Information Technology Infrastructure Library, also known as ITIL has recently undergone a refresh and has repositioned itself to creation of business value rather than focussing on the day to day execution of the processes.  The major difference between ITIL V3 and ITIL V2 is that the new version has adopted an integrated service lifecycle approach to ITSM as opposed to a focus of the delivery and support concepts.

Problem Management focusses on being proactive to identify and avoid problems that may occur in the IT infrastructure. While Incident management processes are focussed on identifying failures and restoring the services, problem management tries to research and identify the root cause of an existing problems to avoid its re-ocurrence. Problem management also focusses on identifying issues proactively based on trend data available from the system management / service desk.

Service Desk is the primary interface of the IT Organization. Its primary goal is to facilitate the communication, identification and restoration of critical IT services within the agreed upon service levels. It is responsible for acting as a single point of contact for the entire IT Organization and has primary responsibilities around Incident Management, Executive reporting as well as providing the primary support for the business operations.

ITIL, IT Infrastructure Library covers 2 key functions.

* Service Support Processes
* Service Delivery Processes

IT Service Management or ITSM can be defined as a systematic approach to planning, delivery and support/control of the IT systems involved in day to day business operations. ITSM ( IT Service Management ) is characterized by the intense focus on Customer and Process to achieve operational excellence in day to day operations of IT.

In today's business context, the growth of applications has seen a tremendous pace. These applications use either thin client, fat client using distributed servers and network appliances and other technologies that are very critical to the day to day operations of the business.