Smashing ITIL

We welcome Matt Proffitt into the ITIL family since he gained certification in ITIL V3 Foundation, after embarking on a 3 day course offered by theKnowledgeAccademy.

ITIL, formerly an acronym for Information Technology Infrastructure Library, is a set of practices for IT service management (ITSM) that focuses on aligning IT services with the needs of business. So what is it really? It's a good guide to providing good support, it puts names to the processes you already have but didn't know, makes you think about why you have support, how you do it, and how to define and measure what you do, and shows you how you continually improve. It's not a huge dusty telephone directory size of instructions, you get to pick and choose the roles and processes relevant to your business. It's not stuffy, or old, or bureaucratic, or bloated, and those lucky enough to have experience with certification in ISO 9001 and 27001 will see ITIL living quite comfortably within these standards.

Why are Ixis interested in ITIL? Well, fundamentally we pride ourselves at providing good support. Without wanting to sound cliched - we're passionate about it, it's a core service and something we've perfected over the 12 years we've been alive. ITIL helps us do that. ITIL has made our support service more robust, less likely to combust, and pretty much able to cope with any eventuality with calm professionalism, rather than the unpredictable chaos I've witnessed at other places. We also find that many of our bigger clients are ITIL'd up to the hilt, and having a common language and understanding our place in the IT service chain is obviously a good thing. Equally, knowing when something is outside of our responsibility is a good thing, and with ITIL this is easy to identify.

Matt was unusual in that he requested this course to gain the qualification; in previous roles I've had to bribe or blackmail staff. The outcome is always similar, an awakening of some sort, and a renewed vigour to continually improve our support, and of course spread the good word, ITIL.

Congratulations Matt.

For more information on ITIL, follow this link.