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What is ITIL?

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (a.k.a. ITIL) is a comprehensive set of standards for how to manage services (like answering trouble tickets) in the Information Technology field. Published as a series of books, ITIL not only guides the reader in providing IT services; it also describes the facilities necessary to support IT.

ITIL came about in 1992 when Great Britain's Office of Government Commerce (OGC) was compelled to create a consistent system to provide a higher quality of service in the IT industry, which includes help desks and call centers. The OGC realized that as organizations depend more and more on their IT departments, they need to manage their IT department and its services better. ITIL is the recognition of this need and its solution. The ITIL manuals describe and provide the best practices for managing IT services.

In 2000, the Office of Government Commerce collaborated with the IT Service Management Forum (itSMF) and British Standards Institution (BSI) to revise ITIL and coordinate it with some of BSI's documents. This collaboration greatly improved the ITIL and integrated it with these BSI documents:

BSI Management Overview - PD0005

BS15000-1 - Specification for service management

BS15000-2 - Code of practice for service management

These documents now serve as an introduction to ITIL, as well as now form a logical progression to ITIL.

During its history, ITIL spawned several accredited training organizations, assessment tools, implementation tools, and qualification schemes. These organization, tools, and schemes apply to a wide range of activities, from writing helpdesk software to running a call center. The Office of Government Commerce also founded the IT Service Management Forum to discuss ITIL. You can learn about these at on the ITIL website (http://www.ogc.gov.uk/index.asp?id=2261).

The next ITIL update is due out in 2006. This time around, the OGC and itSMF intend to clarify and improve the system, not rewrite it. OGC also plans to revise syllabuses in ITIL's qualification schemes and align the entire scheme with BSI's ISO 20000. Expect the revisions to be completely published by the middle of 2007.