ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) is one of the most comprehensive, non-proprietary and publicly available sets of guidelines for ‘best practice’ IT services management. It was originally developed and is owned by the British Office of Government Commerce (OGC).

Each library module provides a code of practice intended to improve IT efficiencies, reduce risks and increase the effectiveness and quality of IT services management and infrastructure.

In the late 1980s, the library was conceived by the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA), a UK government agency.

Although ITIL services and training soon became popular in Europe, it took more than a decade before they were introduced to the US and international private sector.

Earlier this month FrontRange Solutions, which specialises in service management, CRM, and voice application solutions for SME and distributed enterprise markets, announced 20 customer ‘wins’ for its IT Service Management (ITSM) solution in Australia and New Zealand.

In Australia, Queensland’s Logan City Council has purchased the ITSM Configuration Management module to enable integration between its existing FrontRange HEAT service desk and network management solution.

Meanwhile APN News and Media, parent company of The New Zealand Herald, will deploy FrontRange ITSM to centralise IT support functions for 14 daily and 60 non-daily newspapers throughout Australia.

Built on the Microsoft.NET platform, FrontRange ITSM is a modular, integrated service management solution offering a range of benefits.

These include an extensible object model to provide the flexibility and scalability to customise organisational data, business process management (BPM) integration capabilities, and out-of-the-box ITIL best practice support.

Flexibility around existing systems and processes is the key to ITSM success according to John Gilleran, FrontRange ITSM product manager for Australia and New Zealand.

“By providing the flexibility for organisations to customise the solution to fit their business, rather than forcing them to change to fit the application, FrontRange ITSM represents the next generation in functionality for the IT service desk space,” he says.

“The customer wins in Australia and New Zealand underscore a growing understanding of the ITSM concept and value proposition in the region.”

FrontRange plans to build on its successful sales pipeline with a series of ITSM seminars over the next 12 months.

Chris Moynihan, project manager at The Warehouse, updated an industry forum in October on the progress to date with the company’s FrontRange ITSM project, understood to be implemented by FrontRange and local implementation partner Olympic Software.

The project was due for completion in November 2005 so full details were not then available, but the forum invitation stated that “The Warehouse’s IS Group decided to use ITIL to revitalise its operation and build an operationally sound springboard that the business could depend on when launching into new strategic directions.”

Stand by for a whole lot more efficiency from your IT service staff in 2006 and beyond.

For more information
www.frontrange.com.au, www.itil.co.uk

December 2005