This is a common question to the newbies of IT service management. In basic terms, ITSM stands for IT services management while ITIL is the IT infrastructure library. In better terms, ITSM is the way an organization approaches IT services from a strategic level. ITSM, therefore, focuses on the big picture objectives of a company and at a higher level than the daily activities. Here you can find the difference between ITIL VS ITSM.
In addition, IT Service Management is designed to help businesses better meet their goals by utilizing the right infrastructure, the right services, and processes with a focus on incessant improvement. According to Creatio therefore, ITSM system is a customer-focused business intervention.
In order to meet all the objectives of a company, ITSM tries to effectively address the IT components while staying within the set budget. These components include planning, designing, delivering, operating, and controlling.
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What Exactly Is ITSM?
According to the ITIL 2011 glossary, ITSM defines as “The implementation and management of quality IT services that meet the needs of the business. IT service management is performed by IT service providers through an appropriate mix of people, process and information technology.”
In the past, it was more difficult for IT departments to offer effective services to their organizations, standardize processes, streamline communication or even resolve issues effectively and timely, what is generally called “good customer service.” However, many IT departments have progressed especially in the way they offer services to the organization. ITSM is therefore a new way through which IT organizations provide support and services.
In fact, the general idea of the ITSM system refers to the management of IT as a set of services. IT experts should therefore ensure their objectives and strategic objectives of the company are aligned together. And that they are working towards the delivery of high-value services to their customers.
The term has therefore been commonly used in the past to refer to how technology is managed, but presently refers to how IT delivers quality services to customers.
What Is ITIL?
The United Kingdom experienced a long IT dependency period, especially in the 80s. however, there were no set standards of operation to support service delivery. With time, because every other IT department was operating in silos and with individualized management practices. Because these practices were not optimized or standardized, the need to develop a cohort of best practices for ITSM was inevitable.
These practices were first published between 1989 and 1996 in the “Information Technology Infrastructure Library” as a set of 30 books. These were then revised and another set of 9 books released in 2000 and 2001. This was version 2. Progressively, version 3 was released in 2011 and version 4 in 2019. Besides, ITIL was accepted as the official name and not just an acronym of the IT Infrastructure Library.
ITIL has four components and a four dimensions model. The components of the service value system are:
- The practices
- The service value chain
- Governance
- The guiding principles
- Continual improvement
The four dimensions ITIL focuses on for optimized service value chain are:
- Partners and suppliers
- Organizations and people
- Value streams and processes
- Information and technology
ITIL Processes And ITSM Best Practices
ITIL is a set of ITSM best practices. These are regularly updated to optimize IT services on a standard scale. Further, IT organizations adopting the paradigm of IT as a service follows the set of best practices in the ITIL framework for better service delivery to users, aligning organizational objectives to the IT objectives, as well as optimizing service capacity and availability without requiring additional software.
The ITSM ITIL Framework
The ITIL version of 2021 breaks the ITSM discipline into five stages. Every stage corresponds to an IT service lifecycle. The stages include:
- Service strategy: entails IT strategy development for customer service and begins with both customer and business needs assessment, determination of the type of service the IT company intends to offer and capabilities needed.
- Service design: this includes design, creation, and modification of IT services.
- Service transition: services that have been designed are built and deployed.
- Service operation: this stage of the ITIL life cycle ensures that information technology services are effective and efficient.
- Continual service improvement: ensures continuous data collection to adequately capture successes and failures and use the information for the improvement of process and service efficiency.
