What is IT Service?

ITIL® , the best practice framework for IT Service management-  by the time it has evolved into its third version or as it is called now into the 2007 edition –  came up with a comprehensive definition of “Service” (the same is retained in its 2011 edition as well):

“Means of delivering value to the customer by facilitating the outcomes customer want to achieve, without the ownership of specific costs and risks”

However, it seems to be still unclear (or missing the opportunity) in defining ‘IT service’ and  ‘IT Service Provider’ clearly.  As per the 2011 edition, the definitions are:

“IT service:  Services delivered by an IT Service Provider”

 “IT Service Provider: A service provider providing IT Services to internal or external customers”

Talk about Circular references!

 Can’t we have some better definition or at least better insights into understanding what an ‘IT Service’ is?

No, I don’t have a well thought out definition of ‘IT Service’ on offer here; not yet. However here are some thoughts that might lead us to defining ‘IT service’ better:

What is Information Technology (IT)?

Technology used to:  Process information, Store Information, Transfer information, or Present (visualize, for example) business information.

So the ‘outcome’ expected by customer or business from “IT” (as a provider of service) can be described through:

• Process, Store, Transfer or Present business information as required by the business
• While ensuring key aspects like Reliability, Security and Cost-effectiveness

Any systems/technology and/or activity which facilitate the above outcome described above,

• Without the need of  business/customer to own, manage or worry about the specific risks and  costs of the underlying technology, assets, activities etc.

can be an “IT Service”.

With this context , one possible perspective of looking at IT Service can be as below:

 

ISO/IEC 20000 Terms and Definitions: A definite area of Improvement

Some of the definitions of terms in ISO/IEC 20000 fall short of expectations from an international standard, to say the least.

Of course, Improvements are visible such as this:

ISO/IEC 20000: 2005 defined “Service Provider” as: “the organization aiming to achieve lSO/lEC 20000”!.

ISO/IEC 20000: 2011 has a better definition: “organization or part of an organization that manages and delivers a service or services to the customer”.

However, more concerning are definitions which can create conflict or misinterpretation such as that of Incident are still existing:

The ISO20k:2011 defines Incident as:  “Unplanned interruption to a service, a reduction in the quality of a service or an event that has not yet impacted the service to the customer” Though there is no official acknowledgement, it is very clear that this is adopted from ITIL® V3. But in that case, it is a case of incorrect or incomplete adoption. Here is why:

The latter part of the definition, which I underlined above says “or an event that has not yet impacted the service to the customer” – Now this dangerously equates ALL events to Incidents! An event is something that affects the service (mostly exception events causing interruption or reduction in quality) or that doesn’t affect a service (warnings and regular operation events). With this loose definition,
all three types of events can now fall under the bracket of Incidents.

It may not be a major issue of compliance from ISO/IEC 20000 context – where there is no separate Event management process. However the following questions needs clarity:

• Does ISO/IEC 20000 view entire event management process as a subset of Incident management? In such a case, the controls specified under Incident management don’t seem to be enough to take care of the requirements of an event management process.
• So will every event trigger Incident management process? I hope this is not what is implied by the standard.
• What is the meaning of the word event that is used by the standard in multiple places? Unfortunately there is no definition of the same.

Here are some other definitions in ISO/IEC 20000 that may create misinterpretations and confusions:

 

External, Internal and Support Services – A welcome addition to ITIL 2011

In 2003-04, I have led a team of consultants in a Middle East based Bank for adoption of ITIL (at that time V2) practices into their IT organization. One of the deliverables was definition of a suitable Service Catalog framework for the IT Services. We found the guidance in ITIL documentation for Service Catalog to be not adequate enough to satisfy the needs of the Bank.

Through a series of brainstorming sessions and with significant inputs and involvement from the Bank’s IT management, we have zeroed in on a high-level categorization of IT Services into 3 groups:

• Business Banking services – IT Services that are built into the Bank’s business services – like Core banking applications, Internet banking etc; for which the users are end-customers of the bank.
• Business Support Services – IT Services that are supporting the bank’s business processes such as email, HR applications etc; for which the users are the Bank’s employees involved in Bank operations
• IT Internal Services – Supporting services within IT such as System allocations, IP address management etc; for which the users were within IT.

We found the framework to be immensely useful for the Bank’s IT to manage the IT Services in an effective manner.  I have expected to see such guidelines for proper definition and categorization of services to be available in ITIL V3 – but was a bit disappointed (or, I could not find it, if it was defined in some corner of the vast documentation). I always thought that is a significant aspect in IT Service management framework which can have a direct impact on how other aspects/practices in ITSM are defined and governed.

Now, I am happy to see such a Service categorization has been documented in ITIL 2011.  The new revision of the ITIL gives details of Services to be categorized into:

• External customer-facing services
• Internal Customer facing Services
• Support Services – for the interdependencies within IT

Especially the third category – Support Services, clarifies a long-pending confusion for IT outsourcing companies:

IT Outsourcing companies such as those into infrastructure Outsourcing provide services such as network administration/management, Service administration/management, Monitoring etc for which the customers are usually IT personnel in the customer organization. These services were often deemed confusing in the whole discussion of Business-IT Alignment and Integration context.

Now, with this categorization, the services provided by the outsourcing service providers can predominantly fit into the Category 3: Support Services.