What is ITIL?
Patrick Clements
ITIL defined by Wikipedia is a set of concepts and techniques for managing information technology infrastructure, development, and operations. It is concepts that were developed to begin merging IT management with the overall business objectives. This is really a positive movement in customer service and support. Traditionally companies usually tend to get in their own little silos and say 'Hey, my department is doing their job...everything works well over here' without interfacing with the other business units. IT departments (from my own personal experience) are the worse at doing this. What ITIL brings to the table is taking off the blinders and making each department unit operate with the same goals...the goals of the business. Engaging the customer, creating visibility, assigning accountability, and implementing continuous improvements, these are the basic idea on what the ITIL framework is able to provide. This is not to say that ITIL itself is a simple quick fix. It's pretty weighty and lives among the same standards that you would find in Six Sigma or the ISO standards. These standards are definitely overkill for a small to medium size company, however the underlying concepts are what are important. It is our mission to understand the methodology of ITIL and boil it down to something that is tangible and possible for our customers via our web hosted solutions.
ITIL is a continuous learning and improvement process and we would always be open to hear your thoughts and feedback on how we can move closer to these standards. IT management of customer service is a growing need and ITIL is providing a map for best practices.
The following two links will also provide some generaloverview on two specific ITIL processes - Change Management & CMDB.
Amit B
http://itilchangemanagement.blogspot.com
http://CMDB-itil.blogspot.com