IT Service Management Consultants

Primarily as a support to other processes, both in Infrastructure Management and Service Management, Technical Support provides a number of specialist functions: Research and Evaluation, Market Intelligence (particularly for Design and Planning and Capacity Management), Proof of Concept and Pilot engineering, specialist technical expertise (particularly to Operations and Problem Management), creation of documentation (perhaps for the Operational Documentation Library or Known Error Database). The ITIL recommendations were developed in the 1980s by the UK Government's CCTA in response to the growing dependence on IT and a recognition that without standard practices, government agencies and private sector contracts were independently creating their own IT management practices and duplicating effort within their Information and Communications Technology (ICT) projects resulting in common mistakes and increased costs. The IT Infrastructure Library consists of a series of publications that describe a framework for delivering and managing IT services.

Implemented properly, ITIL can result in significant cost savings, improved services, clearly defined IT roles and ways to measure progress. The resulting benefits, especially when a disaster is prevented or quickly controlled, can sometimes outweigh the associated difficulties and costs. IT Service Management Consultants The goal of Change Management is to ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used for efficient handling of all changes, in order to minimize the impact of change-related incidents and to improve day-to-day operations.

Butterworth-Heinemann (Computer Weekly Professional Series) also has developed a notable set of publications covering IT Service Management, with particular attention to IT portfolio topics. The operational management stage helps ensure that maintenance occurs.

Core Practice (CoPr or "copper") calls for limiting Best Practice to areas where there is a business case for it, and in other areas just do the minimum necessary.