ITIL certification is extensively used worldwide with prospects in every organisation. We have shared ITIL’s brief history, why organisations are interested in it and ITIL’s benefits.
Isn’t it hard to believe that ITIL is more than 20 years old; I was also startled in beginning. Right now ITIL is on its v3.0 (third version) and is most widely used and adopted framework all around the world for IT Service Management.
The reason (ITIL) IT Infrastructure Library is still on top is its practical and no-nonsense approach to the identification, planning, support and delivery of IT services.
ITIL inception
ITIL was originally originated in early 80’s when computer technology saw the evolution and moved from centric mainframe infrastructure and fully centralized IT organisations to geographically dispersed resources and distributed computing. This made the ability to distribute IT technology give the companies and organisations more flexibility. However, the significant side effect that was obvious was inconsistent processes of applications for technology delivery and support. The need for consistent practices for all aspects of service lifecycle was soon felt by the UK’s Office of Government Commerce. They needed a framework that could assist in driving organisational effectiveness and efficiency with predictable service levels. This resulted in the birth of ITIL.
Since its inception, ITIL guidance has proved itself to be the most successful mechanism to drive efficiency, consistency and excellence into the business of managing IT services. The basic approach of ITIL is IT service management, forcing us to give you a brief concept of service. A service is defined as something that provides value to customers. Services that customers can directly consume or utilize are known as business services. In ITIL, the IT Service Management suggests a more holistic approach for managing services from end-to-end. With the help of IT Service Management in ITIL, businesses can manage the entire business service along with its underlying components cohesively. The effective use of ITIL assures that we are considering every aspect of required functionality and service levels to the business customer.
Why organisations are interested in ITIL?
Keeping in view the development in information technology, it is most obvious that today’s technologies provide us with robust capabilities and afford significant flexibility, but they are significantly complex. The Internet provides a global reach to companies and organisations making it possible to achieve great business opportunities.
Additionally, companies have to continue to be able to meet or exceed the IT service expectations while working as effectively and efficiently as possible. While the key to effectiveness, efficiency and ability to improve services are the consistent repeatable processes. These consistent, repeatable processes are outlined in the ITIL framework, making it the most desirable framework among IT organisations.
Benefits that make ITIL indispensable
There are literally many benefits of ITIL, it helps in aligning with business needs, negotiating achievable service levels, consistent processes, efficient service delivery, improvable processes and services and much more. Below we will discuss some briefly.
- Getting parallel with business needs: When business needs are instantly responded with proactive solutions by ITIL, it automatically makes itself indispensable. The IT recommended services and implementation of Service Portfolio Management helps businesses to get insight into current and future needs and develop service offerings that can address them. Doing ITIL certification in Sydney can prove the best bet for the graduates seeking a career in IT service management.
- Achievable service levels: ITIL is the only framework available right now that makes business and IT true partners, by letting them agree upon realistic service levels that deliver the necessary value at an acceptable cost.
- Efficiency in service delivery: Well-defined processes with clearly documented accountability for each activity as recommended can significantly increase the efficiency of processes.
- Measurable & improvable services: The saying that you cannot manage what you cannot measure seems true in our case. Consistent and repeatable processes can be easily measured by ITIL and therefore can be better tuned for accurate delivery and overall effectiveness. ITIL can help organisations to monitor SLAs and make improvements as necessary.
Which companies use ITIL?
Right now, thousands and millions of companies of industries and sizes and all around the world have adopted ITIL. Below we have mentioned some of the largest companies using ITIL.
- Large technology companies who are proud users of ITIL are HP, Microsoft, IBM, Fujitsu,
- Multinational Retailers and wholesalers such as Metro, Target, Walmart and Staples
- Manufacturers such as Boeing, Toyota, Bombardier
- Entertainment entities such as Sony, Disney
- Financial services organisations such as Bank of America, Citi Bank, Barclay’s Bank;
- Entertainment entities such as Sony, Disney
- Life Sciences companies such as Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Takeda Pharmaceuticals use ITIL as their premium framework.
