In the 1980s the British government approached the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA), now called the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), to develop an approach for efficient and effective use of IT resources by British public sector organizations.

This resulted in the development of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL®).

ITIL provided a comprehensive set of best practices for IT Service management. It took into account the mistakes that were made in the UK and Europe and provides a collection of the best practices observed in the IT service industry.

ITIL® version 1 was released in the early ‘90s and included a series of 40 related books that served as best practices manuals.

In 2002, ITIL version 2 was released. ITIL v2 included eight publications, with Service Support and Service Delivery publications being the most popular.

ITIL Service Support and Service Delivery books were considered to be the core of ITIL v2 and employed a process-driven approach which can be scaled to fit any size of organization.

In December 2005, the OGC issued notice of an ITIL refresh, commonly known as ITIL version 3, which became available in May 2007. This adopted lifecycle approach to service management.

ITIL v3 introduced five concise and simplified publications, including Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation and Continuous Service Improvement.

ITIL is currently the most widely accepted non-proprietary framework for IT service management.