Information technology service management (ITSM) are the activities performed by an

organization An organization or organisation (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-ise, -ize (-isation, -ization), see spelling differences) is an legal entity, entity—such as ...

to design, build, deliver, operate and control IT services offered to

customers In sales, commerce, and economics, a customer (sometimes known as a client, buyer, or purchaser) is the recipient of a good, service, product, or an idea, obtained from a seller, vendor, or supplier via a financial transaction or an e ...

. Differing from more

technology Technology is the application of Conceptual model, conceptual knowledge to achieve practical goals, especially in a reproducible way. The word ''technology'' can also mean the products resulting from such efforts, including both tangible too ...

-oriented IT management approaches like network management and IT systems management, IT

service management Service management in the manufacturing context, is integrated into supply chain management as the intersection between the actual sales and the customer point of view. The aim of high-performance service management is to optimize the service- ...

is characterized by adopting a

process A process is a series or set of activities that interact to produce a result; it may occur once-only or be recurrent or periodic. Things called a process include: Business and management * Business process, activities that produce a specific s ...

approach towards

management Management (or managing) is the administration of organizations, whether businesses, nonprofit organizations, or a Government agency, government bodies through business administration, Nonprofit studies, nonprofit management, or the political s ...

, focusing on customer needs and IT services for customers rather than IT systems, and stressing continual improvement. The CIO WaterCooler's 2017 ITSM report states that business uses ITSM "mostly in support of customer experience (35%) and service quality (48%)."

Process

Execution of ITSM processes in an organization, especially those processes that are more workflow-driven, can benefit significantly from being supported with specialized software tools.

Service desk

A service desk is a primary IT function within the discipline of IT service management (ITSM) as defined by ITIL. It is intended to provide a ''Single Point of Contact'' (SPOC) to meet the communication needs of both users and IT staff, and also to satisfy both Customer and IT Provider objectives. '' User'' refers to the actual user of the service, while ''customer'' refers to the

entity An entity is something that Existence, exists as itself. It does not need to be of material existence. In particular, abstractions and legal fictions are usually regarded as entities. In general, there is also no presumption that an entity is Lif ...

that is paying for the service. ITSM tools are frequently applied to other aspects of

business Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or Trade, buying and selling Product (business), products (such as goods and Service (economics), services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for ...

; this practice is often called enterprise service management (ESM). A key initiative in ITSM is the

automation Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, mainly by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machine ...

of routine tasks, enabling personnel to focus on higher-priority responsibilities; this is known as IT process automation. The ITIL approach considers the service desk to be the central point of contact between service providers and users/customers on a day-to-day basis. It is also a focal point for reporting '' incidents'' (disruptions or potential disruptions in service availability or quality) and for users making ''service requests'' (routine requests for services). ITIL regards a

call centre A call centre ( Commonwealth spelling) or call center ( American spelling; see spelling differences) is a managed capability that can be centralised or remote that is used for receiving or transmitting a large volume of enquiries by telephone ...

or help desk as similar kinds of tech support which provide only a portion of what a service desk can offer. A service desk has a more broad and user-centered approach which is designed to provide the user with an informed single point of contact for all IT requirements. A service desk seeks to facilitate the integration of business processes into the service management infrastructure. In addition to actively monitoring and owning incidents and user questions, and providing the communications channel for other service management disciplines with the user community, a service desk also provides an interface for other activities such as customer change requests, third parties (e.g. maintenance contracts), and software licensing. Computer emergency response teams (CERT) are specifically dedicated to

computer security Computer security (also cybersecurity, digital security, or information technology (IT) security) is a subdiscipline within the field of information security. It consists of the protection of computer software, systems and computer network, n ...

incidents.

Frameworks

As a discipline, ITSM has ties and common interests with other IT and general management approaches, information security management and

software engineering Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining Application software, software applications. It involves applying engineering design process, engineering principl ...

. Consequently, IT service management frameworks have been influenced by other standards and adopted concepts from them, e.g.

CMMI Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) is a process level improvement training and appraisal program. Administered by the CMMI Institute, a subsidiary of ISACA, it was developed at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). It is required by many U ...

ISO 9000 The ISO 9000 family is a set of international standards for Quality (business), quality management systems. It was developed in March 1987 by International Organization for Standardization. The goal of these standards is to help organizations en ...

, or ISO/IEC 27000. Various frameworks for ITSM and overlapping disciplines include: * ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) is a set of detailed practices for IT activities such as IT service management (ITSM) and IT asset management (ITAM) that focus on aligning IT services with the needs of business. * TOGAF is a framework and methodology that aims to define business goals while aligning them with architecture objectives related to software development. * Business Process Framework (eTOM) is a process framework for telecommunications service providers. *

COBIT COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies) is a framework created by ISACA for information technology (IT) management and IT governance. The framework is business focused and defines a set of generic processes for the ...

(Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies) is an IT Governance framework that specifies control objectives, metrics and maturity models. Recent versions have aligned the naming of select control objectives to established ITSM process names. * FitSM is a standard for lightweight service management. It contains several parts, including e.g. auditable requirements and document templates, which are published under Creative Common licenses. Its basic process framework is in large parts aligned to that of ISO/IEC 20000. *

, guides all types of service providers to establish, manage, and improve services to meet business goals. * ASL's goal is the professional development of application management. This is achieved by offering a framework within which the processes of application management are brought in relation to each other. * USM, the principle-based USM method provides a standardized management system for a service organization to manage its people, its processes, its technology, and its services, based on an explicit service management architecture.USM specifies the management system that supports the practice-based frameworks and standards and is adopted by Dutch government for its management architecture. * ISO/IEC 20000 is an international standard for managing and delivering IT services. Its process model bears many similarities to that of ITIL version 2, since BS 15000 (precursor of ISO/IEC 20000) and ITIL were mutually aligned up to version 2 of ITIL. ISO/IEC 20000 defines minimum requirements for an effective "service management system" (SMS). Conformance of the SMS to ISO/IEC can be audited and organizations can achieve an ISO/IEC 20000 certification of their SMS for a defined scope. * BiSL is a framework of best practices for the

Information Management Information management (IM) is the appropriate and optimized capture, storage, retrieval, and use of information. It may be personal information management or organizational. Information management for organizations concerns a cycle of organiz ...

domain. * MOF ( Microsoft Operations Framework) includes, in addition to a general framework of service management functions, guidance on managing services based on Microsoft technologies.

Professional organizations

There are international, chapter-based professional associations, such as the IT Service Management Forum (itSMF), and HDI. The main goal of these organizations is to foster the exchange of experiences and ideas between users of ITSM frameworks. To this end, national and local itSMF and HDI chapters (LIGs or local interest groups for itSMF) organize conferences and workshops. Some of them also contribute to the translations of ITSM framework documents into their respective languages or publish their own ITSM guides. There are several certifications for service management like ITILv4, TOGAF or COBIT.

References

External links