ITIL-based service management no picnic, survey finds

Angus Kidman
Tuesday, 21 November 2006 08:14

IT Industry - Market

CIOs are displaying an increased interest in using standards such as ITIL to more effectively deliver IT services, but actually completing implementations is proving rather more difficult, a new survey shows.

Analysis of 80 respondents to a survey at the IT Service Management Forum (itSMF) Australia conference earlier this year showed that while many companies have begun introducing ITIL-based standards management, hardly any have managed to complete the process.

Just 3% of survey respondents said they had "fully" implemented IT service management (ITSM), and only 22% said the task was "largely" complete. Nearly half the respondents (48%) said their project was "partially" complete, while another 27% merely declared that an ITSM project had been "started".

While ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) is far from a new concept, with the first versions of the UK-developed standard emerging a quarter of a century ago, it has become increasingly popular as organisations seek to restrain IT spending while delivering improved levels of service.

"The growth and the maturity of IT service management has increased in Australia in the last two years," said Peter Cross, chairman of itSMF Australia.

Membership of the organisation has been growing over the last two years at around 25% per annum, he said.

A variety of factors contributed to new IT services initiatives, the survey found.