In this article, let us go through some of the aspects involved in the ITIL Structure.

Business Perspective

The business perspective is meant to familiarize the Business Management with the supporting components and the architectural design of the Information and Technology (ICT), the infrastructure that is needed to support their business processes and help them to gain a better understanding of service management standards and better practices.

The business perspective helps the organization to better understand the advantages of best practice in IT Service Management, while at the same time serving the service provider to communicate level terms with the company, equally, the planning book of the volume helps service providers to plan their implementation of service management best practice while at the same time helping the organization to converse on level terms with the service provider.

ICT Infrastructure Management

Infrastructure Management covers all of the aspects of ICT, this can range from identification of an organizations business requirements through the tendering process to the testing, installation, deployment, and ongoing support and/or maintenance of the ICT components and Information Technology Services. This volume describes all of the major processes that are involved in the management of all sections and aspects of technology. It includes the following:

• Design and planning processes
• Deployment processes
• Operations processes
• Technical support processes

Application Management

The volume that explains Application Management embraces the Software Development Lifecycle, it opens up the issues that are touched on in software lifecycle support and testing of Information Technology Services. Application Management will bring into light issues of business change with prominence on clear requirement definitions and implementation of the solution to meet organizational needs.

Service Support and Delivery

The Service Support volume is designed to describe all five of the core ITIL processes we spoke of in an earlier article. It also serves to relate these to the provisions of support of services to the user, along with the service desk functions that draw on all of the other processes.

The service delivery volume’s main objective of Service Management is to guarantee that the Information Technology Services are aligned to the organization’s needs. It is important that the Information Technology Services underpin the Business Processes, but it is also important that Information Technology should act as an agent for change to facilitate Business Transformation.

It is important to understand that most organizations that use information technology will depend on if. If the IT processes are not implemented, managed, and supported correctly the organization will risk suffering unacceptable degradation in terms of loss of productive hours, increased costs, loss of revenue and even organizational failure, this all depends on the vitality of the IT service to the organization.

The provision of IT service, in all organizations, must be aligned with current and quickly changing organizational demands. The objective is the constantly improve the quality of service, matched to the other requirements, cost-efficiently. In order to satisfy this objective the following three areas need to be considered:

• People with the correct skills, adequate training, and the applicable service culture
• Efficient and effective service management processes
• A good IT infrastructure in terms of technology and tools.

Next we will take some time to look into other aspects that are not listed in the diagram above.

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ITIL Implementation Justification

It is vital to make a clear organization justification for implementation. Information technology service management needs to make a change to the entire organization, not just parts of it. It needs to make the business processes more effective and more efficient.

How the business views their IT achieving this outcome also should be explored. The present quality of the information technology services and possible need to initiate a quality enhancement program needs to be considered as well.

An organization that desires to initiate a CSIP must also be aware of organizational and Information Technology market developments and what these developments mean to their IT organization.

By understanding these trends in the context of the organization, the company will be able to determine how ITIL can be utilized best; this is not meant only for improving the state of existing Information Technology Service Management practices, but for aligning them with evolving organizational demands as well.

Now we will look briefly at the Business Drivers

Organizations are becoming more and more aware of the importance of IT in not just supporting operations but also enabling operations. This means the following:

• IT is now seen as an enabler of business change, and is becoming an essential part of the business change program.
• There is no added focus on the quality of IT, meaning its dependability, accessibility, capability, and its security.
• IT performance is becoming more evident – outages and disappointment are fast becoming issues.
• IT organizations find themselves in a position where they will have to manage as well as realize business enabling technology and services that will deliver the quality demanded by the organization.
• IT will need to begin indicating worth for finances
• IT within the world of e-business is not only supporting the main Business Processes, but it is not part of the main Business Processes.

The Technology Drivers

With the developments in technology growing rapidly there is a need for IT to provide up to date solutions. This has become a core component of nearly every area of business operations. The driving force behind this is causing more organizations to accept complicated technology to support and enable business operations. This had implications for the IT organization which need to be able to do the following:

• Understand business operation and provide advice for the organization on the abilities and limitations of IT
• It must be able to accommodate more technology change with a smaller allotment of time for realizing that change.
• It should guarantee the present quality of service delivery and service support, all the while gathering more technology.
  it needs to ensure that the quality of delivery and support will match the organizations use of updated technology
• And finally it should bring out of control finances under control.

Before we close I want to touch on one final aspect.

IT Organization in Change

IT organizations are building up their delivery and support abilities in order to better meet the growing demand for availability, capacity, reliability, and change. Even so, the current role as well as the position of most IT organization does not work with the changing business needs and expectations.

Most organizations take the position that present IT provision leaves much to be desired, and that the present IT quality level, and methods for working are not generally acceptable. You will find this applies especially when IT is essential to the business process.

To meet the demand of supporting the organizational transformations it is important for the IT organization to experience a similar transformation process. You will find that the change needed is often ground-breaking for IT organizations.

IT organization are now turning to the best practice IT management practices that are documented in ITIL, it is used to guide them to realize their new position for delivering better quality IT services while at the same time driving down the cost of supporting their IT.