Description

ITIL is a library of best practices for managing IT services and improving IT support and service levels. One of the main goals of ITIL is to ensure that IT services align with business objectives, even as business objectives change.

ITIL has matured significantly since it was introduced in the late 20th century as a series of books that spanned more than 30 volumes. Around 2000, the second version of ITIL streamlined these publications by grouping them into sets that mapped to different aspects of IT management, services, and applications. Around this time, Microsoft standardized on ITIL to help develop its Microsoft Operations Framework.

One of the most essential parts of ITIL is the configuration management database (CMDB), which provides the central authority for all components—including services, software, IT components, documents, users, and hardware—that must be managed to deliver an IT service. The CMDB tracks the location of, and changes to, all of these assets and processes, along with their attributes and relationships to each other.

Adhering to ITIL principles helps ensure you can get to the root cause of problems in your environment as quickly as possible and that you have the right visibility into the systems and people to prevent future problems