Business Application and Technical/Business Services

[FredrikHenning]

Hi,

We are having a discussion internally about adding IT operation tools like for example a Monitoring software as a Business Application. As we understand is quite common that companies also add  these kind of IT Business Application as Business Application not only Business Application that are for direct benefits for the business.

So our discussion has been is we choose to add a Monitoring Application as a Business Application and what to add a Service and Service offerings. Should it be a Tech Service or Business Service?  As i understand you creataean relationship to the Business Capability that this Business Application support to the Service object. And the Business application itself has a relation ship to the Service instance.  I would say Monitoring of servers or applications is a Tech service. But some of my collegues believe is a Business Service. Since they think it support the IT Business. See picture below

[AndersBGS]

Hi @FredrikHenning ,

My vote would go towards that it has technical service and technical service offerings. E.g. the monitoring is not something that the business consume itself, but rather a component that is utilized to benefit an uptime towards a business service offering. e.g. (again) a website is a business service offering, but monitoring of that website is a component to ensure critical response if the website goes down. Off course, this is just my immediate interpretation.

[FredrikHenning]

Agree Anders. Thanks for your insights

[Mathew Hillyard · Accepted solution]

Hi @FredrikHenning 

As @AndersBGS mentions, this kind of Service would definitely belong to the Technology Management Service table. The Service could be something like Monitoring, then the Offerings reference the different types of business monitoring available - these would then contain Service Instances that are instantiations of the Business Application (LogicMonitor, Nagios, SolarWinds etc.)

This is why planning your portfolio is an under-emphasised element of CSDM. It's mentioned in the Fly stage but in reality it's much more useful for organisations to be mapping out their portfolios at the beginning. You inevitably get these kinds of questions - "we have an <ABC> application and want to link it to services, should they be business or technical?"

The answer lies in where the service fits in and which portfolio. Take a look at @Barry Kant's post in this thread: https://www.servicenow.com/community/common-service-data-model-forum/should-end-user-services-be-rec... - it has a graphic with an example of the CSDM modelled using TBM, and shows the various taxonomy layers for business and technology management services. It can really help to both decide where a service can belong, and to uncover gaps where you may not have created services for a particular taxonomy layer.

Regarding your graphic above - Business Capabilities do not connect to Technology Management Services. This is intentional.

I hope this helps!

Mat

[FredrikHenning]

Very helpful @Mathew Hillyard we have looked at TBM. Thanks