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If you’re involved with or concerned about the delivery of
support within your organization, you should take a close look at ITIL. The acronym is ambiguous (it stands for the
IT Infrastructure Library), but ideas are becoming the standard against which
Information Technology services are being measured. In a nutshell, it a set of best practices for
the delivery and support of IT services that are focused on business needs.
One example of where ‘business needs’ and ‘IT needs’ can be
out of alignment is the area of availability, or ‘up-time.’ The typical IT approach is to get as much
equipment approved by the business as they can to minimize the chances of an
outage, improving up-time statistics.
While this sounds like a good thing, the cost of improving up-time
increases exponentially as you approach 100% up-time, so at some point the cost of guaranteeing up-time outweighs the benefit
provided to the business. The ITIL
Availability Management process in contrast, follows a structured process to
make sure that the appropriate amount of up-time is provided in the specific
areas that are important to the business. This is just one of many areas where the ITIL approach can benefit the
organization.
If you fit into any of the following categories, ITIL is
something that you should be looking into:
- You
are a business person concerned about making sure Information Technology
is supporting your business cost-effectively
- You
are an IT professional that needs to make sure you are in tune with the
business needs and industry direction
- You
are involved in sales or customer support and want to make sure that your
organization is competitive (see
our upcoming webinar series for more information)
Written By: Brian Huber, Service Desk, Principal Technical Consultant, ITIL Master Certified
ITIL was started over
10 years ago by the British government to improve the quality of IT within the
government. It has since become a de
facto world standard, embraced by much of the European Union and Canada, and
acceptance is spreading quickly in the United States. Contact us if you are interested in ITIL consulting, training, events, or software.
ITIL® is a Registered Trademark and a
Registered Community Trademark of the Office of Government Commerce, and
is Registered in the US Patent and Trademark Office.
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