Distinction Between ITIL and COBIT

1. ITIL

ITIL (formerly an acronym for Information Technology Infrastructure Library) is a set of detailed practices for IT service management (ITSM) that focuses on aligning IT services with the needs of business. ... Organizations that wish to implement ITIL internally do not require this license.

2. COBIT

COBIT stands for Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology. It is a framework created by the ISACA (Information Systems Audit and Control Association) for IT governance and management.

Distinction Between ITIL and COBIT

ITIL	COBIT
ITIL is the most widely adopted approach for IT Service Management in the world. It provides a practical, no-nonsense framework for identifying, planning, delivering and supporting IT services to the business.	Its mission is “to research, develop, publish and promote an authoritative, up-to-date international set of generally accepted information technology control objectives for day-to-day use by business managers, IT professionals and assurance professionals
ITIL advocates that IT services must be aligned to the needs of the business and underpin the core business processes. It provides guidance guidance to organizations on how to use IT as a tool to facilitate business change , transformation and growth	COBIT are the control objectives which you can use to see if the processes are followed.
The IT Infrastructure Library (or ‘ITIL’) is an IT-specific service management framework. ITIL pertains to IT service management	COBIT is a framework created by ISACA for information technology (IT) management and IT Governance. It is a supporting toolset that allows managers to bridge the gap between control requirements, technical issues and business risks. The framework provides good practices across a domain and process framework
ITIL assists Project Management by defining the guidelines that each release must adhere to with regard to testing, acceptance scheduling, securing code etc.	The business orientation of COBIT consists of linking business goals to IT goals, providing metrics and maturity models to measure their achievement and identifying the associated responsibilities of business and IT process owners.
ITIL is an IT approach to maintenance and supporting certain situation. ITIL is the IT Infrastructure Library based on IT ITIL was designed as a service management framework to help you understand how you support processes, how you deliver services	COBIT pertains to security , COBIT was designed as an IT governance model, particularly and initially with audit in mind to give you control objectives and control practices on how that process should behave
ITIL is a Process Management certification.	COBIT is cited as the most widely used framework for IT governance and controls and is referenced by a variety of standards and regulations
ITIL is focused on Service Delivery and Service Level Management.	COBIT provides alignment between business goals/financial goals/objectives and planning of policy, procedure and process for over all IT infrastructure
ITIL requires something to guide it; that is, ITIL is the “what” not the “how”.	COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and related Technology) is the method to measure ITIL.
ITIL tells you how you should be doing it.	COBIT tells you what you should be doing
ITIL focuses on operations, and mostly ignores development/solutions. ITIL seldom ventures into project management or portfolio management, and it skips a lot of aspects of request management.	COBIT is a list of critical success factors that provides succinct, non-technical best practices for each IT process and Maturity models to assist in benchmarking and decision-making for capability improvements.
The primary focus of ITIL is to provide best practice definitions and criteria for operations management. More specifically, ITIL primarily focuses on defining the functional, operational and organizational attributes that need to be in place for operations management to be fully optimized in two key categories.	The process focus of COBIT is illustrated by a process model that subdivides IT into four domains (Plan and Organize, Acquire and Implement, Deliver and Support and Monitor and Evaluate) and 34 processes in line with the responsibility areas of plan, build, run and monitor
If the objective is to continuously improve IT operations efficiency and IT customer service quality, ITIL would probably be be the better bet.	COBIT focuses on the definition, implementation, auditing, measurement and improvement of controls for specific processes that span the entire IT implementation life cycle. As such, it is an excellent reference model for IT governance across the entire implementation life cycle.