ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) Service Desk Essay

ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) Service Desk - Essay Example They have, thus, transformed from having an IT centric focus to business service focus (that is organizations now adopt service oriented approach to managing IT services rather than the technology oriented approach) and this fact has affected the business entirely. (Knapp, 2010, p. 14). Furthermore, organizations have started to value the service desk and work on its expansion as it has given great boost and support to their business services and increased customer satisfaction tremendously. Brief Introduction of ITIL and Service Desk ITIL is among the many standards that provide best practices and frameworks to business professionals and organizations on how to manage, optimize and improve the quality of their business services through the management of IT services. However; such attempts have been made previously before ITIL came into being. So what is the difference between ITIL and other concepts before it? ITIL differs from other concepts because it contains all of the Service M anagement best practices along with the best practices related to the management of IT services for the betterment of business functions. ... (Grande-Bretagne, 2004, p. 3). ITIL was first produced in 1980. At that time, it had ten books which were on two main topics: Service Support (which is a user oriented point of interface) and Service Delivery (which is a customer oriented point of interface) . Five of the books targeted the former topic and the other five targeted the latter. The ITIL guidelines progressed and version 3.0 was published in 2007 that consists of five books which include Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation and Service Improvement. All these five books discuss a total of twenty processes that can help to implement and manage IT services effectively. Also the functions that carry out these processes are discussed. In the Service Operation book, one of the functions discussed is the Service Desk function. The Service Desk function is a business function that involves all the ten processes that come under the Service Support and Service Delivery and thus it provides a sin gle point of contact from customers to the information technology. (Knapp, 2010, p. 129). Furthermore, all service requests, incident reporting, problems and changing of requests by customers/users of a business organization go through the service desk of the organization as it is the interface through which a user can connect to the IT Department of the organization. The service desk function in an organization binds the users with the service providers (IT department professionals) and through this function the service providers are able to perform the end users informed of service action and events that may affect their daily transactions and any other IT related issue. Hence, it becomes a single point of communication which helps in