1. ITIL

Slightly more than half - 51 percent - of organizations surveyed by HDI use the IT Information Library (ITIL) standard today, with an additional 17 percent looking to use the process framework going forward.

ITIL was created by the British government in the 1980s and has, over the past three decades, become the most widely used framework for IT management in the world. ITIL is focused on aligning IT services with the needs of businesses and shifting IT from product development to a service-provider model.

ITIL offers 14 different types of certifications, and 1,353 of the people surveyed by Global Knowledge had received one of these certifications. The most popular by far is ITIL v3 Foundation, which was held by 1,016 respondents and offers an average annual salary of $95,434.