The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) may have started as a relatively obscure UK government project, but the ITIL approach now underpins a wide variety of service management systems, and is becoming increasingly integrated with other quality standards. Just how can ITIL offer real benefits to your business and provide you with better IT service?
Most IT managers with any experience have learnt to be wary of two things: government IT proposals and acronyms. The former are generally several years behind the times and weighed down with jargon, while the latter are often designed to sound cute rather than delivering any useful features. The paranoia levels when contemplating dealing with the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)--a project almost always referred to in its initialled form, and one originally developed by the UK government in the e-commerce-free days of the late 1980s--can thus quickly reach Marvin-like proportions.
While understandable, such an attitude would be dangerous. ITIL has now established a clear leadership position as a methodology for effective delivery and management of IT services. It is used in a wide range of systems and network management products, and is supported by an ever-growing army of consultants, trainers, and advisors.
Support for ITIL has been steadily building for some time. "Repeatable, documented processes are essential to improving IT service delivery and management. The ITIL framework provides an effective foundation for quality IT service management. Any Australian enterprise considering quality improvements in service delivery should start with the ITIL," Gartner analysts John Roberts and Simon Mingay concluded in an assessment of the relevance of ITIL to the Australian market back in 2001. Expectations of IT departments are, if anything, somewhat higher now than they were back in 2001, so the lessons of ITIL are likely to be doubly important.
A little history
ITIL was originally created by the UK government's Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA), which had the role of advising on how government agencies could best make use of technology. (This is somewhat analogous to what NOIE does within Australia.)
The original ITIL, created in 1989, consisted of a series of books, describing how IT services could be delivered effectively and consistently via a series of best practices. The core of the approach was to apply established principles of management science to the then-emerging world of mass usage IT.
CCTA was quite canny in the process it used to create the books. Rather than spending UK taxpayer funds to author the ITIL volumes itself, it invited technology companies to contribute their expertise in specific areas. Editing and proofing was then carried out by rival IT companies, which ensured that self-promotion and technology-specific references were ruthlessly weeded out. CCTA then took on the final editing of the documents for consistency, and retained copyright in them. For their trouble, the vendors could be fairly sure that what was being proposed wasn't so outlandish that they'd all have to go out and build new systems before they'd managed to implement sales staff to sell them.
One key to the survival of ITIL principles is that they are not technology-specific, but focus squarely on service delivery. They also do so at an astounding level of detail. There were more than 40 volumes in the original series, describing best practices across 24 related disciplines.
The ITIL books have continued to be periodically refreshed, with the most recent batch of updates beginning in 2002, when the existing titles were consolidated down into seven core volumes, covering service support, service delivery, service management implementation, application management, infrastructure management, security management, and the business perspective on ITIL. In each of these areas, there are multiple disciplines to be considered (see sidebar Managing with ITIL for an overview of some of the key disciplines).
The recent consolidation process means that each volume is easier to buy, but costs a little more (the current price is around $170 per volume direct from the UK). For any full ITIL implementation, an understanding of the core volumes is deemed essential by most consultants (though they'll happily sell you plenty of support services as well).
From the UK, the ITIL approach spread into Europe and then gradually into other centres. A key influence in this process has been the support for ITIL by the IT Service Management Forum (ITSMF), an independent body of IT service managers which has established chapters all over the world. The official training supervisors for ITIL, which run certification programs for individuals, are located in the UK and the Netherlands (whose adoption of ITIL has at times threatened to outstrip the UK itself).
Australia's first ITIL course is said to have taken place in 1995. Certified training is currently available from five providers in Australia (Conan Group, Lucid IT, Pink Elephant, RedWorld, and The Art of Service), while exams for ITIL certification can be taken electronically through a large number of Thomson Prometric agencies. More recently, ITIL has seen increasing popularity in North America, an area not always noted for its receptiveness to business ideas from overseas. The dominance of US consulting firms and IT vendors has also seen an increase in ITIL enthusiasm even in markets which had already begun experimenting with it, creating something of a coals-to-Newcastle effect.
Typically, despite its origins, Americans now like to describe ITIL as "an emerging worldwide standard for IT service and support". The UK Office of Government Commerce (OGC), which continues to manage and develop ITIL, is unlikely to be impressed with that attitude. Its Web site includes a curt note reminding everyone that ITIL documents are Crown copyrighted and can't be reproduced without permission. (At least one prominent ITIL consultancy incorrectly identified the ITIL books as public domain.)
And then there's MS
Such patriotic considerations aside, one of the more significant developments in the history of ITIL was its adoption by the IT industry's favourite 800-pound gorilla, Microsoft. Microsoft used the principles developed in ITIL as a key element in its Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF), first introduced in 2000, which is embedded in many of its enterprise products, including Systems Management Server.
Of course, being Microsoft, the non-proprietary aspect of ITIL wasn't seen as particularly essential. "[MOF] provides comprehensive technical guidance for achieving mission-critical production system reliability, availability, supportability, and manageability for solutions and services built on Microsoft's products and technologies," the company's own overview comments (the emphasis is ours). "MOF also extends the ITIL code of practice to support distributed IT environments and industry trends such as application hosting and Web-based transactional and e-commerce systems."
Despite its self-centred view, Microsoft's approach has helped cement the importance of ITIL. META Group estimates that by 2007 more than 75 percent of companies will be using some form of Microsoft management software--which means that they'll be using an approach based on ITIL, even if they completely fail to realise this or perform any kind of more general overhaul on their processes.
Microsoft is far from being the only company which had added ITIL into its proprietary management framework. HP's OpenView, CA's Unicenter, and IBM's Tivoli families all have support for ITIL within some of their components, as do many other more specialised management platforms and tools vendors.
Some of these companies proudly boast that their systems have been "certified" as ITIL-compliant. It's important to note that such certification is done by external agencies, it isn't done by the OGC itself, or even by its training supervisors. In the strictest sense, ITIL certification for products isn't possible, since the products have to be adapted to work within a specific environment, and ITIL assessment would only be possible after that had happened.
Nonetheless, boasting about ITIL compliance now appears to be a checkbox in the marketing materials of many management systems vendors. "There's a lot of lip service paid to ITIL, but not always a lot of substance," says Dominic Schiavello, marketing manager for Computing Associates Australia. (This is hardly unusual behaviour when it comes to marketing enterprise services, of course.)
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I would like to draw your attention to the recent article entitled "Licensed to ITIL", by Angus Kidman, dated 21 May 2003. I refer specifically to the paragraph describing the ITIL training providers in Australia, as it does not provide enough balanced information for your readers.
Firstly, ProActive Services were responsible for bringing ITIL to Australia, and it was our organisation that conducted the first ITIL course in 1995. ProActive was in fact, the only provider until 1998.
Certified training is currently available from numerous providers in Australia, who provide certified training from two separate examination bodies. This article only highlights the training providers certified by EXIN, the Examination Institute of the Netherlands.
The other examination board is the UK-based ISEB, the Information Systems Examination Board. The ISEB has a number of training providers licenced to conduct training in Australia, of which ProActive is one. In fact, ProActive is one of the ISEB's largest service providers worldwide and has a consultant/trainer who is the only Australian ISEB examiner for the Manager's Certificate courses.
Whilst we appreciate that any news on ITIL is good news, and that the article certainly achieves one of our aims - that of educating IT departments throughout Australia and New Zealand, we would hope that you are also focussed on ensuring your readers receive the right information. We are always happy to discuss ITIL and the status of IT Service Management in Australia both from our own perspective and that of our clients.
Bob Philipson
Managing Director
ProActive Services
www.proactiveservices.com.au