Definition

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a set of policies and ideas for managing information technology infrastructure, development, and operations.

ITIL is a series of books; each covers a specific IT management topic. The United Kingdom's Office of Government Commerce (OGC) is the maintainer and trademark owner of the library. ITIL provides guidelines and policies for IT practices; however, it does not give exact details—that information is crafted for each organization adopting ITIL for use.

Business applications

The goal of the policies and procedures within ITIL allow for reduced cost in an outsourced environment. It is suited to large enterprises that have disparate departments, but are seeking standardization and normalization of their IT departments. By implementing the ITIL methodologies and following its ideals, costs should be reduced overall within the organization and duplicate work should be eliminated.

Controversies

ITIL advocates often believe that the ITIL library is an all-encompassing solution to IT problems. However, the library is merely a framework, and does not include all the answers for every organization. Because the library has a large focus on managing services provided to a customer, it has limited details and guidance on enterprise architecture and how those standards and designs reduce the impact on service organizations. The savings from the implementations of ITIL have yet to be seen.

Technical details

The original goal of ITIL was to control costs, while outsourcing work for the UK government to third-party vendors. The Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA) of the government controlled all purchasing of computers during the mainframe  era. As PCs became more available, the various arms of the government began their own IT shops and needed guidance. They sought advice from the CCTA, who received advice from its vendors, and thus the library was started.

The original library was a set of books from IBM and because the binders that they were distributed in were yellow, they came to be known as the “yellow books.” This is what matured into ITIL version one. The current version of ITIL is version three, and it contains information about strategy and continuing to improve upon existing processes.