With more corporations migrating to the IT Infrastructure Library framework for IT service management, Orange Business Services is among the first service providers to launch an ITIL product line.
ITIL is a set of rules that incorporate best practices for delivering IT services more efficiently, with higher quality and at lower cost. ITIL rules affect networks, applications, databases and systems.
In January, Orange Business Services launched Customized Infrastructure Care, a new managed service that allows customers to order and provision services using ITIL. The ISP - formerly called Equant - also offers consulting and support services based on ITIL.
"We’ve seen a massive ramp up in the number of our bids that have requirements around ITIL," says Lee Cardona, Director of Global Infrastructure Management Competency Center at Orange Business Services. "Last year, we saw a rapid increase in interest in ITIL. The year before that, ITIL was just starting to appear on the radar."
Cardona says the demand for ITIL-based services is coming from manufacturing, pharmaceutical, financial services, energy and hospitality companies.
"Globally, we have around a dozen companies already using our ITIL consulting services," Cardona says. "These are multinational corporations – our core customers."
To meet this demand, Orange Business Services is offering consulting services that help network managers prioritize their ITIL initiatives and avoid common pitfalls.
"We’re able to help network managers understand ITIL and how it relates to telephony optimization on the network and remote access," Cardona says.
The ITIL consulting services are available immediately and globally. Cardona says 80% of the company’s professional services organization has entry-level certifications in ITIL, and ITIL practitioners on staff facilitate workshops and assessments for customers. Every region has an ITIL expert, too.
"We have aggressive plans to continue our training," Cardona says. "We’re looking to triple the number of ITIL experts by midyear."
The Customized Infrastructure Care offering allows customers to order and provision Orange Business Services’ core network and managed services using ITIL. This offering uses the same ITIL terminology to make it easier for customers to handle change management, configuration management, incident management and other activities.
Additionally, Orange Business Services is migrating its own service management and support organization to ITIL. The service provider expects to have all of its service centers migrated to the ITIL framework by year-end.
"We want to be helping our customers on a recurring basis so they can do service-level reporting, capacity planning on the network and applications management on the network using ITIL," Cardona says. "If a customer is moving towards ITIL and wants to do capacity management or configuration management that ITIL calls for across their infrastructure but they don’t have the skill set, we can augment that."
Cardona says that network managers are adopting ITIL in incident management and change management, particularly with regard to telephony and mobility projects.
"In the past, network services were always behind the curtain. But now with application delivery and telephony, the network is touching the end user every day in real time," Cordona says. "With this technology comes the need to have bulletproof support and service delivery. This is where ITIL plays. ITIL is becoming the model for network managers to use to make sure these kinds of critical projects succeed in the long term."