Service Improvement strategy.
3. ITIL Intermediate: There are two components to this. The Service Lifecycle track focuses on the fundamentals of the main ITIL phases, whereas the Service Strategy track focuses on managing the Service Strategy phase of the Service Lifecycle, with an emphasis on ITSM.
   • Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation, and Continual Service Improvement are all modules in the Service Lifecycle.
   • Operational Support and Analysis; Planning, Protection, and Optimization; Release, Control, and Validation; and Service Offerings and Agreements are among the Service Strategy components.
4. ITIL Expert: It is necessary to have a thorough grasp and demonstration of the complete ITIL system. Completion of the ITIL Managing across the Lifecycle Capstone Course is required to pass this level (MALC).
5. ITIL Master: Five years of IT service management leadership experience is required, as well as a demonstrated ability to implement ITIL concepts, processes, and strategies in the workplace.

Foundation exams

The Foundation test is the most common ITIL certification. It is your first step in building a mature, ITIL-compliant Company by putting fundamental ideas in IT service management to the test.

The future of ITIL

ITIL will continue to assist enterprises in ensuring that the optimal processes for their environment are supported. As enterprises’ fundamental capabilities evolve at a rapid pace, ITIL processes should evolve as well. An ITIL Change Approval Board (CAB), for example, may need to adjust to the speed of change by adopting a policy-driven approval procedure.