All About IT infrastructure library

When using external consultants or when outsourcing business processes or application services, ITIL will help in the handover. As the processes are common, there is no requirement for lengthy transfers of 'our unique IT processes'.

ITIL makes replacing staff on helpdesks easier too. If the processes are common across industries, anyone who has worked on an ITIL-based helpdesk in the past will be easily able to adapt to your ITIL-based helpdesk.

ITIL has matured over the past two years. This is mainly due to the acceptance by the vendor community that commonality of approach to basic IT processes is a good thing.

Tooling is now becoming strongly ITIL-based and ITIL process templates come out of the box.

Why waste time in creating your own approaches to IT processes when the best solutions are available with the tools you've chosen anyway?

One small fly in the ointment: the last refresh of ITIL was in 2000. There is a new refresh review ongoing, which started in August 2005 and is expected to be completed during 2007.

The problem for the vendors is then whether to change their systems wholesale to the new ITIL or to maintain their current ITIL paths.

For end users, a similar choice applies - and they might also have to choose whether to maintain loyalty to an existing vendor.

Until we see the new ITIL, it's a moot point - but a point worth bearing in mind while talking to your vendor of choice.

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