What is ITIL?

IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a comprehensive and cohesive framework of best practices for IT Service Management.

It has now been adopted by organisations, large and small, public and private, throughout the world. It consists of a set of inter-related and complementary books which provide advice and guidance on the operation and support of quality IT services

Its focus and rationale is delivering, and improving the quality of, business-focused IT services in a cost-justified way.

• ITIL subjects are built around the core Service Management areas of:
• Service Support (the more event-driven, operational processes/functions)
• Incident Management 
• Problem Management
• Change Management
• Release Management
• Configuration Management
• Service Desk function
• Service Delivery (the more cyclic, tactical processes)
• Service Level Management
• Financial Management
• Capacity Management
• Availability Management
• IT Service Continuity Management

Other ITIL areas are:

• Planning to Implement IT Service Management
• The Business Perspective
• ICT Infrastructure Management
• Security Management
• Application Management

ITIL can also be aligned and integrated with other standards and frameworks, e.g. ISO20000 and COBIT.