The ethos behind the development of ITIL is the recognition that organisations are becoming increasingly dependent on IT in order to satisfy their corporate aims and meet their business needs. This leads to an increased requirement for high quality IT services.

Each module is intended to facilitate the quality management of IT services and infrastructure in the organisation (by IT infrastructure, we mean organisations’ computer and networks – hardware, software and computer-related telecommunications, upon which the systems and IT services are built and run). The codes of practice are intended to assist organisations to provide quality IT service in the face of challenges such as budgetary constraints, skill shortages, system complexity, rapid change, current and future user requirements and increased user expectations.

ITIL provides the foundation for quality IT Service Management. The widespread adoption of the ITIL guidance has encouraged organisations worldwide, both commercial and non-proprietary, to develop supporting products as part of a shared ‘ITIL Philosophy’ offering benefits to both IT Service delivery and IT Users.

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a set of guidelines, documented in a set of books, that describes an integrated, process based, best practice framework for managing IT services.

The ITIL Library consists of books concerned with the IT service provision and managing the IT Infrastructure and is further split into two key areas each containing their respective Management Disciplines as listed below.

Service Support

Service Desk

Incident Management

Problem Management

Configuration Management

Change Managemen

Release Management

Services Delivery

Service Level Management

Availability Management

Financial Management for IT Services

Capacity Management

IT Service Continuity Management