IT Service Management is the philosophy of managing IT services, through the use of industry best practices, for the improvement of business functions. The goal of IT Service Management is to align services with current and future needs of the customer; to improve the quality of IT services - in whatever way the customer expresses "quality" and to reduce the long term cost of service provision.

By implementing, IT Service Management, OIT has adopted the philosophy of providing IT services and support that underpin the business processes of the campus. OIT will focus on providing high quality services with a particular focus on customer relationships. Our objective is to continually, cost effectively improve the quality of service, aligned to the business requirements of the university.

Excellent IT operations must be built on a firm foundation that provides a comprehensive strategy for success. The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) has been chosen as that framework. ITIL is the collection of best practices documented within one framework.

Benefits of IT Service Management:

• Improved quality of business operations by ensuring that OIT processes align to campus goals.
• Campus customers will know what to expect from OIT and what is required of them to ensure this can be delivered.
• Cost-justified IT infrastructure and OIT services.
• Increased campus awareness of OIT services and capabilities will allow campus to better utilize them; creation of a Service Catalog.
• Increased OIT understanding of the campus needs will facilitate innovative approaches to meeting those needs.
• Improved ability to recognize changing trends and to adapt quickly to new requirements and market development (competitive edge).
• Improved metrics and management reporting facilitating informed decision making and improved IT governance.

The initial processes of IT Service Management to be implemented in OIT are:

Change Management - Ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used for efficient and prompt handling of all Changes, in order to minimize the impact of Change-related Incidents on service quality.

Configuration Management - Provide a logical model of the infrastructure or a service by identifying, controlling, maintaining and verifying the versions of Configuration Items in existence.

Incident Management - Restore normal service operation as quickly as possible and minimize the adverse impact on business operations, ensuring that the best possible levels of service quality and availability are maintained.

Problem Management - Proactively minimize the adverse impact of Incidents and Problems on the business that are caused by errors within the IT Infrastructure, and to proactively prevent reoccurrence of Incidents related to these errors.

Release Management - Ensure that all aspects of a Release into production systems or services, both technical and non-technical, are considered as a whole.