When we launched MSPmentor (in beta form) in 2007, some managed service providers were talking about ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library), a collection of best practices for IT activities and processes. Now as we all march toward 2009, the ITIL buzz is growing across the managed services market. Here’s why.
Nearly 10 percent of MSPs say they are hearing ITIL inquiries from their customers, according to our ongoing MSPmentor 100 survey. Managed service providers don’t sell ITIL; instead, they adhere to its practices and philosophies in a wide range of activities from project management, systems design, change management and service delivery. Think of it as a template for IT management and services.
True believers in ITIL include Consonus Technologies, an MSP and data center provider in Cary, N.C. Mike Vogt, a principal consultant at the company, recently completed the ITIL v3 Expert Certificate training course.
Spread the ITIL Word
Now, Consonus is marketing Vogt’s ITIL expertise to the broader market. In a note sent to MSPmentor, the company says:
Consonus has more than a decade of combined ITIL service management process design and implementation experience. The company offers a variety of ITIL-related services including consulting, assessments, and education.
This new certification equips Consonus’ consulting and delivery teams with a unique and in-depth understanding of the ITIL framework, a strategic advantage within the growing IT infrastructure solutions industry.
Technology vendors are also promoting ITIL into the managed services and corporate IT markets. Digital Fuel, for one, evangelizes the fact that its ServiceFlow service management platform leverages ITIL best practices.
I’m often skeptical when a new industry acronym gains media attention. But in this case, ITIL has been around for more than a decade. And the best practices seem to be catching on with MSPs and their customers.
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Posted In: Service Level Agreements
Tags: | Consonus Technologies | Digital Fuel | Information Technology Infrastructure Library | ITIL | Managed Service Provider | Managed Services | MSP | ServiceFlow
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Hi Joe,
We are also big believers in ITIL at Autotask. We have individuals on staff that are have their ITIL certifications, and many of our professional service offerings focus on ITIL best practices.
In addition, both Autotask Pro and Go! are becoming more and more aligned with ITIL. For instance, our most recent update included a massive overhaul of our Service Level Management functionality, which we’ve gotten rave reviews for thus far.
Just like in the enterprise/internal IT space, it’s important to keep in mind that they are a best practices framework, not a rigid set of rules that MUST be strictly adhered to. Over the years large organizations have sunk massive amounts of money trying to meet every aspect of ITIL to the t, yet they’ve never been able to realize the benefits because they’ve been too busy trying to “comply”. Those that have been the most successful are the ones that have looked at ITIL as a framework, and then focused on realizing the tangible benefits it can provide to their business.
I think that as people look into ITIL they will find that it really is just based on common sense practices and is not as complicated as one might think.
The two areas that are very relevent to an MSP are the Service Support and Service Delivery concepts, I listed them below along with how an MSP would address them:
Service Support
Incident Management – IT Service Management Suite
Problem Management – IT Service Management Suite
Configuration Management – IT Service Management Suite
Change Management – IT Service Management Suite
Release Management – IT Service Management Suite
Service Desk – Your NOC and Help Desk teams
Service Delivery
Service Level Management – IT Service Management Suite
Financial Management for IT Services – The MSP (QBR)
Capacity Management – Remote Monitoring and Management Tool
Availability Management - Remote Monitoring and Management Tool
IT Service Continuity Management – Process & backup tools
Just implementing the Incident, Configuration and Change mangement processes are going to greatly increase your efficiencies as an MSP.
Also a great side effect of adpoting this sort of IT Management is that it really aligns with many of the compliance requirements out there such as HIPPA, SOX, GLBA, etc. We have found that many of our customers with these requirements easily comply as a result of how we run their IT departments through these ITIL processes.
Lane: Your comment about “common sense” caught my attention. You are right, best practices like ITIL remind us of common sense approaches. It’s simple but important. Imagine if the government AND mortgage lenders referred to common sense best practices for financial lending over the last decade. We would have largely avoided today’s economic problems.
Unfortunately, I have lived through a very rigid ITIL / MOF implementation. From this I learned that the folks who actually support the customers and do the day to day operations must be intimately invovled AND heard when they have opinions about the various procedures being created. In this case, the compliance guys went a bit crazy and used the MOF (Microsoft Operations Framework) as their template, thus forcing everything through that prism of best practices MS published (intended for single enterprises, not an MSP. good concepts, but they must be adapted to an MSP, ours weren’t). Throw in a little ITIL certification with a lack of knowledge about how an MSP supports its customers and you have a recipe for problems. It looks great on paper (over 700 pages thus far), but absolutely kills productivity at the expense of following the processes.