Distinction between ITSM and BSM

The main hindrance in accepting ITSM as a framework for enabling SOA from a service delivery viewpoint is the fact that it is really too “IT focused” or “IT Service focused” – it never actually tries to make a leap into understanding business in business terms and ensuring that service delivery ensures participating in those business outcomes. It is forever stuck in checking QoS of either large monoliths apps or technical services like email, internet access, network accessibility etc. The classic IT service catalogue will focus on Service support and hosting only.

Business Service management takes a different route and maps back the “Business service” to the underlying IT components and tends to measure the QoS of the business service including throughout, availability, and performance as first level concept. The business service if properly aligned to business goals indirectly measures the overall business performance as well. The key to note here is that many early business service management projects seem to claim that they are managing business in business terms but unfortunately the service itself being monitored was not aligned to expected business outcomes or their QoS did not consider the “big picture” – typically these were done to manage or fill the IT Infrastructure parts of very focused BPR projects.

Now note why SOA is important to BSM and vice-a-versa – SOA ensures that Business services are defined at right granularity – the alignment to business goals – the QoS specifications etc – BSM them ensures the Infrastructure monitoring and deployment environment is mapped and measured as per the service levels drafted against the business service. Doing it this way, esp. collating the QoS or business needs against pure play IT services (e.g. email) ensures IT service delivery starts understanding the implication of IT service downtime in email server in terms of no of business services affected and potentially business outcomes affected.

So going forward it is imperative to set the stage for rolling out SOA on BSM rather than ITSM. Unless off course you consider BSM to be a specialization or part of ITSM.