Business Service vs Application Service vs Technical Service

[Mike88]

Apologies as this may be way off the mark and if it is then any layman's help where my understanding has failed would be greatly appreciated.

We're trying to build a CMDB and part of this is the classification of Services different services used within the company. I've read a number of the forum posts and think at a very basic level i've grasped the concept (I hope)

* Business Service - would be a very high level grouping of application services for example "e-mail"
* Application Service - would be a collection of items which come together to provide the Business Service such as various software applications and hardware items "MS Outlook, MS Exchange, Windows Servers etc"
* Technical Service - would be the "Technical support" offered to support the various Application Services (potentially by 2nd/3rd line support teams)

[AndersBGS · Accepted solution]

Hi @Mike88 ,

You should see it as below according to my understanding:

Business Service: e.g. "communication and collaboration" where the business service offering could be mail.

Application Service: is the different instances of a business application e.g. DEV, TEST, PROD etc.

Technical Service: is e.g. Identification and Access Management, where technical Service offering is access for a specific related application Service.

You can read further documentation here  on the CSDM white paper 4.0: https://www.servicenow.com/community/common-service-data-model/it-is-time-csdm-4-0-draft-white-paper...

If my answer has helped with your question, please mark my answer as accepted solution and give a thumb up.

Best regards

Anders 

[Mike88]

Thanks Anders

The link to the whitepaper is really helpful, though it does raise more questions than answers for me unfortunately (though this may just be with my understanding of the concepts/Methodology ServiceNow use) with the seeming necessity of having to add Service Offerings into the mix.

[Tyson Elder]

We're also deep into doing this. We've been having issues with the structure of the Technical Service catalogue, we have started to look at the TBM Taxonomy for guidance.

TS: Hosting

TSO: Windows Server Management

AS (Dynamic CI Group): All Windows Servers (Contains all CI where class = Windows Server and Operational)

TS: Application Management
TSO: Oracle Database Administration Services
AS (Dynamic Group): Contains all OracleDB CI in your CMDB that meet certain criteria

BS: Financial Systems
BSO: Peoplesoft Online Portal
BA: Peoplesoft
AS: Peoplesoft PROD (Top down mapped, contains URL, load balancer, application, oracle db and windows server CI)

Annoyingly we've found this to be more like an English assignment instead of a Maths assignment, You can argue a correct point, there is no 'wrong' answer specifically for your organization. The tricky part is deciding where you slice this and ensure it remains manageable.

The above example, the AS Peoplesoft PROD would be able to consume both the TSOs mentioned, but an end user could only consume the BSO