Standard

The eTOM (enhanced Telecom Operations Map) is a guidebook, the most widely used and accepted standard for business processes in the telecommunications industry. The eTOM model describes the full scope of business processes required by a service provider and defines key elements and how they interact.

eTOM is a common companion of ITIL, an analogous standard or framework for best practices in information technology.

Both of these frameworks are part of the larger context of Total Quality Management, in which many industries have since 1950 increasingly formalized their business processes and metrics in search of higher quality, fewer defects, and greater efficiency. ISO 9000 is probably the best-known of these "process and results improvement" standards, but it is far more generic than either eTOM or ITIL.

eTOM has been adopted as ITU-T International Recommendation, known in 2004 as M.3050.

The IT Infrastructure Library originated as a collection of books each covering a specific practice within IT Service Management. After the initial publication, the number of books quickly grew within ITIL v1 to over 30 volumes. In order to make ITIL more accessible (and affordable) to those wishing to explore it, one of the aims of ITIL v2 was to consolidate the publications into logical 'sets' that grouped related process guidelines into the different aspects of IT management, applications and services.

While the Service Management sets (Service Support and Service Delivery) are by far the most widely used, circulated and understood of ITIL publications, ITIL provides a more comprehensive set of practices as a whole. Proponents believe that using the broader library provides a comprehensive set of guidance to link the technical implementation, operations guidelines and requirements with the strategic management, operations management and financial management of a modern business.

The eight ITIL version 2 books and their disciplines are:
The IT Service Management sets
1. Service Delivery
2. Service Support