During the late 1980s the Central Computer and Telecommunication Agency (CCTA) in the United Kingdom started to work on what is now known as ITIL, the Information Technology Infrastructure Library.

Large companies and government agencies in Europe very quickly adopted this framework in the early 1990s and it has since become known as an industry best practice for IT Service Management.

ITIL has become the de-facto standard in delivering IT Services for all types of organisations. Both government and non-government organizations benefit from the process driven approach regardless of the size of the IT department.

To reflect these changes, a 'refresh' project was announced in 2005. The resulted in the re-development of ITIL itself, culminating in the publication of five core texts, the ITIL Books, in May 2007.