ITIL Version 5 – Why it matters for modern organisations

ITIL Version 5 was written for professionals and organisations facing far reaching changes caused by the use of emerging digital technologies, such as Cloud and AI. These technologies have changed the way organisations work, and they demand new approaches from the professionals who manage them.

The transition from ITIL v3 and ITIL 4 to ITIL 5 reflects a broader shift in the role of technology within organisations. IT is no longer a centralized function—it is a distributed capability embedded in every part of the business.

In this context, ITIL 5 certification is more than an update to existing knowledge. It is a way to extend what we learned from ITIL v3 and 4 to:

• Stay relevant in a rapidly evolving digital landscape
• Understand how to orchestrate across products, services, and partners
• Manage the challenges and opportunities of AI and cloud technologies
• Ensure that digital investments deliver real business value

Organisations that fail to adapt may not feel the impact immediately—but over time, they risk falling behind as the market continues to evolve.

For professionals and organisations alike, ITIL 5 certification is a decisive step toward staying aligned with that future.

Version 3 works well in my organisation, why should we consider using ITIL Version 5?

For decades, IT was centralized, controlled, and delivered by a single IT department. ITIL v3 was written for this situation. IT was the primary provider of all IT services and was involved in all information technology decisions.

Today, that has changed. Digital technology is embedded across every part of the business. Cloud computing, AI, and platform-based services have fundamentally reshaped how organisations operate.

ITIL v3 was simply not written for this environment. IT departments who continue to use v3 to define their way of working will find themselves becoming increasingly out of touch with the needs of their business environment. In fact many IT departments have already found their role shrinking to that of providing shared services, technical support, and security management. Their role in shaping the strategy and tactics of the organisation is shrinking. That means that the traditional ITIL v3 Service Management professional will become less and less relevant in today’s world.

How has digital technology changed the way IT is managed?

One of the most significant shifts in modern organisations is the move away from centralized IT control. Business units now routinely select, configure, and manage their own technology solutions—often without direct involvement from a traditional IT department. Cloud services have made infrastructure instantly accessible, while AI tools are being adopted directly by business teams to drive innovation and efficiency.

Approximately 40% of the work that used to be performed by the IT department has been externalized. Managed Service Providers (MSPs) now deliver infrastructure, platforms, and even application services. Business units collaborate to create and manage new digital products in a fraction of the time that IT application development teams could. This means that technology capability is no longer concentrated in one place—it is distributed across internal teams, external partners, and service ecosystems.

This fragmentation creates a new challenge: how do you coordinate, govern, and extract value from technology that is everywhere?

This is the question that ITIL Version 5 focuses on.

I work in a centralized IT department, is ITIL Version 5 relevant to me, or should I stay with ITIL v3 or 4?

Centralized IT departments still perform approximately 60% of the work of managing IT. They are critical for the success of every organisation. But they work within a broader context. ITIL v3 does not provide that context, and the introduction of AI means that ITIL 4 does not go far enough in explaining that context. In addition, the practices are continually updated, so staying with an earlier version of ITIL could prevent professionals from achieving benefits from emerging best practices.

ITIL 4 and Version 5 talk a lot about value streams – why is this so important?

When digital technology is distributed through the organisation, it is very easy for individual groups to use technology to focus only on their own objectives. For example, choosing a cloud application that helps an individual department to be more productive, or to provide functionality that they need.

However, for organisations to work effectively, these groups need to work in an integrated manner. Work needs to pass seamlessly between departments so that the organisation can operate effectively. If every department only focuses on improving their own performance, the organisation can quickly become fragmented, technology duplicated, and the whole situation very difficult to manage.

ITIL embraces the concept of value streams to align the use of technology to how value is created in the organisation. This provides a way to coordinate how technology is acquired, managed, and used; and it provides a better basis for making technology decisions

For certified professionals, understanding value streams is critical. Without them, organisations risk duplicating effort, misaligning priorities, and failing to realize the full potential of their digital investments.

ITIL 4 covers Value Streams – why should I start using ITIL Version 5?

Value streams are very important to identify how teams use digital technology to co-create value for the organisation. But they don’t describe how these teams manage the technology itself. ITIL 4 introduced the concept of service value chains (SVC) to deal with this, but the concept was limited.

The SVC focused primarily on services, not the digital products that are such a critical part of modern organisations. Also, the SVC was described as if it is linear – it starts in one place and ends in another. While the SVC was an important step in defining how to manage digital technology, it did not go far enough. Professionals who stay with ITIL 4 will find these limitations will be a barrier to their growth and their effectiveness.

ITIL Version 5 re-introduces the concept of the service lifecycle from ITIL v3, but with some very important differences. The lifecycle in ITIL Version 5 applies to both digital products and services. It is a way of aligning the activities of technology professionals, from the time that an idea is conceived, to the design, build, transition, delivery, operation and support of digital products and services. Instead of focusing on the differences between development and operations it aligns the activities of these teams so that they can collaborate effectively – and without sacrificing the techniques and methods that make them good at what they do.

The lifecycle has an additional benefit – it helps to define shared responsibility models that make it easier to integrate across multiple providers, internal and external.

The lifecycle in ITIL 5 acts as a common orchestration mechanism, enabling diverse groups to work together toward shared business objectives. This is especially important in environments where AI models must be continuously trained, deployed, monitored, and governed. It is critical when Cloud services must be integrated across multiple vendors

Digital products evolve rapidly while still requiring stable service delivery. Without a unifying lifecycle, these activities become fragmented and inefficient.

ITIL Version 5 talks a lot about AI – how is this so different from previous versions?

Like Cloud, AI is not just another tool. It is fundamentally changing how organisations operate. Decision-making is becoming data-driven and automated. Processes and operating models are evolving rapidly as models learn and adapt. New AI enabled features enable organisations to win new customers, find new markets, work more efficiently, meet more customer needs.

As significant as these opportunities are, they come with significant risk. Ethical questions dominate the introduction of each new type of AI. There are questions about how govern a technology that can potentially expose sensitive data and make decisions that take the organisation down unintended paths. The use of AI is accelerating, even though there are still serious questions about how accurate and reliable it is. AI tools can obsolete themselves within months. Uncontrolled use will introduce a technical debt that organisations have never seen before.

Traditional IT management approaches were not designed for this level of dynamism. Even ITIL 4, while a significant step forward, does not fully address the orchestration challenges introduced by AI-driven operating models.

ITIL 5 responds to this reality by focusing on:

• Coordinating rapid change across distributed teams
• Integrating product innovation with service stability
• Aligning technology use with evolving business strategies

The role of AI in managing digital products and services is covered in detail in the ITIL practice guides, as well as in the core ITIL publications. In addition, ITIL is being updated to include a certification specifically for AI governance.

A key feature of previous versions of ITIL was IT and Business Alignment – is this still a core part of ITIL Version 5 now that its focus has moved to digital technology?

Business alignment is even more important than ever. ITIL Version 5 recognizes that digital products and services are not just provided by an IT department, but that many of them are embedded in business processes.

So ITIL Version 5 goes beyond simple alignment – it shows how to achieve business objectives through the orchestration of digital products and services, and the teams that work with them. It provides a common language that can be used across multiple contexts (e.g, application development, infrastructure, business processes) to achieve alignment without changing the fundamental approaches used within those contexts. To be plain, ITIL Version 5 does not replace DevOps, Agile, BRM, or any other approach – rather it provides a language that facilitates better alignment and communication between them.

This is done at every level – from defining the digital strategy of the organisation, its business and operating models, and the way in which individual teams work to meet business objectives.