ITIL equivalents

[Big Al]

Our company is considering formalizing our service delivery and management approach and ITIL is certainly one of the frameworks we're looking at. Are there other similar frameworks that should be evaluated to ensure that the successful candidate best suites our needs?

thanks in advance

[RandyASteinberg]

This really depends on what your needs exactly are.

By itself - ITIL has no equivalent that I am aware of here in the U.S. The focus is on interaction between the processes aligned to teh business in a manner which is unique.

Many companies have proprietary approaches. The majority of them treat service management as seperate functions in a standalone manner.

Other industry standards are out there but have different points of view depending on your needs. For example - COBIT might be more helpful if Sorbanes-Oxley or audit requirements are a concern. Six Sigma is good if you want to improve existing processes, etc.

For what it does, I am not aware of anything like ITIL. I've been in this business over 25 years and co-authored several approaches in the past for IBM, Accenture and others.