ITIL

ITIL (the IT Information Library) is the Best Practice IT Service Management which is used by thousands of organisations around the world.

ITIL is based upon the recognition that organisations are becoming increasingly dependent upon IT in order to satisfy corporate aims and business needs. This increases the requirement for reliable, high-quality IT Services.

It was originally developed in the 1980s by the British Government's Office of Government Commerce (OGC), with subsequent updates in the 1990s, and in 2007 with ITIL v3.

ITIL is not based on any particular technology or organisation type, meaning that the best and good practices described can be tailored to suit any organisation, regardless of size or market sector.

ITIL is the only consistent and comprehensive public domain framework and documentation relating to IT Service Management best practice, and is the most popular IT Service Management framework in the world - widely adopted in Europe, North America, Asia and Australasia.

The latest version of the framework (v3) takes a holistic view of the entire service cycle through Strategy, Design, Transition, Operations and a Continual Service Improvement Program. Each of these service elements contains several processes that interact to provide a much greater balance between the business and IT, resulting in greater value being experienced by the Service customer.

ITIL has its own educational framework and qualifications scheme which is illustrated below.

	ITIL v2	ITIL v3
Level 3	Manager's Level (Red Badge)	Expert
Level 2	Practitioner Level (Blue Badge)	Intermediate
Level 1	Foundation Level (Green Badge)	Foundation

ITIL is a registered trademark of OGC.