Change is the only constant, and ITIL is no exception. From an internal government specification to a globally recognized best practice for IT service management, the latest ITIL v3 aims to advance alongside users on the journey toward mature IT service management.
“The service lifecycle approach introduced by ITIL v3 will fundamentally change how practitioners conduct IT practices. As a best-practice framework for IT management, the upgrade of ITIL signifies an increase in its maturity. Unlike previous incremental advancement paths, ITIL v3 introduces IT users into a continuous, lifecycle-based service improvement process,” said David Ratcliffe, President of Pink Elephant, at the “Facing ITSM 2008” IT Service Management seminar held recently in Beijing.
In migrating from ITIL v2 to ITIL v3, practitioners face a shift in service management philosophy. Since its official release on May 30, 2007, the global enthusiasm for ITIL v3 has been steadily rising. Compared to ITIL v2, ITIL v3 offers more standardized theoretical guidance and specific methods for IT service improvement. A notable feature it also highlights is the added capability to demonstrate ROI (Return on Investment) to business groups.
As a renowned provider of IT management best practice education and consulting services, Pink Elephant is one of the authors of the ITIL v3 core volume, “Continual Service Improvement.” When discussing the reasons why corporate interest in ITIL has surged dramatically over the past two years, David Ratcliffe believes that the key drivers are the transformation of IT organizations from isolated technology silos to service-oriented IT frameworks, and the prevailing trend of ITIL’s global adoption. He pointed out that in response to changing user needs, ITIL v3, through its version upgrade of the normative framework, opens up a holistic perspective on enterprise IT, implements ITIL practices from the strategic level down to the operational level, and establishes a service-centric framework system.
“ITIL v3 is not meant to replace ITIL v2; the former simply expands upon the latter,” David said. He emphasized that ITIL v2 can be embedded into ITIL v3, and organizations can choose to continue using ITIL v2 without needing to complete a migration in the short term; he believes it will not be a painful process. At the same time, he admitted that there are currently no complete ITIL v3 deployment cases, as the new version has only been available for a few months. However, many enterprises have already shown strong interest in ITIL v3 and hope to immediately implement some of the new version’s guiding principles. Nonetheless, some enterprises have shown less interest in the new ITIL version. “The overall transformation of ITIL adoption may take several years to complete, but some enterprises are striving to discover opportunities for improving IT service levels from the concepts of ITIL v3,” David said.
David also believes that under the influence of ITIL v3, the development of ITSM (IT Service Management) software solutions is showing some new trends. For instance, service catalogs, version management software, dedicated monitoring and discovery tools, audit and compliance monitoring tools, and knowledge management tools will become hot topics for the technological research and development of management software vendors.
On a practical application level, according to a joint survey by Pink Elephant and BMC on ITIL application within SAP environments, the most commonly implemented ITIL process is incident management, followed by service desk and change management, with the biggest challenge to ITIL implementation remaining cultural issues. In response, Pink Elephant’s Director of IT Service Management Best Practices, Troy DuMoulin, stated that enterprises need to become more adept at using the continual service improvement model and master the details of process improvement. He noted that ITIL v3 provides more detailed guidance for real-world enterprise application issues, offering more specific direction from the strategy and process design levels to the continual improvement process.