IBM Strengthens Commitment To Service Management

Support for ITIL v3 Enables Customers to Increase Performance Through Best Practices and Standards



ARMONK, NY - IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced support for the release of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library version 3 (ITIL v3). The ITIL v3 is a series of books on best practices in IT service management designed to help improve the quality and reduce the cost of service operations.
The update of ITIL to v3 reflects both the increasing maturity and importance of IT service management as a critical business issue. This version of ITIL represents the library itself being updated to reflect advancements in service management that have occurred over the last seven years.

IBM has a number of IT Service Management solutions that help customers implement ITIL recommendations to drive successful service-oriented models. Concepts from many of IBMs products and solutions and other areas were used as inputs for the development of this version of ITIL. Such products and services include:

* IBM business of IT executive workshop – A practical and rapid approach to IT improvement planning and aligning IT with business objectives
* IBM service management adoption model – A strategic planning tool that guides the adoption of service management best practices.
* IBM Tivoli Unified Process (ITUP) – A free downloadable version of the Process Reference Model for IT, which shows how to bring together best practice controls and standards to help clients implement Service Management. ITUP includes the complete process reference model used in ITIL implementations, mappings to other industry models and additional information regarding the roles, information and tools required for each process.
* IBM Tivoli Unified Process Composer – Process design, documentation and publishing tooling with best practices process libraries to promote rapid deployment of unified processes across IT operations and development.
* IBM Service Management Flash Assessment – A free web based assessment tool, which enables an organization to rapidly prioritize service management improvement opportunities.

With 25 years of continuous thought leadership in practical service management, methods and models, IBM has been at the frontier of services science and endorses the convergence of service management practices, controls, standards and language. IBM’s experience in dealing with all these models in a global, heterogeneous, multi sourced infrastructure with both large and small data centers - for internal and commercial IT services - enables it to help clients with practical approaches to service management solutions.

“ITIL is a valuable set of publications that promote best practices in service management,” said Jeanine Cotter, IBM vice president, IT Strategy and Architecture Services. “IBM is a leader in providing business-process based solutions that help companies reduce IT costs and improve efficiency and strongly supports the continued advancement of service management best practices and standards.”

As a leader in the advancement of service management, IBM contributed the Information Systems Management Architecture (ISMA) to the initial ITIL project, which was commissioned to document best practices for managing IT services in the late 1980s. Today, IBM’s Bill Powell and Ivor MacFarlane serve on the ITIL Advisory Group, acting as mentor to the authors of the ITIL v3, and providing additional guidance helping the authors understand leading practices for Strategy and Continual Service Improvement including CBM for IT, IBM Lean Sigma and other lessons learned from IBM’s consulting, outsourcing services and internal operations.
The best practices documented in this version of ITIL were provided by 10 authors, an ITIL Advisory Group and an extended team of reviewers.