Whats the difference between ITSM and ITIL?

Professionals who are new to the Service Management domain have the eternal haziness on the interconnections between the terms ITSM and ITIL. Exchange of these terms in different contexts take them to the point of thinking whether these are one and the same. Let us understand these terminologies, their objectives and demystify the relationship between these two.

IT Service Management:

IT Service Management which is abbreviated as ITSM stands for the specialized organizational capabilities of the Service Provider organizations which are leveraged in delivering value to customers through the IT services delivered. These capabilities includes all processes, tools, functions as well as tangible and intangible assets used by the organization for delivering customer value.

ITIL:

ITIL®, the popular acronym for IT Infrastructure Library, as its name indicates, was created as a library of books that document industry-accepted best practices for IT service and infrastructure management. Since its inception in early 1980s, it evolved through versions and matured from infrastructure management guidance to matured approach for managing the lifecycle of IT services from strategy to operations and final retirement. ITIL® provides a cohesive set of best practice guidance, drawn from private and public sectors internationally and helps service providers on the provision of quality services along with processes, functions and other capabilities required to support the services.

Read More: ITIL Practitioner

ITIL® became the most popular best practice guidance for Service Management, even to the extent that it became synonymous with ITSM. It is recognized worldwide as the best practice approach for delivering and managing IT services and is the choice of businesses across domains across the globe in streamlining IT operations.

Conclusion:

Today IT industry is at an interesting juncture. Digital technologies, which is considered as the fourth wave of industrial revolution is taking IT services by a storm through its gamut of options including Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Automation, Cloud-based services, agile service delivery and much more. IT Service Management which is tasked to manage all types of IT services irrespective of technologies and delivery models is right in the middle of the storm with the sublime task of strategizing and managing new age IT services driven by the digital world. New version of ITIL®, ITIL®4 is coming up to set the direction for this journey. It’s interesting times ahead for Service Management professionals to explore ITIL®4 and utilize the practices for driving IT services in the digital path.