The History of SOA & ITSM

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It needs to be understood that history and origins of SOA are in pureplay software development world - it may have been driven by Gartner to begin with in 1996 under a slightly different pseudonym - but eventually caught the fancy with advent of web services (the earliest version). The rationale for emergence of SOA over and above object oriented and component based software and its distinctions is nicely summarized by Thomas Earl in his articles on SOA magazine.

Service management as a discipline is about making sure that SLAs are set up. Monitored, and controlled for IT services being provided. ITIL is one of primary and best known frameworks for part-ITSM implementation. ITIL version 2 was released sometime in 1999 and contributed to operational excellence by publishing best practices in several domains – most notably these were followed to the core in many organizations in areas of service support and service delivery. A major refresh to ITIL called ITIL v3 happened in 2007 and is in process of rolling out as I write this across the world. However note that while “service” is common between ITSM and SOA – they have carried very different semantics.

Thankfully ITSM now is being slowly changing its way to talk about "BSM" (Business service management) and the ITIL service design talks about 3 categories of service - Business, technical and consulting. Let us begin by examining the traditional notions of business service and how it changes in context of SOA world.