Business Service Management: Beyond 2012

Business service management (BSM) is a way to bridge the user's view of applications and services to the IT operations' view of infrastructure; it maps business services to the components used to deliver them. The promise is that this insight will provide visibility into IT from a business service standpoint and give IT the ability to resolve issues faster, focus on key business services, and better align IT management processes with business needs. The central piece of BSM is therefore the configuration management database (CMDB), the repository of data about services, IT components, and their relationships. Although the foundational technology of application mapping and the CMDB is still a work in progress, BSM has evolved to include all service management processes under its umbrella. For IT infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders evaluating BSM, this report looks at the evolution of BSM and answers two key questions: "What are the benefits and failings of the technology?" and "Is it worth the effort?"