IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)

Best Practice Guidelines for IT Service Management

The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL®) is the only comprehensive framework for best practice IT Service Management in the world, and it is used by thousands of organisations around the world. A whole ITIL philosophy has grown up around the guidance contained within the ITIL books and this is now being aligned and integrated with other standards and frameworks, e.g. ISO/IEC 20000 and COBIT.

ITIL consists of a series of inter-related books which provide advice and guidance on the delivery and support of quality IT services. ITIL has been developed in recognition of organisations’ growing dependency on IT and draws upon industry best practices for IT Service.

ITIL® v3

A set of five books, the ITIL Service Lifecycle, now replace the previous (v2) Service Support and Service Delivery books, and other related volumes.

ITIL has been developed and is maintained to assist and enable organisations to seek to continually improve the IT services that are being provided, fundamentally because these IT services are becoming increasingly more business critical. The IT service must be delivered in an efficient and effective manner, must be aligned with corporate aims and business needs and must ensure that IT is operated according to good corporate and IT governance.

The ITIL processes and guidance provides a robust and thorough foundation for the delivery of cost-effective, value-adding, efficient and reliable IT services. It has become adopted by major technology organisation like Microsoft, HP, Sun and Dell who all have developed their own adaptation of best practice service management (see MOF as an example).

Additionally, there are a wide range of products and services available to support ITIL and to assist organisations to adopt and adapt ITIL to their particular environment and culture. As ITIL is non-proprietary and public domain, organisations can rapidly get a thorough understanding of ITIL and begin to implement the processes across the IT service provider(s). ITIL Training, Assessment, Implementation and Interim Management Services are all available from Fox IT.

Official ITIL Websites

itSMF - www.itsmf.com

The IT Service Management Forum (itSMF) is an international not-for-profit organization which has been established since 1991 to encourage, motivate and oversee the ITIL guidelines and their adoption.

For more information see IT Service Management Forum.

OGC - www.ogc.gov.uk

Information about ITIL can also be found on the OGC web site.
Answers to Frequently Asked Questions may be found at ITIL FAQs.

Best Management Practice website
 - www.best-management-practice.com

The Best Management Practice website is the official umbrella website which provides support for all levels of adoption in offering a comprehensive source of official best practice information, including:

• Knowledge Centre: Comprehensive source of information including ITIL news, reviews, case studies and white papers allowing you to keep in touch with the international community.
• ITIL Publications: For all the ITIL titles and formats, including upcoming titles.

The Official ITIL website - www.itil-officialsite.com

The official ITIL website provides information on the following:

• ITIL Qualifications: For information on the ITIL V3 Qualification scheme.
• ITIL Accreditation: Discover more about APMG's role as the Official Accreditor.
• ITIL Examination Institutes: For the complete list of Examination Institutes.