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ITIL originated in the 1980s in the UK as a set of five books. It was developed by a commercial arm of the British government called The Cabinet Office (similar to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce). It now serves as an accreditation and certification program for IT businesses and professionals worldwide.

In 2019, AXELOS started rolling out a significant revision to the current framework with the release of the ITIL 4 Foundation exam. Three more exams and specialty modules are expected to be completed by the end of 2020 — at which time the ITIL 4 will become the accepted designation. In the meantime, ITIL practitioners can choose to pursue available certification in the ITIL 3 or ITIL 4 frameworks. However, Axelos recommends that candidates with no ITIL certification start with the ITIL 4 path.

ITIL uses a credit system as part of its certification scheme. Each ITIL certification comes with a certain number of credits. For ITIL v3, 22 credits are required before taking the Expert level exam. The Foundation exam will get you two credits, and the Practitioner exam gives you three. The other certifications can be taken in any order.