As we all know that ITSM and ITIL are the key elements of IT services worldwide since ages, as these have set the benchmark for rendering service excellence in IT industry.

However, there are some instances wherein very few end users and service providers know, what exactly it means.

ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) is a framework, which leverages best practises for every unique IT services to come up with their own excellence model; whereas ITSM (Information Technology Service Management) is a discipline to align the IT services to business goals and to manage them as a service to accomplish the business needs.

In short: ITSM conveys "what to be done", however, ITIL guides you with "how to accomplish" it.

ITSM as a whole encapsulates other frameworks and methodologies too like COBIT, DevOps, ISO 20000, Lean, SIAM, etc. The difference between these two matters a lot for many reasons and one of those are as follows:

1. Clarity: It clarifies that ITSM is the goal to achieve and ITIL is the tool to get the target; but not the only tool.

2. Flexibility: ITIL can be fit in existing business processes and no need to alter or reset the processes. In addition to that, ITIL guidelines can be combined with other frameworks and methodologies to accomplish the business needs.

3. Value co-creation: Focusing on outcomes and not just the outputs is the gist in this case. Moreover, few organisations do focus on what additional value has been co-created for better customer experiences.

ITSM is a broad approach to managing IT services, including topics like tools, people and processes. ITIL provides specific guidance and recommendations to implement ITSM effectively.

With ITIL’s guidelines and ITSM processes, organizations will be able to provide excellent IT services to your end users.

Focus: Although both ITIL and ITSM are concerned with IT services, they differ a lot in their scope. ITIL is an ITSM framework that provides guidelines & best practices to improve efficiency and enhance overall IT service delivery. ITSM, on the other hand, includes all the processes and activities that go into IT service delivery from end to end.