Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a framework of best practices to manage IT operations and services defined in mid 1980s by the U.K. government. The main objective of ITIL is to align business and IT but allows organization to implement what is relevant to their business.

ITIL's IT Service Support Module offers best practices to make sure IT services to be highly available. To enable this ManageEngine’s new ServiceDesk Plus 8.0 Enterprise Edition implements IT Service Support modules:

--Incident Management: Incident identification, logging, categorization, prioritization, diagnosis, escalation, resolution and recovery

--Problem Management: Detection, logging, categorization, prioritization, investigation and diagnosis, solution and closure

--Change Management: Including initiating change requests, changing plans and “change advisory board” (CAB) and approval from CAB members, coordinating change implementation, post-implementation review and change history

--Configuration Management Database (CMDB): Including asset discovery, detailed asset inventory, building a software library and defining relationships between assets

“We have defined around 80 percent of the ITIL processes templates such as Incident, Problem, Change Management, and CMDB,” says ManageEngine (News - Alert). “You can customize the rest of the 20 percent via point and click. It’s a bold step but it works like magic and helps you implement ITIL faster.”

ManageEngine has also made the ITIL-ready ServiceDesk Plus available to small/midsized businesses via ServiceDesk Plus On-Demand, delivered as an online, web-based application (SaaS (News - Alert)) with the types of features that are traditionally found in premise-licensed solutions, with data collected and communicated by a small-footprint software probe back to the application through a secure channel.

By signing-up to ServiceDesk Plus On-Demand through a web browser, administrators immediately gain access to the software’s full capabilities and are usually up and running within a matter of days. There is no need to provision and configure new servers and no software to install, resulting in zero capital expenditure or upgrades to worry about at no additional cost.

ManageEngine also offers an ITIL maturity assessment to help organizations assess the effectiveness of their ITIL implementation. This includes a five-point-check for all the major processes including helpdesk management, incident management, knowledgebase management, problem management, change management and CMDB. The check is fast; it only takes 10 minutes. If an organization has or is planning to implement ITIL, ManageEngine ITIL maturity assessment can help you understand what's important.

“Implementing ITIL good practices does not need expensive consulting or tools,” says Manage Engine. “All you need is a simple advice of what changes need to be done and where.”

To do just that requires training, and certification of that knowledge. That’s where the RCCSP Professional Education Alliance comes in. It offers a comprehensive array of ITIL and ITSM education programs at conveniently-located venues across the U.S. and in Toronto, Canada; they are also available virtually. For information click here and/or call (708) 246-0320.