IT service management

IT service management (ITSM or IT services) is a discipline for managing information technology (IT) systems, philosophically centered on the customer's perspective of IT's contribution to the business. ITSM stands in deliberate contrast to technology-centered approaches to IT management and business interaction. The following represents a characteristic statement from the ITSM literature:

Providers of IT services can no longer afford to focus on technology and their internal organization[;] they now have to consider the quality of the services they provide and focus on the relationship with customers.^[1]

No one author, organization, or vendor owns the term "IT service management" and the origins of the phrase are unclear.

ITSM is process-focused and in this sense has ties and common interests with process improvement movement (e.g., TQM, Six Sigma, business process management, CMMI) frameworks and methodologies. The discipline is not concerned with the details of how to use a particular vendor's product, or necessarily with the technical details of the systems under management. Instead, it focuses upon providing a framework to structure IT-related activities and the interactions of IT technical personnel with business customers and users.

ITSM is generally concerned with the "back office" or operational concerns of information technology management (sometimes known as operations architecture), and not with technology development. For example, the process of writing computer software for sale, or designing a microprocessorwould not be the focus of the discipline, but the computer systems used by marketing and business development staff in software and hardware companies would be. Many non-technology companies, such as those in the financial, retail, and travel industries, have significant information technology systems which are not exposed to customers.

In this respect, ITSM can be seen as analogous to an enterprise resource planning (ERP) discipline for IT – although its historical roots in IT operations may limit its applicability across other major IT activities, such as IT portfolio management and software engineering.

IT Service Management is an enabler of information technology governance (or information management) objectives.

The concept of "service" in an IT sense has a distinct operational connotation, but it would be incorrect then to assume that IT Service Management is only about IT operations. However, it does not encompass all of IT practice, and this can be a controversial matter.

It does not typically include project management or program management concerns. In the UK for example, the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), a government-developed ITSM framework, is often paired with the PRojects IN Controlled Environments (PRINCE2) project methodology and Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method for systems development.

ITSM is related to the field of Management Information Systems (MIS) in scope. However, ITSM has a distinct practitioner point of view, and is more introspective (i.e. IT thinking about the delivery of IT to the business) as opposed to the more academic and outward facing connotation of MIS (IT thinking about the 'information' needs of the business).

IT Service Management in the broader sense overlaps with the disciplines of business service management and IT portfolio management, especially in the area of IT planning and financial control.

IT Service Management is often equated with the Information Technology Infrastructure Library, (ITIL) an official publication of the Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom. However, while a version of ITSM is a component of ITIL, ITIL also covers a number of related but distinct disciplines and the two are not synonymous.

The current version of the ITIL framework is the 2011 edition. The 2011 edition, published in July 2011, is a revision of the previous edition known as ITIL version 3 (published in June 2007).It was a major upgrade from version 2 (2001). Whereas version 2 was process orientated (split in 2 groupes: service support and service delivery), version 3 is service orientated. Since ITIL V3, the various ITIL processes are grouped into 5 stages of the service lifecycle: service strategy, service design, service transition, service operation and Continual service improvement (or CSI). The use of the term "Service Management" is interpreted by many in the world as ITSM, but again, there are other frameworks, and conversely, the entire ITIL library might be seen as IT Service Management in a larger sense.