Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Essay Example
Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Essay Example

Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Essay Example

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  • Pages: 11 (2753 words)
  • Published: November 6, 2018
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This paper discusses the elements of Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), a collection of information service management (ITSM) that aligns IT services with business needs (Fry 5). ITIL is composed of five major publications, covering the lifecycle of ITSM. ITIL emphasizes ISO/IEC 20000, the International Service Management Standard for IT. However, there are differences between ITIL and ISO/IEC 20000. ITIL includes procedures, processes, checklists, and tasks that are not specific to any organization. It helps organizations establish a baseline for implementing, planning, and measuring strategies. ITIL is used to demonstrate strategy fulfillment and measure improvement (De Jong and Kolthof 8). It is important to note that ITIL is a registered trademark of the United Kingdom’s Cabinet Office, with ownership now belonging to the HM Government instead of OGC. In response to increa

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sing reliance on information technology, the CCTA of the UK government developed recommendations in the 1980s.The CCTA acknowledged that both private sector contracts and government agencies were developing their own IT management standards without standard practices. ITIL was established as a set of books by Fry, with each book covering a specific practice in ITSM. The number of books grew to over 30 volumes between 1989 and 1996. In 2000, ITIL v2 combined the publications into 8 sets to make it more accessible and affordable. This was done to align different aspects of IT management, services, and applications. The sets for Services Management, including Service Support and Service Delivery, were the most widely deployed, understood, and circulated publications of ITIL version 2. In April 2001, the CCTA became part of the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), under the UK Treasury. ITIL version 2 wa

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then published in 2006. In May 2007, the merged organization released version 3 of ITIL, also known as the ITIL Refresh Project. ITIL v3 consists of 26 functions and processes that are now grouped into 5 volumes. These volumes are organized around the concept of service lifecycle. ITIL v3 is also referred to as ITIL 2007 Edition.The OGC has formally announced the withdrawal of ITIL v2 certification and has introduced a consultation on how to proceed. In 2011, the ITIL 2011 Edition was published as an update to the 2007 edition. However, due to the merging of OGC into the UK’s Cabinet Office, OGC is no longer the owner of ITIL, and the HM Government now owns the ITIL 2011 edition. The 2007 Edition of ITIL expands on v2 and completely replaces it since the withdrawal period ended in June 2011. It provides a holistic view of the full life cycle of services and covers all necessary components for delivering sufficient services to customers. Version 2, on the other hand, focuses on specific activities directly linked to service support and delivery. Most activities from v2 remain unchanged in the 2007 edition, but there were significant changes in expressions to allow for extension. The HM government has published a summary of these changes. The ITIL 2011 edition consists of five primary publications: service strategy, service design, service transition, service operation, and service management.De Jong and Kolthof (6) state that the 2011 Edition is a revised version of the ITIL framework. It adds significant standards by highlighting the official processes that were originally intended but not specified.

The Service Strategy (SS) is the foundation and core of the

ITIL Service Lifecycle. It provides guidelines for prioritizing and guiding service-provider investments in services. The primary focus of the service strategy is to assist IT organizations in developing and improving their services over the long term. This strategy heavily relies on a market-driven framework in two scenarios.

The service strategy encompasses various aspects, including business-case development, defining service value, service assets, types of service providers, and market analysis. It also encompasses several processes such as Service management, service portfolio management, financial management for IT services, demand management, and business relationship management.

Financial Management for IT services is a crucial aspect of best practices outlined by ITIL. The main objective of this process is to ensure cost-effective and accurate oversight of IT resources and assets used in providing agreed upon IT services mentioned in service-level agreements (SLAs). It involves planning, controlling, and recovering costs associated with delivering IT services.Financial management for IT services has the overall objective of providing a transparent evaluation of an organization's expenditure on IT resources. This evaluation is used to develop metric-based cost-cutting strategies. For internal IT organizations, the objective is to effectively steward the IT resources and assets used in providing services. For outsourced or separate entity organizations, the objective is to account for the resources used in order to attribute costs to the services provided. Financial management for IT services includes budgeting, IT accounting, and charging as sub-processes. Budgeting allows organizations to plan for future expenditure and prevent overspending. It also helps in comparing actual costs with predicted costs to improve budgeting forecasts. IT accounting focuses on tracking the amount of money spent on delivering IT services.IT accounting allows organizations to evaluate

their finances and determine the effectiveness of their IT service delivery. This helps in identifying areas where cost savings can be implemented. Different cost elements, such as capital costs, operational costs, direct costs, indirect costs, fixed costs, and variable costs, are considered in controlling an organization's accounting. Capital costs are associated with purchases that have long-term value, like infrastructure buildings. Operational costs refer to daily expenses such as salaries and energy bills. Direct costs are expenses that can be directly attributed to a specific customer or service, such as purchasing a dedicated server. Fixed costs are incurred over a long period of time, like lease contracts, and do not fluctuate in the short term. Charging allows for the fair allocation of IT service costs to consumers of those services. This is an important aspect for IT organizations that function independently as businesses. The service design package offered by ITIL provides guidance on designing IT processes, services, and other aspects relevant to service management efforts. It focuses on service delivery rather than technology itself.Therefore, service design deals with the interaction between a planned service solution and technical environments and larger businesses. Vetterani (41) states that the design work is consolidated into a single Service Design Package (SDP). De Jong and Kolthof (7) also emphasize that the service design package, along with other information about services, is managed within service catalogues. The covered processes include service-level management, availability management, capacity management, IT Service Continuity Management (ITSCM), Information Security Management System, and supplier management. According to Vetterani (7), service-level management involves monitoring, continual identification, and evaluation of IT service levels specified in Service-level agreements (SLAs). This management ensures

that arrangements align with internal IT support providers and external suppliers. The service-level management process evaluates the impact of changes on SLAs and service quality. Fry (65) highlights the close relationship between this process and operational processes for regulating activities. These services play a crucial role in establishing and monitoring metrics against a benchmark. According to Fry (77), this process serves as the central interface between the organization and customers, fulfilling four roles.The primary role of the process is to ensure that established IT services are provided at the correct time and location. It also involves communication with various management teams to ensure that required levels are met within agreed resources. Another role is the creation and maintenance of service catalogs, which list regular IT service options and agreements for customers. Lastly, the process is responsible for ensuring the availability of suitable IT service plans to support continuity requirements.

According to De Jong and Kolthof (65), availability management aims to enable organizations to maintain and support business operations at reasonable costs. This involves high-level actions such as creating an availability plan, determining availability requirements, monitoring maintenance requirements, and monitoring availability. Availability management encompasses reliability, maintainability, serviceability, resilience, and security. Maintainability refers to the ability of IT components to be restored or remain operational. Serviceability is the ability of an internal supplier to operate under third-party agreements. Resilience is a method of ensuring IT services are reliable, and one example of resilience is redundancy. Security relates to the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of data.The process known as IT Service Continuity Management (ITSCM) focuses on creating arrangements that ensure the ability of IT services to continue and recover

from severe incidents. This process involves both reactive and proactive measures. ITSCM is seen by application owners as a means of recovering the IT infrastructure to provide IT services. In 2009, many organizations adopted business continuity planning (BCP) to ensure the continuation of complete business processes in the event of severe incidents. ITSCM includes assessing recovery alternatives, developing contingency plans, prioritizing activities through business impact analysis (BIA), and regularly reviewing the plan.

Service Transition, on the other hand, deals with providing necessary services for an organization's operation. According to Fry, this aspect often focuses on the project side of IT rather than the everyday "business as usual" activities. Service Transition also encompasses topics such as change management in the "business as usual" environment. Some of the ITIL processes related to service transition are service asset and configuration management, change management, and release and deployment management.Change management aims to ensure that standardized techniques and procedures are implemented to effectively handle any changes in the organization. Vetterani (34) defines change as an event that leads to a new state of one or more Configuration Items (CIs). The main objectives of change management include reducing the need to backtrack, minimizing service disruptions, and optimizing resource utilization. Some commonly used terms in change management are Change, Request For Change (RFC), ITIL v2, and ITIL 2007. Change refers to modifications, additions, or subtractions of CIs. RFC is a form used to record details of a change request and is typically submitted to change management by the requester. Service asset and configuration management mainly focuses on maintaining information about configuration items such as assets that are necessary for providing IT services. Configuration

management involves tracing and managing each element of a configuration from start to finish. It includes planning, identification, change control, change management, release management, and maintenance. The software migration and automated distribution team is responsible for release and deployment management. Effective control of hardware and software ensures that they are tested, licensed, and have the correct version.Such hardware and software operate as intended when introduced into the existing infrastructure (De Jong and Kolthof 5). Release management is responsible for ensuring quality control during the creation and implementation of new software and hardware. Quality control ensures that all software and hardware meet the requirements and processes of a business. The main objectives of release management include planning the launch of software, planning and implementing procedures for installation and distribution, effectively managing and communicating customer expectations during the design and launch of releases, and regulating the installation and distribution of system changes. According to Fry (67), release management focuses on protecting the live environment and its services through the use of formal checks and procedures. Service Operation (SO) aims to provide best practices for delivering agreed levels of service to both customers and end-users (De Jong and Kolthof 85). Customers are individuals who pay for the service and negotiate service level agreements (SLAs). SO is the phase of the lifecycle where value and services are directly delivered, as stated in the ITIL service operation package. Additionally, this volume considers problem management and finding a balance between cost and reliability.The main functions of service operations include application management, technical management, service desk, and operations management. These functions encompass various processes such as event management, request fulfillment, incident management,

problem management, and access management.

The service desk, which is part of service operation, is closely linked to the lifecycle of service operations. Its tasks include handling requests and incidents, and serving as an interface for ITSM process. The service desk operations feature a single point of entry, single point of contact (SPOC), single point of exit, data integrity, and streamlined communication channel. It is also known as a help desk or call center.

Call centers focus on professionally managing high call volumes, while help desks are responsible for coordinating and resolving incidents at primary support levels.

Application management involves implementing best practices that enhance the quality of software development throughout the software development lifecycle (SDLC). ITIL version 2 emphasizes Software Asset Management (SAM), which is closely related to application management. SAM involves incorporating processes, people, and technology to systematically assess, track, and manage software usage and licenses.The aim of SAM is to reduce human resource and IT expenses. Event management is a process that indicates proper functioning. This can result in incidents being blocked. According to Fry (24), events can also indicate normal activities, as well as the need for routine intervention. Fry (34) suggests that event management relies on monitoring to provide notifications and analyze the status of components. A management tool that polls the CI can detect events, which may lead to incidents, problems, or changes. Service Management aims to align and realign IT services with the dynamic needs of business. It detects and adopts the necessary changes to support business processes (De Jong and Kolthof 67). The perspective of service management regarding improvement focuses on the quality of service from a business standpoint, while

still aiming to enhance overall efficiency throughout the lifecycle. In order to successfully manage improvement, service management must clearly define what needs to be measured and controlled. According to De Jong and Kolthof (7), service management should be treated like other service practices, with open training, planning, and ongoing scheduling to be effective. Service management should also be scheduled and planned similar to a process, with defined inputs, activities, and roles.According to Vetterani (67), service management and Application Performance Management (APM) are closely related as they both focus on improvement. Organizations that have adopted ITIL in their IT Service Management (ITSM) may seek certification under ISO/IEC20000 for conformity. It is worth noting that there are differences between ITIL and ISO/IEC20000. For example, an organization can achieve ISO20000 qualifications without implementing or recognizing the concept of ITIL's Known Error, which is deemed necessary in ITIL. The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA) uses ITIL as the foundation for their Framework for ICT Technical Support (FITS). According to De Jong and Kolthof (56), there are at least 20,000 companies in the US that utilize ITIL, including Boeing, IBM, Barclays, and Procter & Gamble. A strength of ITIL is its ability to enhance customer relationships and satisfaction by prioritizing the customers' needs and user experience over technological issues (De Jong and Kolthof 76).In addition, implementing ITIL has several benefits. Firstly, it leads to increased customer satisfaction which improves the relationship between the business and its customers. Secondly, it results in improved reliability and service quality. This is achieved by implementing effective standards that allow organizations to deliver their services more easily and consistently to established levels. De

Jong and Kolthof (78) have found that this also leads to faster restoration of services and reduced disruption and downtime for support teams.

Furthermore, organizations are able to meet their contractual and legal conformity requirements. Additionally, ITIL has the advantage of optimizing the delivery of service across the supply chain. De Jong and Kolthof (67) suggest that it provides opportunities for standardization and simplification across trading people or organizations. This enables better cooperation with suppliers and customers, facilitating logical business decisions on cost optimizations.

However, there are some drawbacks to using ITIL. De Jong and Kolthof (56) criticize that ITIL does not directly deal with business applications running on IT infrastructure. It also does not allow for a mutual working association between operations and development teams. This trend towards a mutual working relationship is known as DevOps, which is associated with increased release rates of applications and adoption of agile software methodologies.According to Vetterani (89), conventional service management does not support increased release rates of applications due to the lack of automation. The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) focuses on aligning information technology services with business needs. The ITIL 2011 edition consists of five main publications: service strategy, service design, service transition, service operation, and service management.

Service Strategy (SS) provides standards and guidance for prioritizing and investing in services. The ITIL Service Design (SD) package offers recommended guidance for designing IT processes, services, and other aspects of service management. Service Transition (SR) involves providing the services required by an organization and transitioning them into operational use.

Service Operation (SO) aims to provide best practices for delivering agreed levels of services to customers and end-users. Service management aims to

align and realign IT services with the evolving needs of the business by detecting and implementing necessary changes to the supporting processes.

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