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ABC: An Introduction to the IT Infrastructure Library

ITIL is a framework of best practices for delivering IT services. What's the big deal about it, and why is it considered so important in corporate computing? We explain the basics before you hunker down with the books.

By Lynn Greiner

PAGE 3

Table of Contents

• What is ITIL?
• What's in the ITIL?
• What do I do with it?
• How can ITIL improve a company's business performance?
• What does ITIL cost?
• How long will an ITIL project take?
• What savings can I expect?
• What changed in ITIL V3?

What will this cost?

Getting started involves the purchase of the ITIL, in hard or soft copy either from ITIL directly or from many other book resellers. Then there's the cost of the training. The course leading to the initial Foundation Certificate typically runs for two days, and courses leading to higher certifications can be a week or more.

Add to that the inevitable cost of re-engineering some processes to comply with ITIL guidelines, and adjustment of help desk or other software to capture the information you need for tracking and generating metrics. There is, by the way, no such thing as "ITIL-compliant" software; the ITIL is a framework, not a standard. Some help desk and management software has been engineered with ITIL practices in mind, however, and so will lend themselves better to teams working within the framework.

How long will an ITIL project take?

ITIL is not a "project"; it's an ongoing journey to improve IT service management. Best practices have to be baked into everything, and they have to evolve as the enterprise evolves. With IT staff buy-in, changes can begin once staff are trained, and some results should be apparent within weeks or months. Process changes do take time, however, as entrenched bad practices are rooted out and modified (and, potentially, staff changes occur), but many companies have reported substantial savings after their first year.

What savings can I expect?

Corporations and public sector organizations that have successfully implemented ITIL best practices report huge savings.

For example, in its Benefits of ITIL paper (PDF), Pink Elephant reports that Procter and Gamble saved about $500 million over four years by reducing help desk calls and improving operating procedures. Nationwide Insurance achieved a 40 percent reduction in system outages and estimates a $4.3 million ROI over three years, and Capital One reduced its "business critical" incidents by 92 percent over two years. For example, after three years of ITIL implementation, forest products company MeadWestvaco claimed to have eliminated more than $100,000 annually in IT maintenance contracts and recognized a 10 percent gain in operational stability thanks to ITIL.

Without buy-in and cooperation from IT staff, however, any implementation is bound to fail. Bringing best practices into an organization is as much a PR job as it is a technical exercise.

What changed in ITIL V3?

ITIL V3, released on May 30, 2007, has cut the number of books and modified the focus of ITIL. It is now viewed as a service lifecycle. The core content is collapsed into five volumes:

• Service Strategy—focusing on providing guidance on how to leverage service management capabilities that effectively deliver value to customers.
• Service Design—translates plans and objectives into action items.
• Service Transition—looks at how the design delivers the intended strategy, and whether it can be effectively executed. Change management is an important component.
• Service Operation—this is the day-to-day service management guidance.
• Continual Service Improvement—performance measurement and improvement through the life of the service.

An initial volume, The Official Introduction to IT Service Management, sets the stage. Each may be purchased in hard copy, in PDF soft copy, or in an online subscription for individual or concurrent users.

According to the official website, the changes to ITIL may be summarized thusly:

• Where V2 talked about business and IT alignment, V3 emphasizes business and IT integration.
• Where V2 talked about value chain management, V3 emphasizes value network integration.
• Where V2 talked about linear service catalogues, V3 emphasizes dynamic service portfolios.
• Where V2 talked about collection of integrated processes, V3 emphasizes holistic service management lifecycle.

ITIL V3 also provides much more "how-to" guidance to assist in actually using the best practices.

Each core book includes information on tools, recommending which processes it makes sense to automate, and suggesting criteria to use when selecting a tool.

As promised by OGC, no prior certifications are voided by the advent of V3, but new V2 certification is being phased out over the next year, and update courses will be made available for those certified under V2 who wish to learn about the differences in V3.

 

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