IT services. Equipment - Part 3: IT services ≠ IT services. Who or what makes the service useful?

• IT services: materiel. Part 1. Introduction and Basics
• IT services: materiel. Part 2. Formula services

Well, we got to the subject area of ​​IT. The first and very important question - what is “IT service”? We look at Wikipedia:

IT services (IT services, IT services; including IT consulting ) - services related to providing assistance in mastering computer literacy of users, teaching them new software products ...
The article " Service " of the Russian Wikipedia ( as amended on March 16, 2015 ).

We arrived. It turns out that the giants of the IT services industry, such as Google , are engaged in assisting in the development of computer literacy ...
And here ITIL comes to the rescue.

IT service - a service provided by an IT service provider ...
IT Service Provider - A service provider that provides IT services ...
Official Russian glossary of ITIL 2011

But no, it does not come.

In general, I want to laugh and cry. A quote from Russian Wikipedia is the clearest example of the terminological mess that is created in our industry. Definitions from the ITIL dictionary, in turn, are an elegant attempt to disguise this mess with a clever look.

At the same time, ITIL really deals with IT services. And this is not computer literacy training. Moreover, it considers aspects of IT support as an activity, but you will not find there the answers how to build an IT support service. Like at a medical university, where you will be taught how to treat people, but they will not teach you how to organize a paid clinic.
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Well, let's start raking the mess. From our experience, it is clearly seen that naming all services in IT as “IT Services” brings a lot of misunderstanding, confusion and wrong expectations. And this leads to conflicts, loss of time and money.

In this series of articles I will call IT services clearly only those services, the final results (outcomes) of which are provided solely through information technology, and not by the employees of the supplier. First of all, we are talking about the immediate functionality (utility, utility) services. Yes, IT systems are failing and becoming obsolete, and people are needed to fix and update them. But when everything works, then people are not needed. Totally. In IT services, the employees of the supplier do not spend their time directly on the formation of the result necessary for the consumer.

Examples of IT services are:

• Internet access;
• Email;
• cashier's workplace.

Non IT services:

• support and maintenance of network devices;
• support and maintenance of the Exchange server;
• support and maintenance of software in the workplace.

And then where are the services from the second group? Here it is necessary to answer the question: “Who or what creates the utility of these services?” In these services, the utility is created by specialists, and specially trained in the field of IT. Based on this, I will refer these services to the category of Professional Services .

To make it clearer, how these services differ from each other and how they relate to each other, I will give two diagrams. The first is the conceptual (simplified) composition of IT services. Something like a diagram of the relationship of classes in software development. The second is a comprehensive IT service composition taken as an example. This is a diagram of the relationship of objects ( instances ) of classes. To simplify the diagram, most objects are not shown.

In both diagrams, I dotted out those things that the owner of the IT services (actually the customer of the supporting services) does not have to worry about every day, since this is the area of ​​responsibility and the concerns of its suppliers and contractors.

Conceptual (simplified) composition of IT services:

An extensive composition of IT services, taken as an example:

A typical sign and consequence of the fact that these 2 categories do not distinguish are attempts to stretch the recommendations of ITIL to professional support services and maintenance of IT components and systems. And ITIL'om and restrict.

Conversely, professional services indicators are used as primary to formulate service levels for IT services.

It is important to understand that ITIL is primarily aimed at IT services in the sense described above, and teaches them to build and manage them. Of course, you can try to fly a helicopter according to the instructions from the aircraft, but the result will be far from expectations. If you are interested, first of all, how the IT service is built, then you can not wait for the next articles, but switch to the study of ITIL.

“But aren’t support services a part of IT services?” You ask. Yes, they can be. Moreover, if the support work is carried out by employees of the IT service provider company, then this is most likely not a service at all, if there is no “galvanic isolation”. These are separate functions of individual organizational units within the company. But if support work is performed by an outsourcer, then this is a full-fledged professional service.

By the way, these are the most frequent cases of confusion when they confuse an IT service and its supporting professional IT support service from an outsourcer. Please pay attention to what kind of service you are talking about, and about which - your interlocutors.

An interesting point for IT services is that the key factor for their success is to minimize the need for people to work as a component of operating costs, since this means that the IT service will be noticeably more economical and, most likely, noticeably more responsive. You can imagine an IT service as a rental car: you just sit down and drive where you need it. And the less you have to contact people, for example, for repair or refueling, the greater will be the pleasure of using the car.

Exercise A3:

1. List the IT services in the ICL Services catalog ?
2. For which category of services is the “solution time” indicator preferable for formulating service levels?
3. For which category of services is “affordability” preferred for formulating service levels?
4. How much greater percentage of availability is provided by the description of the service level “decision time of an application incident — 1 hour” compared to “decision time of an application incident — 16 hours”?

Sources:

1. ITIL v2011. Service Design. Section 3.1.5 “Comprehensive and integrated service design”
2. Official Russian glossary of ITIL 2011
3. The article " Service " of the Russian Wikipedia ( as amended on March 16, 2015 ).
4. In the diagrams, I use the GLYPHICONS PRO icons.

PS What aspects of IT services do you think should be revealed early? I will be glad to know your vision in the comments to this article, and if you do not have rights, then in the comments to the news about this article in our group on Facebook .