ITIL--reference model for IT service management.

Kozina, Melita

Abstract: In modern times business systems are investing large sums in information and communication technology (ICT) owing to the fact that various aspects of this highly dominant technology have a great bearing on business and the competitive position of the company on the market. Use of IT is no longer adequate on operative level only; ICT investments are expected to yield better business processes, connected value chain in organizations and expanded business. In order to accomplish these goals, one must develop adequate IT management methods, which will raise the level of IT organization maturity. This way leads to higher business value of IT investments. This paper presents ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library), a concept for managing IT services which support transitional IT organizations.

Key words: IT Organization Maturity, IT Business Value, IT Management, ITIL Reference Model

1. INTRODUCTION

In recent years we bear witness to large investment activities in ICT. Moreover, these investments are still on the increase. Effect of technology is being focused toward restructuring traditional business organizations into u flexible organizations based on the process approach. However, in order to achieve higher effectiveness of investments in ICT, one needs to make sure that adequate concepts and methods of managing ICT potentials are applied. Numerous studies show that business practice does not see nearly enough use of such methods (or not at all), since most companies are veterans of IT investments but the effect of ICT investments is not on a satisfactory level. ICT potentials do not lead only to technological changes whose purpose is, in most cases, already preordained--it is a body of organizational, sociological, economical and numerous other changes. IT organization may be found on many different maturity levels, as Fig. 1 shows (Salle,2004), and this depends on the maturity of the business organization and its strategy of seeking IT support.

Key factors in constructing a modern IT organization which needs to be planned, implemented, controlled and continually improved are: processes, people, technology and management. Their inter-dependability is shown on Fig. 2 (OGC,2005).

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The goal of this work is to emphasize the need for transforming classic IT functions and using modern IT management concepts in order to accomplish higher business value of IT. The aim is also to analyze one of the concepts of IT management; one for managing IT services, with the use of which IT organizations raise its level of maturity. ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) is a modern reference model by which IT organizations accomplish their goals, such as: improvement of business process performance supported by IT; decrease of user problems and IT incidents (disasters); ensuring the continuity of IT services and customer (user) satisfaction, change management, etc.

2. ITIL--PROCEDURAL MODEL FOR IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT IMPLEMENTATION

Preconditions for ensuring the quality of IT services for business support are planning, implementation, measuring and analysis and continual improvement of the IT process (Brooks,2006; Lloyd,2002). Fig. 3 shows the procedural model for implementation of IT service management.

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3. ITIL--EFERENCE MODEL FOR IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT

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ITIL ensures a consistent best practice concept for setting up the IT service management processes built into the IT organization. Developed toward the end of 1980's for the government of Great Britain, ITIL, in time, became a de facto standard in setting up IT service management processes.

Core service management processes, according to the ITIL concept, contains Service Delivery and Service Support. Service Delivery describes services in accordance with customer requirements to support their business and the means to ensure these services. Service Support describes how customers(users) can get access to the IT services and how these services are supported.Fig.4 shows global communication between ITIL processes ensuring IT service support. Fig. 5 shows ITIL processes for delivery of IT services.

4. CONCLUSION

Modern IT management influences maturity of the IT function. The highest level of business management in charge of IT must be the acting body on the strategic level, deciding on IT investment, analyzing the need to link business needs and IT and possible IT risks, deciding on IT resources and following the effectiveness of using IT (IT Governance). Also available is operative management, including both business and IT managers working together to make IT strategy operative through IT processes. It's important to support business strategy. This includes many levels of IT management, such as planning and organization, development, delivery and support (service management) and revision of information systems.

5. REFERENCES

Brooks,P.(2006).Metrics for IT Service Management,ITSMFNL

Haes,D.S.,Grembergen,V.W.(2005).IT Governance Structures, Processes and Relational Mechanisms: Achieving IT/Business Alignment in a Major Belgian Financial Group, Proceedings of the 38th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

Lloyd,V.(2002).Planning to Implement Service ManagementUK OGC (2005). Introduction to ITIL, U.K.

Salle, M. (2004). IT Service Management and IT Governance: Review, Comparative Analysis and their Impact on Utility Computing, Available: http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2004/HPL-2004-98.pdf, Accessed: 2007-04-10.