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Robert N. Phillips
CEO, Lasotell Pty Ltd.
www.lasotell.com.au
If you are involved in trying to understand the various
facets of IT service delivery or of an IT organisation in
general, there are two very useful models/methodologies you
can investigate. They take all the mystique out of such
tasks—including documenting them:
- Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)
- Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (CoBiT)—yes,
that is the correct capitalisation.
The ITIL model is reviewed in this article (written by a
certified ITIL Master, ,)
and the CoBiT model will be reviewed in a future issue.
The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is
the best known public, consistent, and comprehensive
documentation of best practices for IT Service management.
The ITIL methodology is used by many hundreds of
organisations around the world; a whole ITIL philosophy has
grown up around the guidance contained within the ITIL books
(see the list).
ITIL consists of a series of best practices guidebooks for
providing quality IT services, including the accommodation
and environmental facilities needed to support information
technology. Its usage is functionally encapsulated in British
Standard 15000.
ITIL came into existence because organisations are becoming
increasingly dependent on IT in order to satisfy their
corporate aims and meet their business needs. They require
high quality IT services—matched to business needs and user
requirements as these evolve.
Each module is intended to facilitate the quality management
of IT services and of the IT infrastructure in the
organisation (the computers and networks—hardware,
software, and computer-related telecommunications—upon
which the systems and IT services are built and run). The
codes of practice provide the insights for providing quality
IT service in the face of budgetary constraints, skill
shortages, system complexity, rapid change, current and
future user requirements, growing user expectations, and so
on. But like anything else, carrying them into practice
requires the senior management to sign up. Crosby's maxim
that Quality is Free still rules!
As a measure of its overall value, organisations worldwide,
both commercial and non-proprietary, have developed
supporting products as part of a shared ITIL philosophy.
In total, there are six major streams to the comprehensive
ITIL methodology, covering all major IT functions:
- Service Support: focusing on the day-to-day processes for
the support of operational IT services
- Service Delivery: the key processes that ensure
cost-effective IT service delivery that meets customer
requirements in accordance with agreed service levels
- Management: addresses planning and organisational issues
and customer and supplier relationship management
- Software Support: an end-to-end approach to software
acquisition or development that facilitates giving
adequate consideration to the operational phase of the
life cycle
- Business Continuity: extending disaster recovery planning
to cover essential business processes
- Business Perspective: providing business management with
an insight into IT infrastructure concepts.
Each of the process sections contains several topics, or
functions. The precise number of these topics is not
normally defined, as the "library" is continuously being
updated. The major focus of most implementations (and user
certification) is largely around the first two sections. The
Service Support and Service Delivery functions form the core
of most ITIL-based operational Service Management
functionality and implementations. However, these other
functions are needed within an infrastructure to provide an
overall, comprehensive, and consistent best practices
implementation and operation.
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