To understand ITIL Lifecyle, we must understand why IT is important? In fact IT has become a dynamic, strategic and indispensable asset for any organization to meet its objectives.
As a result, and given its importance, it continues to generate questions within companies. Among the most common are, for example, how can the power of IT be harnessed effectively?
How can investment in these technologies be maximized? How can the risks associated with them be limited?
Fortunately, all the answers can be found through the same benchmark: good IT management.
IT Best Practices and ITIL
Best practice is “a group of tasks that optimizes the efficiency (cost and risk) or effectiveness (service level) of the business discipline or process to which it contributes. It must be implementable, replicable, transferable and adaptable across industries.”
IT best practices can be used for benchmarking and self-assessment and are also critical to popular ITSM frameworks like COBIT and ITIL. Good best practices go beyond ‘templates’ and hard-and-fast rules, focusing instead on positive business outcomes and most expedient adaption of historically valid guidelines.
ITIL is a framework of best practices for delivering IT services. ITIL’s systematic approach to IT service management can help businesses manage risk, strengthen customer relations, establish cost-effective practices, and build a stable IT environment that allows for growth, scale and change.
IT service management or ITSM
ITIL is the most widely accepted approach to IT service management in the world. ITIL can help individuals and organizations use IT to realize business change, transformation and growth.
ITIL globally recocgnize standard to deliver it services.
ITIL is a widely accepted approach to IT service management (ITSM), which has been adopted by individuals and organizations across the world. It provides a cohesive set of best practice, drawn from the public and private sectors internationally.
ITIL Lifecycle exaplined through Processes
IT services are aligned to the needs of the business and support its core processes.
- Service Strategy
- Service Design
- Service Transition
- Service Operation
- Continual Service Improvement.
iTop stands for IT Operational Portal. iTop is an Open Source web application for the day to day operations of an IT environment.
iTop was designed with the ITIL best practices in mind but does not dictate any specific process. This software is flexible enough to adapt to your processes.
Configuration Management Database – CMDB
The heart of ITIL is CMDB. Which helps to store all the information of the systems, servers and devices.
Even the Software license details. A basic example could be the windows license key that you don’t need to find in system, you can simply find in iTOP Portal.
The belief behind iTop is that a CMDB must be an operational tool. The only way for a CMDB to be accurate and up to date is to be used day-to-day by the IT teams (support agents, IT engineers, etc.). .
Moreover, the more the CMDB is integrated with other IT tools (monitoring systems, reporting tools, automated inventory, etc.), the better.
Here is a video that can descrip what an ITIL is and how to setup ITIL based Service Desk (iTOP) an open source Service Desk for your organization.