Information Technology Infrastructure Library

ITIL provides a holistic view of the full life cycle of IT services. Helping to deliver excellent services to the customer, by supporting the component parts throughout the organisation.

The main areas are:

Service Strategy
Focuses on helping organisations improve and develop over the long term, providing a reliable infrastructure at the most effective price.

Service Design
Services and processes are well designed and published as a service catalogue. These are then delivered correctly using equipment that is reliable and serviceable, whilst providing resilience and the necessary capacity. Risk assessment needs to take place on a regular basis covering areas such as recovery and security.

Service Transition
Major software releases and hardware upgrades require extensive research and meticulous planning to maintain an excellent service.

Service Operation
This is the part of the lifecycle where the facilities are used and monitored. Equipment and software maintained. Users are supported through the Service desk and specialist site teams.

Continual Service Improvement
Requires constant training, monitoring and planning. Often upgrades are forced upon the department when support for older systems is withdrawn, this then has a complex knock on effect.