In the late 1980s, the British Ministry of Commerce (OGC) released ITIL. The initial goal of OGC is to improve the efficiency of government business through the application of IT and to minimize the lack of communication between different IT functions. OGC is aware of the need to manage different IT components, such as hardware, software, and computer-based communications, to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the government, which will ensure optimal use of IT. OGC got help from experts in IT management industry and began to document their experience.
ITIL was first used as a best practice guide for government IT departments, and soon after it came out, it was promoted to private enterprises in Britain, then spread throughout Europe, and then began to rise in the United States.
ITIL V3 Introduction
ITIL V3 based on the service life cycle from 2004 to 2007 integrates the essence of V1 and V2, and integrates with the current best practices in the field of IT service management. Five life cycle books form the core of ITIL v3, which mainly emphasize the implementation support of ITIL best practices and the details that need attention in the improvement process.
ITIL V3 is a process to consolidate and improve ITIL best practices, and is also the essence of “current best practices”. “Current best practices” define the cutting-edge information in industry practices and will change as customer needs change. OGC simplifies the important contents in ITIL V2, and then incorporates them into ITIL V3. The structural framework and content of ITIL V3 are derived from the opinions of a large number of public reviews and industry managers. At the same time, it also covers the parts of V2 that are still widely practiced and used by the ITSM community.
Importance of ITIL Implementation
For enterprises to implement ITIL, it can help to ultimately improve service management. In each process management of ITIL, it can directly interact with each business department to redesign business functions and processes, reduce costs, shorten turnaround time, improve quality and enhance customer satisfaction.
The implementation of ITIL enables the information system department to make timely response to process changes in finance, sales, marketing, manufacturing and other businesses. In some cases, this has also led to the birth of some relevant organizations, such as change committees, emergency change committees, internal business managers, etc., to enhance the integration of business and IT.
The implementation of ITIL can achieve the accuracy and foresight of IT’s business support. The intensification of market competition requires enterprises to make decisions quickly and shorten response time. The traditional enterprise benefit measurement standards, such as income and market share, reflect the business situation behind. Once problems are found, it is often too late to avoid them.
As far as IT department is concerned, in terms of investment return, it is easy to define the expected return and measure the return by referring to ITIL to consider IT investment. At the same time, it can clearly establish a multi skilled, cross organizational cooperation team with common responsibilities and obligations. Due to the deepening of mutual trust, users and IT personnel will no longer blame each other, but form a form of mutual promotion, and change their “fire brigade” image.
David Prior
David Prior is the editor of Today News, responsible for the overall editorial strategy. He is an NCTJ-qualified journalist with over 20 years’ experience, and is also editor of the award-winning hyperlocal news title Altrincham Today. His LinkedIn profile is here.
