ITIL History
IT Infrastructure Library® (ITIL®) is a process-oriented IT control framework for service management organizations. Developed in the late 1980s by the United Kingdom, this framework has been widely adopted and is now the most accepted and used IT service management best practices approach in the world.
In the late 1980s, the UK recognized that the cost of IT infrastructures must be controlled so they commissioned the Central Computer and Telecommunication Agency (CCTA) to address the issue. This directive resulted in the publication of the Government Information Technology Infrastructure Management, or GITIM. The goal of GITIM was to define a framework that would ensure the efficient and financially responsible use of IT resources within the British government and the private sector. Apparently, GITIM satisfied a need. Governments and private industry in Europe adopted the framework very quickly and soon was proclaimed the world’s “defacto standard” for IT service management. GITIM was ITIL version 1.0.
Today’s ITIL version 3.1 was also developed by the UK government under the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) which merged with the CCTA in 2000. Version two, like its predecessor, concentrated on the service management model but the new publications were more concise and usable.
ITIL’s popularity continues to spread. Microsoft used the ITIL framework to develop the Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) and the first ITIL-aligned British Standard (BS15000) has been issued. In 2005, the International Standards Organization (ISO) placed BS15000 on the fast track to becoming an ISO standard (ISO20000).
ITIL is divided into a service of 8 publications commonly known as “sets”. The 8 publications are:
- Service Support
- Service Delivery
- Planning to Implement Service Management
- Software Asset Management
- Applications Management
- Service Delivery
- The Business Perspective
- ICT Infrastructure Management
Together these publications describe the processes that are necessary for the effective management of IT organizations. According to ITIL, service management is composed of both service support and service delivery organizations whose working relationship with the customer is specifically defined by a Service Level Agreement (SLA).
The popularity of ITIL and IT and business processes automation is fueled by two concurrent market forces resulting into a “perfect storm” for ITIL and IT Service Management: