The Service Catalog is widely acknowledged as the cornerstone of ITIL, and the starting point for effective IT service management. ITIL v3 placed even more emphasis on Service Catalog Management, promoting it to its own process. However, ITIL often refers to the Service Catalog as a "database" or "document" of services. The idea that your Service Catalog can be a document or simple database is a misnomer — it causes a lot of heartache for those who try to define their services in a static document.
Consider who will use and manage the Service Catalog, the need to control who sees and has access to what, the changes and iterations you are likely to make over time, the need to update prices and service levels, and the ability to order services from the catalog. Trying to do this in Word or Excel would be like Amazon.com reverting to a paper catalog for selling its wares to consumers.
The services in your catalog are in fact multi-dimensional. ITIL v3 introduces the concept of a Business Service Catalog and a Technical Service Catalog — as well as a service portal. With newScale, these business services and technical services co-exist, their relationships and dependencies connected, with different views managed through roles-based access. Business customers only see the business services that they need, your IT staff only sees the technical components for which they're responsible for or need to use, and end users access a portal that contains only services they are entitled to order.
One of the most common first steps then, is to define the services in your Service Catalog. This may seem like a daunting process, but newScale provides a wide range of templates and tools that make it easy. Then you can focus on enabling self-service by connecting your Service Catalog to the service request fulfillment process. You can also use this as the foundation for ITIL processes like demand management and IT financial management — to support demand planning, effective budgeting, and cost transparency for your services throughout their lifecycle.
Some vendors claim to provide Service Catalog functionality, yet they merely offer a way to document services in a database; or they simply provide a self-service front end to their service desk tool. Only the newScale Front Office Suite provides the fully integrated ability to both define a customer-focused Service Catalog and make it actionable and operational — for defining your portfolio of service offerings, enabling self-service requests in an online "menu", tracking the fulfillment and lifecycle of service items, and managing IT budgets and consumption.
To learn more about newScale Service Catalog solutions, please go to our Literature Request Section to read the newScale Solution Overview Brochure or other solution Data Sheets.
