Service Catalog concepts
According to ITIL, a service comprises one or more IT systems that enable a business process. Examples include payroll, e-mail, printing, telephony, and computer delivery and installation. Each of these separate services typically comprises a number of separate IT systems that all need to be available, managed, and maintained – but about which the end-user has no real interest in, and need not be aware of. The end-user wants e-mail available, but is not interested in the various server and network components that are required to enable their e-mail account to work.
Each of the services that you make available to your end-users is known as a Business Service. The IT systems that are required to make these Business Services available are known as Technical Services. Only the Business Services are presented to your end-users, not the Technical Services.
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Business Service |
associated Technical Services |
|---|---|
|
|
E-mail server |
|
|
E-mail client |
|
|
E-mail account |
|
|
etc... |
A Service Catalog is a hierarchical list of all of the services that an organization makes available to its end-users. It provides a single, customer-facing view of the services that are in use, and highlights which business processes they enable. Careful design of a Service Catalog hierarchy, combined with publishing the different levels of the hierarchy to different groups and roles within your organization, can help to ensure that people have the correct services that they need to do their jobs, without providing them with things that they don't need and you don't want to pay for.
Ivanti Service Catalog enables you to specify which CIs are part of the Service Catalog, and then which CIs are Business Services and which are Technical Services. You can then build a Service Catalog hierarchy and publish the different levels of the hierarchy to the appropriate groups and roles.
Accessing the Service Catalog
After you have set up your Service Catalog, using the Ivanti Service Catalog component in the Ivanti Console, your end-users can request items that have been published to them through the Service Catalog. This is done through the browser-based, Web Access or Ivanti Workspaces Service Catalogs.