Information Technology Infrastructure Library– The Information Technology Infrastructure Library is a collection of best practises for delivering excellent IT services. ITIL has undergone several changes and presently consists of five volumes, each of which covers and focuses on a certain set of activities and phases in the IT service lifecycle.
ITIL was first developed by the British Government’s Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency in the 1980s, and it consisted of more than 30 publications at the time, which incorporated best practises in IT gathered from many credible sources from across the world.
What is ITIL?
The ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) method to IT service management is the most widely accepted worldwide. ITIL’s planned and structured approach enables businesses to manage risks, implement cost-effective practises, create a secure IT environment, and improve customer connections, all of which contribute to scalable corporate growth.
How an IT Infrastructure Library can Improve Your Enterprise Performance?
The Information Technology Infrastructure Library provides a structured method to assisting firms in managing IT services, as well as the following advantages:
- Reduction in IT costs.
- Best practises are being implemented in order to provide better IT services.
- Improve customer happiness by providing excellent service.
- Provides the necessary standards and guidance.
- Productivity is improved.
- Application of knowledge and abilities in a more effective manner.
- ITIL specifications enable efficient delivery of third-party services.
- ITIL is effective at assisting organisations in delivering better services.
- Providing organisations with the tools they need to manage risk, failure, and disruption.
- Developing solid client relationships through offering services that are tailored to the demands of the company.
- Providing a robust infrastructure that aids in scalability, growth, and change for enterprises.
What will ITIL cost?
It begins with the purchase of the ITIL, which can be done as a PDF, a paper copy, or an online subscription. Then there’s the training expense, which changes from year to year. The course leading to the Initial Foundation Certificate should last two days, but courses leading to higher-level certificates can last a week or more. There are certain other unavoidable expenditures associated with repurposing processes to comply with the ITIL requirements.
The ITIL Service Lifecycle
The ITIL framework is broken into five categories:
- Service Strategy
- Service Design
- Service Transition
- Service Operations
- Continuous Service Improvement
Each of the above-mentioned processes’ output is used as the input for the subsequent process. The ITIL framework aids businesses in integrating service and business plans, monitoring, evaluating, and improving performance, as well as lowering costs.
Service Strategy Process
This procedure entails the creation of service concepts as well as the provision of service selection.
Service Portfolio Management Process:
This refers to the entire set of services that a service provider manages as a whole. This is made up of three main components:
- Service Pipeline
- Service Catalog
Retired Services
A systematic technique to identifying, evaluating, explaining, and selecting the process is provided by service portfolio management.
Demand Management Process:
This procedure entails determining and controlling the customer’s needs.
Models of demand management are framed in terms of:
- User Profiles are used to categorise different types of users for a specific service.
- Patterns of Business Activity is a tool that helps you figure out how different user profiles use a service over time.
Financial Management Process:
The Financial Management Process aids users in understanding and controlling costs. This consists of the following elements:
- Budgeting
- Accounting
- Charging
Strategy Operations:
This involves determining if user demands are met, whether service problems are addressed and resolved in a timely manner, and whether day-to-day operational skills are performed properly.
Service Design Process
The design of services is the focus of this phase of the ITIL service lifecycle.
The four ‘P’s of Service Design’ that should be addressed while developing a service are people, processes, products, and partners.
The procedures involved in Service Design are as follows:
- Management of the Service Catalog – The Service Catalog contains a list of services available to users and customers. Customers now have access to the service catalogue. It is frequently used as a gateway to all of the information services available in the real world.
- Service Catalog Management aids in the administration and management of the service catalogue, which contains all of the information about the services that are currently offered to clients.
- Service Level Management (SLM) is a procedure for managing service level agreements (SLAs) between service providers and customers that relate to the levels of reliability and performance of specific services.
- Operational Level Agreements (OLAs) are similar to SLAs in that they are performance agreements.Availability Management – This procedure is concerned with the management of the service level agreements’ availability requirements. The configuration or any other service that must be done when required is termed as availability.
- Capacity Management – This procedure is concerned with the amount of capacity that is easily accessible to meet the business needs outlined in Service Level Agreements.
- Service Continuity Management – This is a process that monitors whether the IT Service Provider follows through on the services that were agreed upon under the Service Level Agreement. This guarantees that a consistent and comprehensive Business Continuity Plan is provided.
- IT Security Management – This procedure is concerned with the safeguarding of information and IT assets. This is accomplished through assuring the information assets’ confidentiality, availability, validity, and integrity.
- Service Transition – This process is concerned with the development and implementation of IT services. It also ensures that service changes are carried out in an organised and defined manner.
Change Management strives to track and manage the whole lifecycle of any changes made. - Change Evaluation – This seeks to look at the major changes that have occurred recently, even before they are allowed to move on to the next stage of the lifecycle.
- Project Management – The goal of this procedure is to plan and coordinate the deployment of resources so that a release may be completed on time and within budget.
- Application development ensures that the applications needed to supply the essential IT services are available.
- The basic goal of release and deployment management is to organise, schedule, and oversee the migration of releases to test and live environments.
- Service Validation and Testing – This process assures that the deployed releases’ services match customer requests, as well as that IT operations are qualified to provide support for the incoming new service.
- Service Asset and Configuration Management – The goal is to keep track of the configuration items that are required or expected to deliver the IT service.
- Knowledge Management – This process ensures that information and knowledge are collected, examined, archived, and shared within the organisation.
Service Operation
- Event Management – This procedure continuously monitors the services and categorises the occurrences in order to determine appropriate actions.
- Issue Management – The goal of this method is to manage the entire incident lifecycle.
- Request Fulfillment – This method tries to deliver immediate responses to service requests.
- Access Management – This procedure involves granting certain users permission to access the service and preventing unauthorised users from doing so. The information security management process frames a set of policies that are implemented by the access management process.
- The goal of the problem management process is to manage and oversee the entire lifetime of all linked problems. It aids in preventing incidents from occurring or, to some extent, minimising the impact of incidents that cannot be avoided.
- IT Operations Control is a procedure for managing and overseeing IT services and the infrastructure that supports them. It ensures that everyday tasks relating to the operations of infrastructure and application components are executed and run.
- Facilities Management guarantees that the physical environment of the IT infrastructure is managed and monitored.
- Controlling and monitoring apps over their whole lifecycle is part of application management.
ITIL CSI (Continual Service Improvement) Process
This stage of the lifecycle tries to put quality management strategies into practise in order to learn from prior errors and triumphs. It also provides mechanisms for IT businesses to analyse and improve the technology in use, service levels, and the overall efficacy of service management.
- Service Review – This is for a consistent review of infrastructure and business services.
- Process Evaluation – This aids in the regular examination of the process.
- CSI Initiatives – This is where you decide on specific initiatives to help improve the procedures and services related to reviews and evaluations.
- Monitoring of CSI Efforts – This is done to see if the CSI initiatives are working as planned and to take corrective action if necessary.
