CSDM: Service Offerings and Facilities

[rwilson1]

I'm trying to wrap my head around something that I think is a common use case, I'm trying to figure out how this would be mapped out in the CSDM.

We have several facilities, and we want to review and approve a Change that impacts one of those facilities. Since we don't have facilities or locations as Configuration Items, I was wondering if I should create a Service with several Service Offerings to try and map this out.

Conceptually, we would have a Technical Service called "Facilities and Infrastructure Services", then within that we would have specific Technical Service Offerings for each separate location. I'm also wondering if Facilities wouldn't fit better under Business Services and Business Service Offerings. Once you have offerings identified, you should be able to create dependencies to specific CIs that depend on those facilities - data centers and other hardware for example.

Any thoughts on this?

[s4scott]

You are on the right track. One way to use CI Groups and Dynamic CIs is to populate Technical Service Offerings for infrastructure services by facility/location that roll up to a high level Technical Service. You could break down the Technical Service Offerings into things like Network - <Facility name>, Voice - <Facility name>, etc. 
I would recommend thinking through how you would want to show impact, as "Facilities and Infrastructure Services" is pretty broad. 

[rwilson1]

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I would recommend thinking through how you would want to show impact, as "Facilities and Infrastructure Services" is pretty broad. 

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Oh I definitely agree, it would need to be refactored quite a bit to make it useful. I like your idea though, so we'd potentially have a Technical Service called "Telecomms - Voice" and then maybe "Telecomms - Video". Then separate into Offerings for:

- Telecomms - Voice - Location A

- Telecomms - Voice - Location B

- Telecomms - Video - Location A

- etc..

When I submit a Change though: I want to pick a single Service / CI as my primary affected CI on the Change form. An example would be running a data center power fail over test that affects Location A. So if I select Location A, I would want all the different Technical Offerings (and further downstream impacted Services and Applications) at that specific facility to be reported on. Would this be possible?

[s4scott]

I have a similar situation, where services are deployed and provided by location or regionally. We ended up adding a custom related list to the CIs to list the Locations that use/consume the service. Then added a similar related list to INC and CHG to pull in those locations when the associated CI is added to the affected CI list.
If there is a way to do this OOtB, I'd be game for re-evaluating, but I am not aware of another way.

[Barry Kant]

Hi,
depending on the breakdown of locations (can be 1000's) distinctive Service Offerings makes sense. (Technical either Business --> eg ATMs on locations --> payment capacity)
as long as the infra/application/services are modeled the impact analysis will list up (potential) impacted Service Offerings (check properties for this). I like the idea that Technical Approvals audience comes from Technical Service Offerings and Business Approval comes from Business Service Offerings. 
While the models are ok the output of impact analysis can be used to identify to impacted consumers or supporting parties. 

If the nr of locations is exceeding then mostly companies do not like to model that granularity level of service offerings. Then you might define a less granular level and use the location subscriptions. 
Keep in mind that the subscription logic is really on a location and is not cascading down to child locations. This could be an improvement if needed. 

so as usual there is not a single answer, but I am sure it will be doable. 

GL,

Barry