IT Service Management (ITSM)

ITIL defines ITSM as a set of specialized organizational capabilities for providing value to customers in the form of services.

ITIL Glossary defines ITSM as the implementation and management of quality IT services that meet the needs of the business. IT service management is performed by IT service providers through an appropriate mix of people, process and information technology. See also service management.

Wikipedia provides a customer focused definition of ITSM as a discipline for managing information technology (IT) systems, philosophically centered on the customer's perspective of IT's contribution to the business. ITSM stands in deliberate contrast to technology-centered approaches to IT management and business interaction.

“Also termed service management thinking, service management is a systematic method for managing the offering, contracting and provisioning of services to customers, at a known quality, cost and designed experience. Service management ensures the desired results and customer satisfaction levels are achieved cost effectively, and is a means by which the customer experience and interaction with products, services, and the service provider organization is designed and managed. Service management is also a transformation method for any organization that wishes to operate as a service provider organization.”

The Origins of ITSM

Many will point to the introduction of ITIL in 1989, with a set of best practice books, as the starting point for ITSM. However, there was much that preceded ITIL that could be considered ITSM – from both inside and outside the IT community. So ITSM and service management is older than ITIL, although the term “IT service management” was not commonly used pre-ITIL. Much of the early IT-based ITSM thinking (albeit often referred to as IT operations or similar), and support, came from technology vendors/suppliers through the need to help their customers to use their technology. For example, in early large-scale mainframe environments it would be common to find configuration management, change management, problem management, capacity planning, availability management, and disaster recovery used to optimize operations. Outside of IT, the concept of service management was, and still is, relevant to all service providers. The 1984 book “Service Management: Strategy and Leadership in the Service Business” by Richard Normann, often referred to as one of the foundations of service-based thinking and service management excellence, is another source of service management, and thus ITSM, advice. So while ITSM owes a huge debt to ITIL, its origins can be found in both traditional IT operations’ best practices and the wider service provider community.

Difference between ITSM & ITIL
ITSM is an acronym for IT service management. It simply means how you manage the information systems that deliver value to your customers. Even if you’ve never heard the term ITSM, if you’re running IT systems, then you are doing ITSM. ITSM could include activities like planning and managing changes so they don’t cause disruption to the business, fixing things when they go wrong, or managing a budget to ensure you can pay the bills when they arrive. People who use the term ITSM tend to think of IT as a means of delivering valuable services to their customers, rather than as a way to manage technology—but even if you have a completely technical focus, your work still needs to be managed, and that’s what we call ITSM.

ITIL is the name of the world’s most widely recognized framework for ITSM. ITIL is a registered trademark of AXELOS, which owns a range of best practice solutions and their corresponding publications and exams. ITIL has been adopted by many organizations, and there are millions of certified ITIL practitioners worldwide.

See Also

Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)
IT Service Continuity Management (ITSCM)