Governance Gauge: Don't Worry, 'ITIL' Be Alright

After almost 20 years languishing on the shelf, large companies are beginning to adopt ITIL, the Information Technology Infrastructure Library of IT services best practices guidelines (the British pronounce it "it-ill," while Americans say "eye-till"). Forrester Research predicts that 40 percent of large organizations will rely on ITIL by 2006 and 80 percent by 2008, up from a mere 13 percent that had implemented it by 2004.

Addressing ITIL and related IT management frameworks COBIT and ISO, a recent Forrester report notes, "Process improvement is not a choice. The evolution of IT is such that both complexity and cost containment will exert continuous pressure on IT operations and make best practices the only answer available."

Latching on to this awakening, vendors are adding new layers to their ITIL software. ProactiveNet has partnered with search vendor Inxight Software to add visualizations to its ITIL-oriented business services management suite. Magnum Technologies has a new business services discovery product that lets companies analyze a process, such as obtaining information from SQL server and displaying all the interconnections between underlying IT assets.

The Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom is writing a "refresh" of ITIL with input from private and public sector contributors. ITIL v.3 is due out by the end of the year.