How to tie Application Services to Tech Services and Offerings when Dynamic CI Group is being used?

[AustinN]

Hello,

Currently we have App Services built out for all of our 600+ Business Applications. We are in the process of Service Mapping and building out Technical Services, TS Offerings and Dynamic CI Groups.

We have built out for example a Technical Service for Middleware Messaging, have Offerings for the different Models of IBM MQ (7.5, 8.0, 9.1) and then have the Dynamic CI Groups to query each of those groups of CI's by Model ID. 

1. We now want to understand how to determine which Application Services are using the Middleware Messaging Technical Service. For example, if someone entered a CHG or INC ticket on the Technical Service, how could we identify which Applications Services will be impacted?

2. Also, how could we see on the Application Service record what Offering and Tech Services they are consuming?

3. Also, how do we see on the CI level (and IBM MQ 8.0 device) what Technical Service/Offering it falls under? 

Another example would be OpenShift Clusters (Kubernetes) If we created Tech Services and Offerings for these, how would we know what application services are using them in the CSDM?

There doesn't seem to be a good answer in the white papers.

[CMDB Whisperer]

It's an interesting question and one I'm not sure which CSDM addresses directly, because a Technical Service is generally consumed by a person, not by an application.  It is probably more accurate to say that your Application Service is dependent on one or more specific CIs that are included in the Dynamic CI Group, rather than saying that it is dependent on the high level Technical Service itself.

[AustinN]

Agreed. The App Service depends on the CI which is included in the DYCG which makes up one of the Offerings under a Tech Service. So by way of the different relationships, the App Service relies on a Tech Service and its Offering.

[CMDB Whisperer]

It may be more accurate to say that the Tech Service and its offering have a dependency on the DCG which includes the specific CI, and that the App Service has a dependency on the same CI.  It does not follow that the App Service relies on the Tech Service and its Offering.  Rather, it relies on an element of that offering, which is the specific CI.  To say that the App Service depends on the Tech Service and its offering implies that all CIs included in the DCG have an impact on the App Service, when it is more likely that a specific CI within the DCG group has an impact on the App Service.

[AustinN]

I see what you mean but the application service is still relying on the tech offering as a whole to be up and running. What if the tech service owners are running a CHG on one of their offerings as a whole and they need to be able to identify all of the applications using that offering to instruct them to do something. How would we be able to tell our tech service owners 'here is the list of applications subscribed to your service offering' in a simple way? I guess we could add some logic to Affected CI's business rule to pull in application services that are depending on one of the offerings ci's.. Or build some sort of custom reporting table? Just trying to see if there is a CSDM solution. That's just one example too. Same goes for an INC on the service/offering. The tech service owner would want to know what applications are using their service/ci's.