Regardless of what anyone may try to tell you, ITIL V3 is much much more complex than V2. This is not only because ITSM is a deeper and more advanced discipline than a decade ago, but many areas that could be quietly neglected in simpler V2 installations are now more tightly integrated and brought back into prominence. V3 covers the entire IT Ecosystem and because of that it maps more clearly onto Sun Microsystems vision for the future of Technology Management..

Over the last fifteen plus years that ITIL has been around research has confirmed the benefits of its approach, it has also highlighted its deficiencies and ITIL V3 has sought to correct them. It is claimed that the new ITIL life cycle approach will;

• Establish the integration of business strategy with IT service strategy.

• Enable agile service design and an ROI blueprint.

• Provide transitional models that are fit for purpose

• Demystify the management of service providers and sourcing models.

• Improve the ease of implementing and managing services for dynamic, high risk, volatile and rapidly changing business needs.

• Improve the measurement demonstration of value.

• Identify the triggers for improvement and change anywhere in the service life cycle.

• Address the current gaps and deficiencies in ITIL today.

The new approach changes the relationship between IT and the business whereas before, ITIL worked to align service management with business strategy, V3 integrates both into a single ecosystem. Other developments include areas that we have all had to implement but were lacking in V2, for example;

• new concepts such as the Service Management Knowledge base that helps transform captured information into organisational intelligence;

• new processes such as request fulfilment;

• process expansion, such as event management;

• new practice areas and organisational structures

• and not least of all an entirely new strategy book.

The model contains the processes needed to manage services within the life cycle structure. The core practices of the Service Management life cycle are then supported by more detailed complementary content specific to industry, stakeholder and practice topics. This makes the library more practical, easier to use and provides guidance specific to various stakeholder viewpoints to help gain further traction in ITSM.