Reading "Service Catalog--Your Prerequisite For Effective IT Service Management" #ITIL #ITSM

I've been meaning to write about the new Forrester report on service catalog, "Service Catalog — Your Prerequisite For Effective IT Service Management."  First, I'm really glad to see this category getting some love from Forrester, so my thanks. 

The report makes a nice distinction on the need to establish a Front Office of IT that works on the priorities and value drivers of the business. This is separate from the Back Office of IT. This is a topic I've written a lot about it here.

There are two recommendations and one insight worth mentioning.

First, focus on the service catalog as standalone component. Why? Because independent vendors are driving innovation. And any vision of automating services (like for cloud computing) must include a service catalog.

Second, focus on self-service provisioning because it's one the great value drivers of automation. And the the catalog is the entry point to self-service. This allows the user to browse, compare, select, configure and request service.

The insight worth mentioning is that these requests should happen against services that are constructed from standard service components; that there is a service model from which larger services are composed.

The insight? "The important point here is that the underlying components of the service must be in place before the service itself can be delivered. Navigating from the service catalog down to the components ensures this is the case."

Here's the abstract. You must be a Forrester client or have $499.

Service Catalog — Your Prerequisite For Effective IT Service Management

Yes, They Can Help Connect You With The Business

by Evelyn Hubbert, Glenn O'Donnell with Peter O'Neill, Simon Yates, Lauren E. Nelson, Alex Crumb

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Executive Summary

The vision and purpose of effective IT service management is to efficiently develop, operate, and deliver services with value and alignment to the business. To do this, IT must transform itself from an organization with many silos of technical and functional silos into a business with reliable and cost-effective service offerings. The attitude, behavior, and culture of the organization must shift to a service provider organization. The first step in this transformation is to develop a service catalog that describes the IT services supporting the business services and in turn the business process.