In working on a glossary of terms for Business Service Management, I’ve discovered the ITIL glossary, version 3.0, and I’m reading it with interest. It’s a writing task taken very seriously with wonderful cross referencing and consistency of terms and usage. I haven’t yet found a contradiction or hole in logic so hats off to the writers who put it together. The only additional feature I’d like is clickable cross-references to the other terms used within a definition.
With the terms of use, you can reference the definitions as long as you’re not using the glossary specifically to sell your own products or services, and you must use the term accurately. So it’s a wonderful resource and source of content.
One item I found very interesting while studying the glossary: IT Service seems interchangeable with any Service. However, that interchangeability is not specifically spelled out in the IT Service definition. In the Service definition they call Service synonymous with IT Service. But, there’s also the Business Service definition which has an example such as financial services. So the generic term “Service” is never related to say, banking services or financial services, but “Service” is always related to IT Services.
Confused yet? I confess I am a little confused as well, especially if I want to use Business Service Management principles to interrelate banking services and IT services such as ATM software (firmware?) that runs on Linux. At that point, I guess it’s all about Service, no matter what type you’re talking about. I’ll have to ask Peter Armstrong where he draws the line for his definitions of service management.
What criteria do you use for your definitions of IT Service in contrast to Business Service?