Claims of compliance to ITIL® are often a self-declaration or based on an assessment report from a consultant. Third party certification against ITIL® is not possible because it is not a standard. In order to address this issue, ISO introduced ISO 20000-1 in 2005, which provides specifications for IT Service Management. These specifications can be met following the guidelines provided in ISO 20000-2: Code of Practice. ITIL® best practices supplements ISO 20000-1 by providing the best practices.
Some of the main reasons for the popularity of ISO 20000-1:2011 include:
- It provides a brief roadmap for implementing ITIL®
- An annual surveillance audit helps to demonstrate incremental improvement
- There can be significant cost savings compared to an ITIL® assessment
Benefits of ISO/IEC 20000:
- ISO/IEC 20000-1 certification provides objective evidence of compliance to ITIL best practices
- Competitive advantage
- Easy roadmap to IT Service Management implementation
- Certification drives continual service improvement
- Provides a scalable standard which can be applied to any size IT operation
- Third party endorsement of compliance to ITSM best practices.
- For internal IT, ISO 20000-1:2011 certification increases perceived value of IT services
- Performance improvements such as:
- Reduction of system outage
- Reduction of critical incidents
- Increased system availability
