Planning Service Models › Planning Service Models › Service Identification

Service Identification

Any set of resources that depend on each other to provide a useful business function can compose a service. Identifying services requires an understanding of the resources that make up your enterprise and the typical contents of a service. A service can take many forms, including the following:

• A low-level IT service such as DNS or DHCP
• A set of resources that you want to manage collectively, such as the servers or printers contained in a specific location
• A network service such as VPN
• A systems service such as Active Directory
• A database service such as a Microsoft SQL Server cluster
• A high-level business service such as Payroll, Email, and so on
• External services such as an Internet Service Provider or Cloud

Most services are a combination of all of the above, with high-level business services containing various low-level services. For example, a Blackberry business service may contain subservices that represent key IT services that support Blackberry communication, such as Active Directory, Exchange, DHCP, and so on.

Most modern, complex service models do not, by definition, follow a hierarchical tree-like structure. They follow a more dynamic, multi-layered structure that requires you to collect comprehensive information about what makes up your services. As you begin identifying the services in your enterprise that require modeling, you can consult the following sources for the required information:

• Department leads and line of business owners
• Your IT department
• Existing management products
• Old design documents, statements of work, and so on
• Service Catalog, defined workflows
• Application configuration management tools
• Existing help desk or CMDB products

Other sources may also be useful. In a large enterprise, you rely on all available sources of information to gain an accurate picture of your services.