To Provide Online Distance Learning as a Portfolio of Services

Despite the popularity of IT Service Management frameworks such as IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) in the business world, there is little scholarly literature available on this topic in general, and even less when we consider the online education business. ITIL is known as ¿best practice¿ guidance and it is relevant for all types of organizations who provide IT based services to a business. Both online distance learning (ODL) literature and ITIL literature are reviewed in this study, and a need for supportive IT services in connection with competitive ODL programs are identified. Moreover, we find that few educational institutions have tried to manage their supportive IT services according to ITIL. Thus, it is assumed that ODL programs can benefit from adopting ITIL, and move to a service-centric lifecycle approach provided by ITIL version 3. This is comprehensive and we propose that educational institutions start out with an introduction of a service strategy in this context.