Why is "Application Service" being renamed to "Service Instance", and not e.g. "Product Instance"?

[Johannes]

In CSDM v5 DRAFT, the Application Service is renamed to Service Instance.

The Application Service has previously been defined as the instantiation of the Business Application.

Now, when Business Application is renamed to Digital Product, why is not e.g. "Product" used as part of the new name for the Application Service? Is the definition also changed? Or the earlier suggested "System"?

As the word "Service" is removed from Service Offering, it is only Technology Mgmt Service and Business Service containing this word in addition to Service instance, making it sound like these are partly representing the same thing, which is not correct.

Also, there are probably more interpretations of the word “service” than there are CIs in the universe, so using this word should in general be avoided.

I believe changing the name from Application Service to Service Instance will make understanding the CSDM even more complex, and really hope this is not the final decision.

[Mathew Hillyard]

Firstly, CSDM 5 has not been released - even as a draft - as far as I am aware, although ServiceNow has shown the above diagram both at K24 and online as a teaser.

I believe the original intention was to rename App Service to System, which I'm glad they've moved on from as System is far too generic a term to be applied to something that is quite specific.

Digital Product Instance might work as an instance of a Digital Product but doesn't really make sense to me once Service Offerings are linked, and it also doesn't really highlight that this object is a conceptual top level focal point for a deployed stack of technology (or another conceptual CI in the case of SaaS). We are in the service Delivery domain, in the technology if you will, so I find this term too abstract.

Service Instance is something that would make more sense as a Service Offering (which is a specific instance of a service with its own SLA, geography, ownership and support), but of course Service Offering is the more familiar term. It doesn't really scan that well when looking at CSDM as a whole in either direction (from Business App or Business Service). In the diagram above it also appears that it is not connected to any infra CIs, which I assume is an error?

I suspect many of us have spent years trying to explain Application Services to customers. The word Service makes no sense in this context and what in my experience has caused the most confusion. That being said, once a customer gets that it is a conceptual CI that represents its technology stack they usually quickly move on. I don't believe any of the alternatives are any better. I would have kept it as it is.

[Johannes]

Here's a CSDM v5 roadmap session recording from July:

https://www.servicenow.com/community/cmdb-data-foundations/csdm-v5-roadmap-july-8th-session-recordin...

(Here, "Product Instance" was discussed as another name for "Install Base Item")