You've no doubt heard of ITIL, but how much do you really know about it? Everything on the planet has a life cycle: Worms, mushrooms, and IT services. In this context, service can mean anything. It could be a network service such as email, messaging, or access to information resources. A manufacturing process has a life cycle; so does a commercial service. Facebook, Amazon Netflix, and Google all have tons of life cycles.

Each process or service has to be monitored and documented along the way; who uses it, how it's used; what works, what doesn't. That's where the concept of a life cycle comes in. You may for example, need to redesign your document to include new technology in your industry or to comply with legislation.

Take, for instance, the many iterations of data privacy legislation. Each time a new bill is passed, you need to look at your data privacy procedures to assess what, if any, changes you need to make in your information handling procedures. Another example is block chain technology. Does it apply to you? How can you implement it to streamline your process?

At the end of a system's life cycle, you have three choices: modify the system, terminate it, or leave it the way it is. While the choice is implemented at the end of the lifecycle, it is at the midpoint that you make the decision. Enter ITIL.

What is ITIL?

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library is a suite of detailed, best practices that provides a focal point for IT service management (ITSM) to align its services with the continually changing needs of its clients, be they in-house or B2B. There are five levels within the framework of the ITIL Certification Scheme. They are Foundation, Intermediate, Management, Expert, and Master.

The Foundation certification is aimed at anybody who is interested in IT service management. This could include IT professionals and others who are working in an organization that has adopted the ITIL framework. If your role within your organization involves oversight of IT service management without getting your own hands dirty, then the ITIL foundation level is probably aimed at you.

Most of the red meat in ITIL is at the Intermediate level, which is divided into two streams, life cycle and capability, both of which have their own service certifications.

Within the life cycle stream, there are five service certifications:

• Strategy (SS) focuses on customer needs and improving IT over time.
• Design (SD) focuses on strategies, rather than technology.
• Transition (ST) emphasizes building, validating, and delivering services to customers.
• Operation (SO) is the practice of keeping your system ticking over nicely, everybody happy.
• Continual Service Improvement (CSI) keeps everybody on their toes, avoiding complacency, and identifying and implementing minor tweaks to keep improving the service and keep the client even happier.

Under the capability banner, you have:

• Operational Support and Analysis (OSA): Targeted at IT professionals, business process owners and business managers, the OSA certification prepares users to develop competency in managing events, access, incidents, and problems, while also fulfilling requests and operating the service desk.
• Planning, Protection, and Optimization (PPO): is aimed at helping individuals and organizations with the practical aspects of capacity management, availability, information security, management of demand, and continuity of service. This is where you put your metrics, tools and architecture in place in the run up to the midpoint, where you make your end of life cycle decision.
• Release, Control, and Validation (RCV): the chunk of ITIL that helps you plan, test, and implement new services that meet your client's needs.
• Service Offerings and Agreements (SOA): This ITIL service certification is aimed at ensuring personnel understand the benefits of the ITIL lifecycle: SS, SD, ST, SO, and CSI. It provides guidance on how you can provide what the customer wants while remaining aligned with your own business needs.

ITIL Training

The benefit of employing IT staff who are ITIL certified is that you are confident that your people are properly equipped for IT service management. It's something you can tell your clients when you are competing with less savvy organizations for their business. What is great about the modular structure of the certification streams is that nobody has to plod through the entire catalogue to qualify to perform in their little corner of the world.

If you have competent staff that you want to retain but who are not yet ITIL certified, sending them on an Infotec ITIL training course will provide you with the tangible reward of having a work force that is clued up and battle ready. It also tells your staff that you are willing to invest in their future. Give us a call and find out how Infotec can help you get your work force ITIL certified.

For more information about Infotec or any of our programs click here: http://www.infotectraining.com/ or https://ops.infotecpro.com/course_schedule/course_schedule.cfm.