Comparison of COBIT and ITIL

By Thomas Lee & Steve Adams

What is ITIL

Information Technology Infrastructure Library ITIL consists of a series of books giving guidance on the provision of quality IT services, and on the accommodation and environmental facilities needed to support IT. ITIL has been developed in recognition of organizations' growing dependency on IT and embodies best practices for IT Service Management.

What is ITIL (cont)

Many of ITILs concepts are from four volume series called Management System for Information Systems by Author named Edward A. Van Schaik. It was compiled in 1985 in IBM, Schaik used reference from Managing the Data Resource Function by Richard L. Nolan (1974)

History

Originally developed by United Kingdom Government ITIL version 1 was developed under Central Computer and Telecommunications agency (CCTA). It was titled Government Information Technology infrastructure Management Methodology (GITMM). GITMM was expanded to 31 volumes over the year project initially directed by Peter Skinner and John Stewart at the CCTA. The change of title came about due to foreign interest of GITMM and as guidance and not a formal method. Although ITIL was developed in 1980s, It wasnt till mid 90s that ITIL was widely adopted.

Service Support Goals for ITIL

1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6)

Service desk Incident Management Problem Management Change Management Configuration Management Release Management

Service Delivery Goals for ITIL

1) Capacity management 2) Availability management 3) Financial management of IT services 4) Service level management 5) IT service continuity management

Determining need for ITIL

Each Category has specific goal set in order to compare companys current level of service with goals of subcategories of Service support. Generally speaking more goals company is missing the more likely it is that company need ITIL.

Levels of ITIL

Comparison to COBIT

COBIT
Control Focused Uses IT metrics Used by auditors in SOX Critical Success Factors

ITIL
Strong concentration on processes Security is very important component Focused on Service Delivery

Comparison to COBIT (cont)

Although there are many different control frameworks out there, many of them have ITIL at their core. With COBIT for example, 45-50% of the control objectives are covered within ITIL. In particular, ITILs Service Support and Service Delivery processes address almost a dozen specific control objectives Troy DuMoulin Managing Consultant Pink Elephant

Manager Recommendation
We would recommend that the managers use some combination of COBIT and ITIL In attempts to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley managers must use all resources available to ensure their IT is being run both efficiently and securely

Citations
http://www.itilcommunity.com/ http://www.itil.org/en/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITIL http://www.itilofficialsite.com/home/home.asp http://www.itil-itsm-world.com/ http://www.nextslm.org/itil/itil_sarb anes.htm