What is an IT service?
Imagine a business that processes informationtask by a person using pen and paper. If someone else needed to process the information it would be delivered by hand. The file would be stored in a filing cabinet for retrieval later. A manager would need to coordinate these activities and make sure they're started and completed at the right times.
Those activities could be digitised and automated so the business buys a computer. The computer increases the organisation's capacity to perform these activities and it does them at speed. But it doesn't come for free and the computer system needs to be managed too.
The business side of the organisation doesn't want the hassle of managing all those computers. Their skills are better utilised running the business rather than running the computer. So it creates an IT department to do the work instead. The business grows and becomes heavily dependent upon the computers to function at this scale. It has expectations that the computers will always be there for them to do their jobs. They set up an agreement with the IT department to ensure they're available nearly all of the time as long as enough funds are provided for the department to make it happen. At this point the IT department becomes a service provider. The business side of the organisation becomes the customer.
The IT department increases its capabilities in response to business need. There are different capabilities with different expectations from the business and so different agreements are put in place. The IT department creates a catalogue of these services which makes it easier for the customer to visualise what's on offer.
Then some bright spark realises that one of the capabilities they've developed for this organisation are probably needed by a lot of other organisations too. It would make a great business model to provide this one capability to lots of other IT departments. They set up the new business and adopt the service model that worked so well before i.e. they agree with their customers to make the service available nearly all the time in exchange for a fee.
Pretty soon every IT department in the world is dependent on IT services from lots of other providers and that's when you realise that it's services all the way down!
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