ITSM (IT Service Management) is a set of methods that helps enterprises effectively manage the planning, development, implementation, and operation of IT systems鈥攊t is a methodology. ITSM originated from ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library), a standard library for IT service management developed in 1980 by the CCTA (Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency, UK). It consolidates the UK’s IT management practices into standards, providing enterprise IT departments with a standard methodology covering planning, development, implementation, and operations. This standard has been widely adopted by enterprises across Europe, the Americas, and Australia. Currently, 40鈥?0% of IT managers in Europe know ITSM, and 20-30% in the United States are familiar with it, yet very few in China understand ITSM. Aidan Lawes, CEO of itSMF, believes that “for any enterprise, regardless of the size of its IT architecture, ITSM is needed. Not many customers can integrate business and IT well yet. Many think of business first and then IT, rather than using IT to drive business.” Aidan Lawes believes it is necessary to start with education to popularize ITSM, making people aware of its importance from their student days.
Based on different starting points and emphases, various definitions of IT service management have been proposed.
Gartner, an authoritative international IT research firm, believes ITSM is a set of collaborative processes that ensure IT service quality through Service Level Agreements (SLAs). It integrates management activities like system management, network management, and system development management with the theories and practices of many processes such as change management, asset management, and problem management.
itSMF (the International IT Service Management Forum), the international authority in the ITSM field, defines ITSM as a process-oriented, customer-centric approach that improves an organization’s IT service delivery and support capabilities and levels by integrating IT services with organizational business.
I. The Origin of ITSM
In the mid-1980s, the British government discovered that IT service quality was generally unsatisfactory, and even the IT services provided to the government were poor. It therefore tasked its subordinate agency, the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA) (later merged into the UK’s Office of Government Commerce, OGC), to launch a project to investigate this and develop an effective, financially measurable method for using IT resources, for use by both the government and enterprises. The final outcome of this project was a publicly published set of IT management guides, namely ITIL. Because OGC issued the first version of ITIL, it has always held the ITIL trademark. ITIL’s purpose is to provide a vendor-independent and effective IT service management method applicable to different scales, technologies, and business needs.
II. ITSM Emerges at the Right Time
ITSM is not actually a new concept, so why is it only now starting to attract attention? The reality is that previously, customers focused more on business during IT system construction, with IT following business needs. For example, financial customers were busy with Core-banking, Internet-Banking, etc.; telecom customers focused on billing systems and BOSS; manufacturing customers implemented ERP systems, and so on. Now, enterprise informatization construction has begun to take shape, with business systems largely completed. The next focus is shifting from technology to management鈥攈ow to make these systems run better and how to improve management efficiency. Hu Jiansheng, Deputy Director of the National Informatization Evaluation Center, is very concerned about this: “Currently, domestic enterprises invest nearly a trillion yuan in IT annually. How to effectively manage past, current, and future IT investments to achieve effective informatization is our most pressing concern right now. In fact, during the early stages of informatization construction, many problems were indeed discovered, leading to IT investment waste. Therefore, promoting enterprise informatization construction with an effectiveness-oriented approach and strengthening IT infrastructure management is our current focus. And ITSM is precisely based on this concept.”
III. Characteristics of ITSM
ITSM has the following three characteristics.
1. Commonality 鈥?ITSM is an international management standard for informatization construction based on ITIL standards. The ITIL system provides a “common language,” offering shared models, methods, and terminology for personnel engaged in ITSM, allowing users and service providers to deeply discuss user requirements through common tools and easily reach consensus.
2. Neutrality 鈥?ITSM provides an implementation framework for IT management, allowing users not to be tied to any single service provider. ITSM does not target any specific platform or technology, nor will it change with the release of a next-generation operating system.
3. Practicality 鈥?ITSM is a process-oriented, customer-centric approach. While considering theory and academia, it places great emphasis on practicality and flexibility. Precisely because of these distinctive characteristics, ITSM has been widely adopted.
IV. The Three Levels of IT Management
In fact, many enterprises attach great importance to IT management, as evidenced by the existence of IT operations departments in every enterprise. However, due to a lack of standardized processes and methods, most enterprises still face the following three problems:
First, the IT environment is not yet reliable enough. For example, even if networks, servers, databases, and application software all reach 99.5% availability, this still means more than 10 days of downtime per year.
Second, the enterprise IT department staff are still busy “firefighting,” playing the role of a “fire brigade,” in a passive service state, rushing to wherever problems arise, with no quantitative standards for service quality and performance.
Third, the enterprise’s IT management still relies on so-called “geniuses” for support. Due to a lack of corresponding processes and knowledge accumulation, IT management relies too heavily on individuals, and the departure of key personnel can even paralyze the enterprise’s IT systems. Therefore, it can be said that current IT management is still at the first level of passive service. The higher level of IT service management is to transform passive service into proactive service, and even to be prescient鈥攑redicting potential problems and proactively addressing them. The key to achieving this goal requires not only the support of IT management tools but also standardized processes and personnel skills, which is precisely the essence of ITSM.
V. ITSM Emphasizes Three Key Elements
ITSM is just a set of methodologies; its ultimate implementation still relies on corresponding tools and experience. Since domestic informatization is still in its infancy, there was previously more focus on technology. For example, many customers have adopted management tools like network management and system management, but technology only ensures service quality and efficiency. Standard processes monitor the operational status of IT services, while personnel quality relates to the level of service quality. What ITSM emphasizes most is the organic combination of the three key elements: processes, personnel, and technology. During ITSM implementation, not only are corresponding management tools deployed, but personnel job responsibilities are also defined based on the specific situation of the enterprise, and daily work processes, as well as incident and problem management processes, are designed. For instance, when FAW-Volkswagen discussed why it introduced the concept of IT service management, it cited these reasons: to provide a single point of contact for IT system users, ensuring a unified interface for any user discovering a problem; to provide specific statistical reports to the IT department management, allowing for quantitative measurement of IT department work; to enrich and improve the knowledge base of known problems; to assist in enhancing the overall problem-solving capability of service desk support personnel; to be able to predict the support capacity of system resources; to enable proactive problem handling; and to improve customer satisfaction. These reasons represent the typical needs of enterprise customers in IT service management and are also the goals of ITSM. Additionally, ITSM can reduce management costs. Aidan Lawes cited Pro