Why ITIL has so little emphasis on Infrastructure

For the practitioners of ITIL and its champions a question which often comes up is why is it that in a best practice labeled “Infrastructure Library”, the actual emphasis on Infrastructure is minimal.

We need to understand what ITIL is and where it comes from to answer this basic but important question.

What is ITIL?

“ITIL® is the only consistent and comprehensive documentation of best practice for IT Service Management. Used by thousands of organizations around the world, a whole ITIL philosophy has grown up around the guidance contained within the ITIL books and the supporting professional qualification scheme.

The ethos behind the development of ITIL is the recognition that organizations 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.”

http://www.itil-officialsite.com/AboutITIL/WhatisITIL.asp

“If GM had kept up with technology like the computer Industry has, we would all be driving $ 25 cars that got 1000 MPG (miles per gallon)” – Bill Gates

Bill Gates could not have said it better to describe the explosive growth of the Computer or IT industry. However what needs to be understood is that the IT industry is just not the hardware component, but the software as well. In the 70’s and early 80’s decisions affecting the use of IT were based on the hardware aspect. It slowly progressed to a focus on the software aspect. Now decisions on IT are based on “the need”.

The requirement and the consequent design of solutions of comes first with both hardware and software based on the need. Thus the IT industry has progressed considerably from the focus on hardware to the “solution”, from a product to a “service”.

ITIL or “Information Technology Information Library” follows a similar history. This concept emerged in the 1980’s when the British Government decided it needed to have a framework to efficiently manage the use of IT resources. As was the scenario in the 70’s and early 80’s, IT resources meant “Hardware”. The British Government tasked the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA), now called the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) to devise a framework for efficiently managing these resources.

The earliest version of ITIL was called GITIM, “Government Information Technology Infrastructure Management”. It focussed heavily on service support and delivery of IT infrastructure. By the 1990’s the framework for managing IT Infrastructure had gained widespread use in Europe and the name ITIL stuck.

However like all of Information technologies’ explosive growth as explained with the analogy of the development of the car, the scope of IT Service Management has grown, the only thing not having grown is the name, which is still rooted in the IT infrastructure of yore. ITIL underwent an overhaul in 2001 with Version 2. The latest version change “V3” in 2007; or ITIL V3 has laid emphasis on aligning with business needs.

To explain further the explosive growth of computing power, try to recollect the Y2K problem. In the 1960’s when computers began to be used in general applications, computer programmers used to use only 2 digits to represent the year to save on computer memory costs. As the year 2000 was approaching there was a sudden fear that all those programs with their roots in the 1960’s would not work. Hence there was a frenzy to upgrade software code. Hardware scarcity is not a fear any longer.

In the scheme of things today, the hardware or infrastructure portion plays just one part in the provisioning of IT services. It’s like having a lot of information. Information by itself is of no use unless it is structured in a usable format, what we would say knowledge. Similarly to ensure optimal usage of services “ITIL” now mandates a comprehensive all encompassing approach to service management, and not looking at Infrastructure in isolation.

The philosophy behind ITIL V3 today as per the OGC is one of “patterns of collaborative exchanges, rather than an assembly line”.

ITIL today is all about aligning the four P’s i.e. People, Process, Products and Partners. In such a scenario Products or hardware or infrastructure thus forms just one important pillar.