When should I use Business Services vs Business Applications vs Service Offering vs Application Services?

[Mick McAllister]

I'm working with a customer who would like to know the best practice to classify each application. For example, they're using an IBM platform called FileNet which supports invoicing as well as meeting minutes for separate teams. The FileNet offering from IBM is a shared service but is viewed as two different applications by each team using that service. The customer would like to know how they should represent each of the scenarios within the CMDB. If we look at service definitions within the CMDB, it looks like there's four different categories of services (e.g. Business Service, Application Service, Service Offering, and Business Application).

What is the best way to classify these services in the CMDB so we maintain a hierarchy of support?

[Phillip Le Roy]

Hi mickmcallister,

I would say that the answer to that would be to it depends in how you will use the Service from the ServiceNow perspective.

I still believe Business Service would be the better fitting for your case. Specially if you are using Service Mapping and/or Event Management.

I'm not sure about Business Application and Service Offering but I know that Application Service will be the new terminology for Business Services in London.

[Surya Kuraku]

I had the same question. But got an idea after reading below thread https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_question&sys_id=0f87c3a9db1cdbc01dcaf3231f9619d0

[Ian Leu]

Hi Mick

In my opinion it could be "all of the above" depending on how you would like to manage it.

Your customer probably has multiple instances of filenet (prod, intg, test  etc). Filenet can also have multiple data stores depending on how it was implemented on your clients infrastructure. Lets assume you have 2 instances of Filenet (test & prod) with 2 data repositories per instance (let's say for each continent if your customer is globally operational). Based on the CSDM architecture in New York (details: https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_Article&sys_id=f54be0f7db984c146064eeb5ca961...)

Business capability would be something like "Manage content and documents".

Business application would "IBM Filenet"

Application service would be something like "IBM Filenet Prod" and "IBM Filenet Test"

Application would be what your discovery found installed on the windows host. I don't remember the service names filenet uses but I think that it was more than one depending on how many filenet components you use or developed (filenet needs custom applications for some capabilities like dynamic ACLs) I think they can be developed as java apps so they might even be in other CI classes than "application". However modelled you want to make sure you document all the critical application components (and databases).

Business service would be "DMS", "ECM", "Filenet", "IBM Filenet", "Invoicing", "Meeting Minutes" or however best your business users recognise the service. As there tends to be a lot of discussion on this level on the service naming convention - i recommend defining that it should be the name that appears on the title of the user interface (fat client/web app) of the business users and/or the start menu or desktop shortcut. This way you can keep it easy and consistent for the whole organisation and hopefully greatly reduce debates while still giving service owners the right to influence their service' recognition.

Service offering i would suggest as "IBM Filenet Prod" and "IBM Filenet Test" but there could be a better way to name it.

I have attached an example of how it would look if you we're trying to model ServiceNow as a platform.

Does that help?

[Nathan57]

Hi Ian. 

Just took a look at your example diagram.  I'm a little confused about the Business Application "Platform App" and "Platform Host" designations.  You have connected the Business Capabilities directly to the "Platform App" Business Application which is then connected to the "Platform Host".  Should it not be the other way round? The Capability to the Platform Host to the Platform App?

I've seen some examples with it that way round so keen to get your thoughts?

Thanks