Definition of Service Offering.

Michael Imhoff
Kilo Contributor

The definition of Service Offering in CSDM 3.0 is: 

A service offering is defined as a stratification of the service into capability, availability, pricing, and packaging options.

 

The definition from ITIL 4 is:

A description of one or more services, designed to address the needs of a target consumer group. A service offering may include goods, access to resources, and service actions.

 

My questions is whether this means the same just with different wording or something different. 

 

Best regards,

Michael. 

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alexrozov
Tera Expert

Hi,

I think this is an interesting discussion.

 

But my understanding here these definitions are not fully aligned.

 

If we look at the ITIL terminology as I understand it based on an example

Let's say our service is a CRM application and our service offerings for this service are standard and VIP

 

- Access to service - this is just the license/user in the CRM application - would probably be the same in these 2 offerings

- Goods - not sure this is a good example but maybe the VIP offering also includes a tablet that can be used to access the service. and users with the standard offering do not get a device and they need to use their laptop

 

and service actions - here we might see the same actions but with a different SLA so for example both will have an "open incident" service action but the response SLA will be 1 hour for VIP and 1 working day for standard.

We can also see a service action like 1 on 1 training and this might only be available for VIP offering

 

When we move to ServiceNow and CSDM and we try to describe the same thing it will not be just a service offering.

 

- depending how everything is implemented you might see a catalog item for a tablet and a catalog item for 1 on 1 training only available for the VIP offering.

another option to implement this would be to create 2 catalog items for CRM standard and CRM VIP

the CRM standard request will have a task to provision the user in the CRM and would subscribe the user to the standard service offering

the CRM VIP request will have 3 items/tasks - provision a user, provide a tablet and provide 1 on 1 training

 

and with regards to the SLA  - each service offering will have the option to open an incident but the service commitment would be different

 

I know that ServiceNow are stating tat with CSDM a service offering can now be requested through the service catalog but I have not seen how this is actually implemented. 

 

long response and it's not very decisive but I hope it does help a bit.

 

   

 

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7 REPLIES 7

Amanda Buggy
Kilo Guru
The definition of Service Offering in CSDM 3.0 is: 

A service offering is defined as a stratification of the service into capability, availability, pricing, and packaging options.

The definition from ITIL 4 is:

A description of one or more services, designed to address the needs of a target consumer group. A service offering may include goods, access to resources, and service actions.

-----

Personally I would say yes this is basically the same definition, the CSDM one is just offering guidance on the criteria about how to split the Service into distinct parts (offerings), eg it only needs to be a separate Offering (within the Service) if there are difference levels such as price/response (VIP vs standard), uptime commitments (availability), customer base, technology/support groups, etc otherwise should just be a single offering  

jakobdiness1
Kilo Contributor

I also see a lot of similarities, and I find it important to link existing ITIL practice with your ServiceNow. It should not be two different worlds, but merely different ways of expressing services.

Sven Heide
Tera Contributor

very interesting Question! 🙂 

 

In my eyes it means the same... but in both defintions I miss the needed Ressources to actually host or run this service... Am I am the only one who misses this?

 

and I think, the CSDM defintion is a little bit more sharpend to additional "topics" from the CSDM...

 

but without a Service offering there will never be a avilable Service (Business or Technical)... at least not when you want to be CSDM "compliant"

 

Having a Service Offering for me also means you need to have a Service Catalog avilable for your whole company...
on Business Service Level and on Technical Service Level.... the Technical Services always support the Business Services...