ITIL, formerly an acronym for
Information Technology Infrastructure Library, is a set of practices for
IT Service Management (ITSM) that focuses on aligning IT services with the needs of business. In its current form (known as ITIL 2011 edition), ITIL is published as a series of five core volumes, each of which covers a different
ITSM lifecycle stage. Although ITIL underpins
ISO/IEC 20000 (previously BS15000), the International Service Management Standard for IT service management, there are some differences between the ISO 20000 standard and the ITIL framework.