What is the ITIL Certification and Why is it Important?

ITIL certification is a key requirement for providers who seek to give clients maximum value from their IT services. A widely adopted framework for delivering IT services, ITIL brings big value to companies working across countless industries. Read on to learn why ITIL is so important for modern businesses.

What Is It?

Short for Information Technology Infrastructure Library, ITIL is a framework of the established best practices required across the entire Information Technology Service Life Cycle. While it can seem complex, ITIL is essentially designed to help an organization strengthen its strategy by using the procedures, processes, checklists and tasks in ITIL, while showcasing its level of competence and providing a baseline for continual improvement.

In layman’s terms, ITIL is really just an integrated set of tried and tested best-practice processes for effectively delivering IT services to business customers. The main focus is to optimize value for businesses by aligning appropriate IT resources with specific business needs. It revolves around the idea that IT Services provide maximum value when they are well aligned with a business’s needs.

Evolving Over Time

ITIL has changed and matured substantially since it was initially introduced in the late 20th century as a complete series of books with more than 30 volumes. Around the turn of the century, version two of ITIL streamlined all of these individual publications by grouping them into related sets that mapped to varying aspects of IT services, management and applications. About this time, Microsoft decided to standardize on ITIL to help develop its Operations Framework.

Over the past 20 years, ITIL has had four major revisions – Original, V2, V3 and the current V4. In its current iteration, ITIL has been whittled down to five specific “lifecycle” phases, including:

• Service Strategy – focused on understanding a business’s requirements and directions, improving IT over time
• Service Design – focused on turning strategies into a clear, detailed service description
• Service Transition – focused on validating, building and delivering new, altered services to businesses
• Service Operations – focused on the day-to-day feeding and care of services
• Continual Service Improvement – focused on managing and identifying incremental service improvements

One of the reasons behind ITIL’s worldwide adoption is the active involvement of a diverse, global community of IT trainers, consultants and professional organizations. Informed by expert insight, ITIL brings big benefits to companies who want to maximize value from their IT resources.

What Are the Benefits?

ITIL guidance allows individuals and organizations to get optimal value from digital and IT services. It equips service providers with a clear and actionable capability model, aligning them to the customer’s business strategies and individual needs.

ITIL best practice frameworks deliver value across a business by providing essential tools and a common language that drive collaboration within IT teams. The global standard in IT best practice, ITIL is used throughout the world by millions and millions of practitioners. In fact, 90% of the FTSE 500 rely on ITIL to run their IT operations.

The ITIL framework contains detailed metrics, process descriptions, success factors, flows and implementation guidance companies can adapt to function optimally in their unique environments. ITIL can help businesses establish and continually improve their IT Service Management capabilities and optimize alignment with their individual company while demonstrating and maximizing value to the business.

Adhering to established ITIL principles ensures that a company can get to the root of potential problems in their environments as soon as possible. It also helps ensure that they have optimal visibility into their people and systems to avoid future problems.

Harnessing ITIL

At Fisher’s Technology, we focus on discovering and continuously understanding your business objectives when scoping, managing and installing your software, apps and comprehensive solution strategy. Empowered by decades of IT expertise, we have an ever-evolving development process and an inspired culture aligned with all our clients’ unique needs.

Understanding its importance, Fisher’s invests in ITIL by certifying our IT Leaders in ITIL models. Vested in your success, we strive to effectively manage risk, establish cost-effective practices, select best-in-class standards, and build stable, supportive IT environments compatible with growth, scale and change. To learn more, contact us today.