Salchicha

Disney’s ITIL® Journey
Glen Taylor, Vice President of Technology, Architecture and
Security, Parks & Resorts, The Walt Disney Company

Case Study
October 2010
© Disney

© The APM Group and The Stationery Office 2010

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Disney’s ITIL® Journey

Contents

Introduction

3

Disney’s ITIL journey

3

Getting widespread adoption

3

Choosing ITIL experts

4

Glen’sadvice for organizations adopting ITIL

4

Acknowledgements

4

Trademarks and statements

4

© The APM Group and The Stationery Office 2010

Disney’s ITIL® Journey

Introduction
The Walt Disney Company (TWDC) has five major segments:
Studios, Consumer Products, Media Networks, Interactive
Media and Theme Parks & Resorts. Glen Taylor is VP of
Technology for Theme Parks & Resorts(TP&R). It is the largest
division in the organization and in 2009 generated $10.7 billion
– approximately 30% of TWDC’s revenue. The division currently
manages 11 parks, two water parks, 42 resorts and two
cruise ships.
The scale of the organization is extraordinary. Over 118 million
people visit the parks every year. In comparison, the 2010 World
Cup brought around 350,000 visitors to SouthAfrica.
Theme Parks & Resorts is the only segment of TWDC that
interacts face-to-face with its customers every day, 365 days a
year. During peak times some parks are open and full of guests
for 18 hours a day. The 42 resorts have over 36,000 rooms
worldwide. Cosmic Ray’s restaurant at Magic Kingdom in
Orlando is the busiest quick-service restaurant in the world.
Walt Disney World aloneemploys more than 100,000 people
and runs the third-largest bus fleet in Florida.
Demand on systems and on ‘cast members’ (as all employees
are called) is significant. The IT department employs nearly
1,000 people globally, manages contractors and consultants
and works closely with TWDC’s Enterprise IT team on
outsourced services, such as data centre management (IBM)
and service deskoperations (ACS). ‘Each park is like a city in
itself,’ Glen says. ‘Nearly 45% of the entire company’s
applications are dedicated to TP&R. We have over 800
applications and 1,800 servers. The pressure on reliability and
availability is enormous.’
Clearly, excellence in service management is critical for the
organization. ‘Guests have high expectations of what a Disney
Parks experience should be andwe are a guest-centric business.
We are focused on telling the story through immersive
experiences and in-the-moment interactions between guests
and cast members. Technology is used to advance that story.
Behind the scenes we are looking for increased efficiencies
and cost reductions while all the time improving creatively
and technically.’

Disney’s ITIL® journey
Disney began adoptingITIL best practice in the mid-2000s.
ITIL was developed by the Office of Government Commerce
(OGC) in the UK and is the most widely accepted approach
to IT service management in the world. It provides a cohesive
set of best practice, drawn from the public and private
sectors internationally.

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Hired by the former Chief Information Officer (CIO) to kick-start
TP&R’s ITIL initiative, Glenhas championed the adoption of ITIL
since his appointment in 2008. Already an experienced ITIL
adopter, he was keen to move towards an integrated service
management approach, backed up by ITIL best practice.
‘ITIL aligns IT with the business and our goal was to grow into a
more proactive IT organization. We were looking for an improved
level of service. ITIL helped provide the tools andmetrics to
define the value of IT services.’
The ultimate objective of TP&R is to provide guests with ‘the
perfect experience.’ For IT, this means 100% availability, reliability
and maintainability. ‘It means we have to ensure that widespread
change does not result in incidents; that we are sure-footed and
confident with our release management and new capabilities. We
also need to ensure we...