an it service taxonomy for elaborating it service...

Master Thesis Software Engineering Thesis no: MSE-2009-34 December 2009

School of Engineering Blekinge Institute of Technology Box 520 SE – 372 25 Ronneby Sweden

An IT Service Taxonomy for Elaborating IT Service Catalog

Md Forhad Rabbi

School of Engineering Blekinge Institute of Technology Box 520 SE – 372 25 Ronneby Sweden

Internet : www.bth.se/tek Phone : +46 457 38 50 00 Fax : + 46 457 271 25

This thesis is submitted to the Facultad de Informática, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and to the School of Computing, Blekinge Institute of Technology, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of European Master on Software Engineering. The thesis is equivalent to 22 weeks of full time studies.

Contact Information:

Author:

Md. Forhad Rabbi CarreteraBoadilla Del Monte, 52, 5B Madrid, 28024, Spain Email: [email protected]

University Advisor:

Jose A. Calvo-Manzano Villalón Facultad de Informática - Universidad Politécnica de Madrid Dpto de Lenguajes y SistemasInformáticos e Ingeniería del Software Campus de Montegancedo s/n 28660 Boadilla del Monte – Madrid Email: [email protected] Faculty Reviewer Richard Torkar PhD, Associate Professor in Software Engineering, School of Computing Blekinge Institute of Technology SE-372 25 Ronneby Sweden Email; [email protected] Office: +46 (0) 457 385 809 Mobile: +46 (0) 768 653 342


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Table of Contents

Acknowledgement ...............................................................................................xi

Abstract ..............................................................................................................xiii

CHAPTER 1: ............................................................................................................ 1

INTRODUCTION................................................................................................... 1 1.1Introduction....................................................................................................................................................3 1.1.1 Service Taxonomy................................................................................................................................... 5 1.1.2 Service Portfolio ...................................................................................................................................... 5 1.1.3 Service Catalog......................................................................................................................................... 5

1.2 Problem and approach to the solution ..............................................................................................5 1.2.1 Problems in IT Service Catalog ......................................................................................................... 6 1.2.2 Approach to the Solution ..................................................................................................................... 6

1.3 Objectives .......................................................................................................................................................7 1.4 Expected outcome.......................................................................................................................................7 1.5 Research methodology .............................................................................................................................7 1.6 Structure of the Thesis..............................................................................................................................8

CHAPTER 2: ............................................................................................................ 9

STATE OF THE ART IN SERVICE LEVEL MANAGEMENT ................................... 9 2.1 Systematic Review................................................................................................................................... 12 2.1.1 Systematic Review Background......................................................................................................12 2.1.2 What is a Systematic Review............................................................................................................12 2.1.3 Protocol Description ............................................................................................................................12 2.1.4 Prototype Development......................................................................................................................12

2.2 Results of the Systematic Review...................................................................................................... 18 2.2.1 Studies Trends ........................................................................................................................................18 2.2.2. Studies Classification..........................................................................................................................19 2.2.3 Analysis of those studies covering the relationship of the three topics (ITSM, SLM and small and medium sized enterprises).............................................................................................20

2.3 Study on the processes of the frameworks................................................................................... 22 2.3.1 IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) .....................................................................................................22 2.3.2 CMMI for Services (CMMI_SVC).......................................................................................................24 2.3.3 Control Objective for Information and related Technology (COBIT).............................25 2.3.4 Microsoft Operational Framework (MOF).................................................................................27

2.4 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................... 28

CHAPTER 3: ...........................................................................................................31

RESOLUTION FOR IT SERVICE TAXONOMY .....................................................31 3.1 Introduction................................................................................................................................................ 33 3.2 Development of IT Service Taxonomy ............................................................................................ 34 3.2.1. Identify, establish and define categories....................................................................................34 3.2.2. Identify, establish and define subcategories and services..................................................34 3.2.3 Assign the services to sub-categories ...........................................................................................35 3.2.4 IT Services ................................................................................................................................................35

3.3. IT Service Taxonomy ............................................................................................................................. 53

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3.3.1 Category: Support Services ...............................................................................................................55 3.3.1.1 Subcategory: Network Services...................................................................................................55 3.3.1.2 Subcategory: Security services ....................................................................................................57 3.3.1.3 Subcategory: Service Desk Services...........................................................................................58 3.3.1.4 Subcategory: Maintenance services ..........................................................................................59 3.3.1.5 Subcategory: End User Services ..................................................................................................63 3.3.2 Category: Outsourcing Services ......................................................................................................64 3.3.2.1 Subcategory: Applications Outsourcing Services ................................................................64 3.3.2.2 Subcategory: Application Development Services ................................................................65 3.3.2.3 Subcategory: Systems Integration Services ...........................................................................67 3.3.2.4 Subcategory: Business Process Outsourcing Services (BPO).........................................68 3.3.2.5 Subcategory: Infrastructure Outsourcing Services ............................................................69 3.3.3.1 Subcategory: Customer Relationship Management Service (CRM) ............................70 3.3.3.2 Subcategory: IT Services Strategy .............................................................................................71 3.3.3.3 Subcategory: Product Chain Management Service ............................................................72 3.3.3.5 Subcategory: Consolidation Services ........................................................................................74 3.3.3.6 Subcategory: Security Services....................................................................................................76 3.3.3.7 Subcategory: Business Continuity Services ............................................................................77 3.3.3.8 Subcategory: Risk Management Services ...............................................................................78 3.3.3.9 Subcategory: IT Architecture Services .....................................................................................78 3.3.3.10 Subcategory: Business Service ..................................................................................................79 3.3.4 Category: Training ...............................................................................................................................80 3.3.5 Category: Operation ............................................................................................................................81 3.3.5.1 Subcategories: Management and control systems .............................................................81 3.3.5.2 Subcategory: Restoration Services ............................................................................................82 3.3.5.3 Subcategory: Application Performance Management......................................................82 3.3.5.4 Subcategory: Performance Engineering Services ..............................................................82 3.3.5.5 Subcategory: Business Continuity Services ............................................................................82 3.3.5.6 Subcategory: Other Operating Services...................................................................................83 3.3.5.7 Subcategory: Server services........................................................................................................83 5.3.5.8 Subcategory: Operational Security Services..........................................................................83 3.3.5.9 Subcategory: Microcomputer Operating Facilities ............................................................84 3.3.5.10 Subcategories: Operations and monitoring services.......................................................84 3.3.5.11 Subcategory: Mission Critical Services ..................................................................................84 3.3.6 Category: Integration and Development Services ..................................................................84 3.3.6.1 Subcategory: Systems integration and implementation Services................................85 3.6.2 Subcategory: Software Development Services .........................................................................86 3.3.7 Category: Other services ....................................................................................................................86 3.3.7.1 Subcategory: Security Management Services .......................................................................87 3.3.7.2 Subcategory: Risk Management Services ...............................................................................87 3.3.7.3 Subcategory: Cost Management Services ...............................................................................87 3.3.7.4 Subcategory: Print Management Services .............................................................................88 3.3.7.5 Subcategory: Relationship management services with suppliers (Supplier Relationships Management, SRM)............................................................................................................88 3.3.7.7 Subcategory: Infrastructure Management Service ............................................................89

3.4 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................... 89 3.5 Application OF proposed IT Service Taxonomy: In IT Service Portfolio and IT service catalog Development...................................................................................................................................... 89 3.5.1 Method to develop IT Service Portfolio using ITST ................................................................90 3.4.2 Method to develop IT Service Catalog using ITST ..................................................................91

CHAPTER: 4 ...........................................................................................................91

CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK .................................................................91


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Bibliography .......................................................................................................95

PUBLICATION........................................................................................................99

APPENDIX ...........................................................................................................101 1.1Template for Systematic Review..................................................................................................... 101 1.2 Papers Used for Systematic Review.............................................................................................. 103 1.3 Reviewed IT Companies..................................................................................................................... 107


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Index of Figures

Figure 1 Studies Trend-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 19 Figure 2 Studies Classification-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 20 Figure3 Studies Classification by Country-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 21 Figure 4 Studies by Company’s Size-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 21 Figure 5 Studies classified by model ----------------------------------------- 22 Figure 6 Categories and Sub Categories of IT service-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 54 Figure 7 Support Service Category-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 54 Figure 8 Network Services-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 56 Figure 9 Security Services-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 57 Figure 10 Service Desk-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 58 Figure 11 Maintenance Services-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 59 Figure 12 End User Service Subcategory-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 63 Figure 13 Outsourcing service Category-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 64 Figure 14 Application Outsourcing -‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 65 Figure 15 Application Development-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 66 Figure 16 System integration-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 67 Figure 17 Business process outsourcing-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 68 Figure 18 Infrastructure outsourcing-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 69 Figure 19 Consultancy-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 70 Figure 20 Customer Relationship-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 71 Figure 21 IT services storages-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 72 Figure 22 Product chain management-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 73 Figure 23 Organizational performance-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 74 Figure 24 Consolidation-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 75 Figure 25 Security service consultancy-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 76 Figure 26 Business continuity-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 77 Figure 27 Risk management-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 78 Figure 28 IT architecture-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 78 Figure 29 Business services-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 79 Figure 30 Training-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 78 Figure 31 Operation services-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 79 Figure 32 Integration and development services-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 85 Figure 33 Other services-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 87 Figure 34 IT Service portfolio-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ 91


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Index of Tables

Table 1 Spanish Companies (Employee’s Straturn and Total)--------------- 11 Table 2 Search String for Systematic Review---------------------------------- 14 Table 3 Source List----------------------------------------------------------------- 15 Table 4 Studies inclusion and exclusion criteria definition------------------- 16 Table 5 Number of Studies and Result------------------------------------------ 17 Table 6 Information inclusion and exclusion criteria definition ------------- 17 Table 7 Hardware Upgrade Service --------------------------------------------- 92


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Acknowledgement In the name of GOD who is the most gracious, merciful and creator of this universe. I am thankful to Him who blessed me with abilities to do this thesis work. I am thankful to our supervisor, Jose A. Calvo-‐Manzano Villalón, who was the real source of encouragement and motivation during the whole work of thesis. His useful suggestions, advice and ideas to bottleneck problems encountered during this thesis work were just immensurable. His expertise, devotion and constant encouragement were very helpful and made this effort an enjoyable one. My gratitude’s also goes to Gerzon Eliud Gómez for his invaluable guidance, fruitful discussions and encouragement throughout this thesis work. I am grateful for his kindness, patience and feedbacks. He is really the best. I am also grateful Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the co founder of Google. Thanks God, they came out of this idea of Google engine. Through out my thesis work I really got incredible supports from this search engine. I am thankful to all staff and friends at UPM, Spain; they all were very supportive and kind. We are thankful to Professor Oscar my contact person in UPM who encouraged me throughout the master studies. I am also thankful to Mai Nguyen for proof reading the whole thesis and helped me to cook my foods during my thesis work. At last, I am thankful to my family for their kind support, encouragement and dedication of their whole lives to make it possible for me to pursue higher studies in Sweden and Spain. Indeed, without their emotional support it would not be possible for me to accomplish this work.


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Abstract In this thesis, I, as the author, have tried to propose a methodology for establishing IT service taxonomy in order to elaborate IT service portfolio and IT service catalog. As a core part of my thesis, IT service taxonomy has been discussed to manage IT services in an efficient way in the small and medium sized enterprises The small and medium sized enterprises can use the categories and sub categories of this taxonomy to define their service catalog and portfolio. In that regards, a list of IT services has been identified from the industries and has been used to define the IT service taxonomy.

Keywords: IT Service Taxonomy (ITST), IT Service Management (ITSM), Service Level Management (SLM), IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL).

1 | I n t r o d u c t i o n

CHAPTER 1:

INTRODUCTION


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1.1INTRODUCTION Service is nowadays one of the most important values to achieve the organization’s goals. In the present world, according to the study of National Academy of Engineering [3], most of the nations have transitioned from agriculture and manufacturing economics to service based economies. Hence, with respect to the research report from National Academy of Engineering [3], currently, more than 75% of the economies of industrialized nations are based on business services and in United States of America business services comprise nearly 80% of the country’s economic activities. Moreover, another study from the Software Engineering Institute [4] shows that the expectation for process improvement in services is likely to grow: services constitute more than 80% of the USA and global economy and 54% of what the Department of Defense (DoD) acquires. Furthermore, according to Fleming [2], 80% of the cost of an infrastructure is in service delivery and service support. So, it is easy to comprehend that services are more important than any other sectors of the business.

In this dissertation, among all types of services, IT service is the main concern. According to [7], the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) field is one of the main contributors in changing economic background. And ICT companies are under pressure to deliver IT services in an efficient and effective manner to support the business. It is important to establish and employ the best practices and the best processes to optimize IT services in order to meet the business goal.

In fact, IT service management is a set of processes that detail best practices based on some standards (IT Infrastructure Library, Microsoft Operational Frameworks, etc) to enable and optimize IT services in order to satisfy business requirements and manage the IT infrastructure both tactically and strategically [6]. Currently, a growing number of organizations are focusing on IT service management to manage their IT services. In the organizations, IT Service Management (ITSM) provides an approach combining process management and industry best practices [1] to ensure quality IT services. If the processes to deliver IT services are implemented in an uncontrolled way without defined measures, there is a high chance that these IT services will fail to meet the business needs [1]. According to Fleming [2], ITSM is a discipline for managing IT operations as a service that is process-‐oriented and accounts for 60% -‐ 90% of total cost of IT ownership. It is about managing information technology (IT) systems as well as it is philosophically centered on the customer's perspective of IT's contribution to the business. ITSM ensures IT infrastructures are aligned to the business requirements so that business unit and IT can operate in a coordinated effort to achieve the goal of the organization.

One key challenge faced by managers today is to provide IT services that will cross many platforms to work cohesively with all core business functions internally and externally. It is therefore very pertinent for the top management to consider how those IT investments will support better service quality and lower cost and risk with a united approach to cross-‐domain collaboration and automation [14]. Here appears Service Level Management (SLM). Service Level Management ensures that agreed services are delivered where and when those

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are needed to be delivered. Service Level Management (SLM) negotiates, agrees and documents appropriate IT service targets with representatives of the business, and then monitors and produces reports on the service provider’s abilities to deliver the agreed level of services. SLM is a vital process for every IT service provider organization as it is responsible for agreeing and documenting service level targets and responsibilities within Service Level Agreements (SLA) and Service Level Requirement (SLR), for every activity within IT.

There are several frameworks that have been proposed so far in industries to manage the IT services. These standards, processes and evaluation models or frameworks help organizations to improve the management of IT services. The public framework and standards assessed relevant to service management are Information Technology Infrastructure library (ITIL) [1], Capability Maturity Model Integration for Service (CMMI_SVC) [8], Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT)[5], BS 15000 [7] and MOF [24].

Among all the frameworks and approaches to manage IT services, ITIL is the most widely used service level management practice to establish and improve capabilities in service level management. ITIL is a set of publications providing descriptive guidance (i.e. what to do and why) on IT service management. ITIL has become the international standard guidance for IT service management [1]. This framework was created in the late 1980s by the government of United Kingdom to use in government agency and later expanded for using in all organizations. ITIL was formed with two objectives in mind: 1) create comprehensive, consistent and coherent codes of best practices for quality IT service management promoting business effectiveness in the use of IT, and 2) encourage the private sector to develop ITIL-‐related services and products (training, consultancy and tools). There are three features that make ITIL unique. Firstly, ITIL is vendor-‐neutral, best practice guidance. ITIL is a synthesis of ideas drawn from international practitioners—not academic theory of how things should be or a vendor’s view of how to operate its products. Secondly, ITIL is non-‐proprietary. Anyone can apply ITIL concepts freely in their organization. Thirdly, ITIL is comprehensive and consistent. Rather than providing isolated advice, ITIL attempts to describe every key process in IT service management, and to use a consistent, common sense set of definitions and distinctions across each process.

Besides ITIL, the other popular framework for ITSM is CMMI for Service. This framework carries the CMMI architecture into the realm of practices that cover the management, establishment, and delivery of services [8]. CMMI for Services builds upon the same foundation of material that is in common with other CMMI constellations and adds goals and practices that focus specifically on service-‐related work. This framework has been developed to be compatible with the broad definition of service [8], and its goals and practices are therefore potentially relevant to any organization concerned with the delivery of services. CMMI for Services contains practices that cover project management, process management, service establishment, service delivery, and other supporting processes. This framework shares a great deal of common material with other CMMI constellations, and those already familiar with another CMMI constellation will find much of the CMMI for Services content to be familiar. However, the


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CMMI for Services constellation provides an alternative, more streamlined approach to evaluate and improve the development of service systems that may be more appropriate in certain contexts [8].

All these frameworks have tried to recommend better IT service management than traditional service management [7]. In this dissertation, the research has been advanced based on ITIL framework. Therefore, this research work has used the same vocabulary of ITIL framework. Here are three most important vocabularies that have been used.

1.1.1 Service Taxonomy In this thesis, to the author, IT Service Taxonomy is a logical hierarchy of

IT services to use in future development of IT service portfolio and later IT service catalog. IT Service Taxonomy (ITST) identifies the common and distinguishing characteristics of the services to increase discoverability and reuse. When there is IT service taxonomy, it is easy to recognize the services for the portfolio and catalog.

1.1.2 Service Portfolio The Service Portfolio is an executive-‐level view for mapping services to

business needs. It documents the services under development (e.g. Service Pipeline), services that are in production or available for deployment (e.g. Service Catalog), and the retired services [9]. The Service Portfolio is useful for analyzing where to invest, prioritizing and allocating resources, risk management and financial modeling.

1.1.3 Service Catalog Service Catalog in service level management, by the definition of ITIL [9],

is a list of services that an organization provides, often to its employees or customers. Each service within the Catalog typically includes a description of the service, timeframes or service level agreement for fulfilling the service, who is entitled to request/view the service, costs (if any), how to fulfill the service. It provides a central source of information on the IT services delivered by the service provider organization. This ensures that, area of the business can view an accurate, consistent picture of IT services, their details and their status [1]. Hence, it contains a customer-‐facing view of the IT services in use, how they are interested to be used, the business process they enable, and the levels and quality of service the customer can expect for each service.

1.2 PROBLEM AND APPROACH TO THE SOLUTION Interestingly, although there is so many frameworks and models for IT

Service Management, this domain still demands a lot of research, especially in Service Level Management. The objective of the Service Level Management in ITSM is to lead IT organizations through the design of a service catalog and through the development of detailed service description for their services [36]. These services will then be documented in Service Catalog. But the industry has problem to understand this service catalog. Here, the major problem of existing IT service catalog has been discussed.

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1.2.1 Problems in IT Service Catalog Services defined in IT Service Catalog are ambiguous. In service industry,

there is no uniform vocabulary for each service [32]. Sometimes services are offering the same content to the customers but addressing to the service labels are different. Vice versa is also true. Perhaps the services have the same label but they offer completely different content. Therefore, when customers request for the services based on the label of those services, the customers can be misled. As a result, customers get different services that are not intended.

In contrast to traditional service catalog, planned service catalog can help the industries to sell their core product and increase revenue for the companies [31]. Service Catalog with uniform vocabulary can improve to get more revenue for the companies. For example, while reviewing the IT service companies, the author has found that “Security Service” was defined in different ways in different companies. For some companies it is more about supporting service whereas for other companies it is more about deployment service. By checking only the label or terminology of the service, it is impossible for customers to know about the service.

In addition to uniform vocabulary problem, the IT services in contemporary industries are not perfectly categorized for service catalog, especially in small and medium sized enterprises. It leads to luck of understanding of the relationship among services. It is hard to find information about the services including root of the services. Till now most of the works or research related to service level management and service categorization are for large industries [28][29][30]. But the fact is, most of the organizations are small or medium [23]. According to the DIRCE [23], the greater percentage of companies belongs to the small and medium sized enterprise (SME). In January 2007, the amount of the 99.81% SME ascended to equivalent to more than three million of small companies out of the total companies in Spain. Like other fields of science, lack of categorization of IT services in these small and medium sized enterprise may fail to define clear perceptive of IT services. In current context of service industry, it is difficult to identify the origin of the services as well as boundary of the services [34].

1.2.2 Approach to the Solution Although there is no straightforward solution of those problems

mentioned in the previous section, an approach has been recommend here to get the solution of the mentioned problems. As a part of the solution, a systematic review on IT service management in small and medium sized enterprises can be performed. This will allow us to know the current state of the art of IT services in the present industry.

After knowing the state of the art, for the categorization of the IT services in small and medium sized enterprise, the IT Service Taxonomy (ITST) should be defined. In this regard, to identify the IT services, a large number of IT small and medium and large sized enterprises should be identified to know what IT services they are offering. Based on the results of reviewing IT services from


7

small, medium and large sized enterprises, the categories of the IT service taxonomy can be formulated.

Once there are IT services, the categories and the subcategories of the ITST have to be defined. Each IT service should be mentioned under a specific category and subcategory in that IT service taxonomy. Moreover, to ensure the uniform vocabulary, in IT service taxonomy, standard naming convention should be proposed. It will help to produce consistent service catalog that will have same meaning to every customer in the market. It will help to get rid of misunderstanding of service catalog.

In this thesis, I have tried to find out the resolution to those challenges. Especially, generic IT service taxonomy has been proposed to overcome inconsistency that exists in current ITSM. This thesis has tried to find out the main IT services in small industries and define IT service taxonomy from it. The author of this thesis has found that improved IT service catalog can be outlined from this generic IT service taxonomy.

1.3 OBJECTIVES The objectives related to the thesis are given below:

1. To do a systematic review on IT Service Management in small and medium sized enterprise to know the state of the art of ITSM in small and medium sized enterprise. a) Identify the relevant research works and get the results about state of

the art of IT Service Management. b) Analyze the results of the systematic review.

2. To define a method for developing IT Service Taxonomy. a) Identify the IT service companies. b) Identify IT services.

3. To develop the IT Service Taxonomy a) Define IT Service Taxonomy categories and sub categories. b) Define the IT services.

1.4 EXPECTED OUTCOME At the end of this research, in this thesis, following outcomes can be

attained.

1. A systematic review of IT Service Management in small and medium sized enterprises. 2. A Method to define IT service taxonomy for the small and medium sized enterprises. 3. Detail descriptions of categories and sub categories of IT Service Taxonomy.

1.5 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY There are three types of research methodologies namely qualitative, quantitative and mixed methodology. However, in the context of this thesis, the author has used the qualitative approach [35].

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Firstly, a thorough literature study has been performed in order to collect material related to Service Level Management and ITSM. This is essential to gain a fundamental understanding of those research areas, the underlying concepts and to know the current state of research. The literature study embraces the study of existing articles, books and web references, if appropriate. However, it is taken in to account that a literature study can be time consuming [35]. In this regard to collect research works Google, IEEE, ACM, Springer databases have been used. Secondly, the author has conducted review of small, medium and large sized enterprises for IT services. Google search engine has been used to find out these small, medium and large industries. Categorization and sub categorization have been defined after that for ITST.

1.6 STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS This section describes the overall structure and contents of the thesis.

Chapter 2 (State of the Art) provides a detailed discussion about the basic elements of the systematic review. It contains review protocol that contains a comprehensive plan for conducting a systematic review. Review protocol contains search terms, names of databases to be searched, inclusion/exclusion criteria, study quality assessment procedure and the way to synthesize the data gathered from the systematic review. The process of systematic review on Service Level Management is completely documented in this chapter. It also discusses about the result of the systematic review. Moreover, framework related to ITSM has been discussed here. Chapter 3 (Resolution for ITST in small and medium sized enterprise) provides the solution to develop IT Service Taxonomy with a methodology. IT services are identified from small, medium and large sized enterprises based on their websites. Later in this chapter details of the proposed IT Service Taxonomy have been discussed by defining categories and subcategories. Chapter 4(Conclusion and Future Work) provides the future plan of the research and concludes this thesis. Most importantly, future work is about the naming convention for the IT services so that every small and medium sized enterprises can use unique vocabulary for the IT service. Chapter 5 (References) provides references related to this research work. References are from different conference papers, journals. There are some references from websites, white papers. Chapter 6 (Appendix) includes appendix. Here, systematic review protocol template, reviewed small and medium sized enterprises, and reviewed papers (for systematic papers) have been attached.

9 | S t a t e o f t h e a r t o f S e r v i c e L e v e l M a n a g e m e n t

CHAPTER 2:

STATE OF THE ART IN SERVICE

LEVEL MANAGEMENT


| S t a t e o f t h e a r t o f S e r v i c e L e v e l M a n a g e m e n t

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Service Level Management is the process by which an organization identifies and agrees on the level of IT Service needed to support the business and defines a mechanism to monitor the identified service level to see if they Service Level Management is also one of the important processes to regulate the qualities and to decrease the cost of IT services [15]. Moreover, the ITSM models, standards and proposals give high importance to Service Level Management in the IT Service Management context.

The main factors to carry out this research focusing on a systematic review for SLM from the point of view of small and medium sized enterprise are:

• The current growing trend to acquire Technology and IT Services acquisitioned by organizations [16].

• The importance of IT Service Management in small and medium sized enterprise.

• The absence of models that help to implement the Service Level Management process in the context of the IT Service Management for small and medium sized enterprise. The statistics compiled by the National Statistical Institute (INE) and the

Central Business Directory [23], show that small companies represent the highest percentage of the industries. The INE and DIRCE analyze their situation within the European Union and their relationship with the employees they recruit.

Table 1 summarizes the study for Spanish companies based on the employee stratum and total percentage [23]. The interest in showing this study is due to the current importance that small companies have.

Systematic review gives a summary of the state of the art for this specific topic about SLM. In this case, Service Level Management in small and medium sized enterprise has been discussed. In addition, systematic review identifies the existing gap in some topics related to SLM in small and medium sized enterprises These results can help users who are working with SLM to do further research and practice in the industry or can help to know current initiatives in this domain.

Apart from that, there are several frameworks and models proposed to improve IT services management in the industry. ITIL [1], MOF [24], COBIT [5], CMMI_SVC [8] are the main frameworks working on IT service management. In

Micro-enterprise

Small Medium Large Total SMEs

3,137.46 169.60 23.52 6.07 3,336.66 3,330.58

94.03% 5.08% 0.70% 0.18% 100% 99.818%

Table 1. Spanish Companies (employee’s stratum and total percentage).

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this research, detailed studies have been conducted on those frameworks. While reviewing those frameworks, the focus was to investigate whether those frameworks or their processes have discussed any kind of IT services categorization or classification.

2.1 SYSTEMATIC REVIEW Here in this section the systematic review method has been discussed.

2.1.1 Systematic Review Background

Integration of research results was introduced for the first time in twentieth century. In 1904, Pearson calculated the average of correlations between the typhoid fever inoculation and morality. Then, systematic review began to be formalized and at the end of the 80’s systematic review achieved legitimacy as a field of research [13]. Later, Kitchenham formulated the idea of Evidence-‐Based Software Engineering and proposed a guideline for systematic reviews that was appropriate for software engineering researchers [12].

2.1.2 What is a Systematic Review Systematic Review (SR) is used to refer to a specific methodology of

research, developed in order to gather and evaluate the available evidence pertaining to a focused topic [13]. This is the process of summarizing all existing information about a phenomenon in a thorough and empirical way. At the end, systematic review draws a general conclusion from individual studies on any phenomena.

A systematic type of review follows a very well defined and strict sequence of methodological steps. A systematic review begins when researchers are confident that it is necessary to carry it out. It aims to integrate empirical research in order to create generalizations. In this regard, defined assessment objectives, reference source, data extraction method are some of the aspects contained in the protocol used for this systematic review [13].

2.1.3 Protocol Description Biolchini et al, [13] have drawn up a proposal for how to conduct a

systematic review focused on Software Engineering adapting it from other study areas such as medicine.

Hence, for this work, the protocol proposed is applied to the systematic review for IT service management in small and medium sized enterprises.

2.1.4 Prototype Development The prototype development used for the systematic review of the subject

is presented: Service Level Management for IT Services in small and medium sized enterprises.

2.1.4.1 Question Formulation The systematic review objective should be clearly established in order to

formalize the question.



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2.1.4.2 Question Focus The systematic review is carried out to identify initiatives and experience

reports on Service Level Management for IT Services in small and medium sized enterprises.

2.1.4.3 Question Quality and Amplitude This section aims at defining the syntax of the research question (the

context in which the review is applied and the question the study must answer) and its semantic specificity (or question range) described by the remaining items of this section -‐ intervention, effect, outcome measure, population and application. Next, each of them are described [13] specifically for Service Level Management for IT Services in small and medium sized enterprise.

Problem: Service Level Management (SLM) is a vital process for every IT service provider organization in that it is responsible for agreeing and documenting service level targets and responsibilities within Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Service Level Requirements (SLRs), for every activity within IT. SLM implementation is needed to ensure that an agreed level of IT service is provided for all current IT services and those future services are delivered to agreed achievable targets [1].

Question: What initiatives have been carried out to evaluate processes for Service Level Management in IT service context?

Intervention: Service Level Management for IT Services in small and medium sized enterprises.

Effect: Service Level Management initiatives and proposals for IT services in small and medium sized enterprises.

Outcome measure: Number of identified initiatives.

Population: Publications related to Service Level Management, IT Services and small and medium sized enterprises.

Application: Organizations that use IT services and those who provide them.

Experimental Design: No experimental design will be performed.

2.1.4.4 Source Selection The objective of this section is to select the sources where the primary

studies will be executed [13]. To perform the selection the author of the systematic review protocol proposes to address the following issues:

Source Selection Criteria Definition

• Use search mechanism with keywords and sites suggested by experts. • Use papers recommended by other experts. • Use papers available on the website.

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Studies Language

• English.

Source Identification

The method to identify the sources has been discussed below

Sources Search

The identification of sources has been based on the criterion of experts in this research area. These sources include journals as: European Journal of Operational Research, Information and Software Technology, Software: Practice and Experience, Software Process: Improvement and Practice, IEEE Software, Software Technology and Engineering Practice, Computer and research workshops & technical reports of Software Engineering Institute – SEI, among others.

Search Strings

Keywords from the word set defined in the question were extracted. By combining these keywords with the logical operators “AND” and “OR”, two search strings were obtained (see Table 2). These search strings have been adapted for each web browser of the sources.

Search Strings

1 itsm or slm or sla or ((itil or asl or 20000 or 15000 or cmmi-‐svc or mof or cobit) and (small and (company or organization or enterprise or setting)))

2 ‘it service management‘ and 'service level management' and (small and (company or organization or enterprise or setting))

Table 2. Search Strings

Source List

These sources have been selected taking into account the defined source search method (see Table 3).



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Source Selection After Assessment

Firstly, it is evaluated if the sources fit all defined criteria. Initially, the complete list is right. After applying the search string to all sources, it was found that some items were common in the IEEE Computer Science Digital Library and ACM sources.

Reference Checking

Three researchers from the Research Group of Software Process Improvement for Spain and Latin American Region evaluated the sources list obtained from the previous section and determined, at first instance, all references as approved.

2.1.4.5 Studies Selection In this systematic review, an iterative and incremental procedure is used

for studies selection: a) Iterative, to group all activities that could be repeated during the procedure, and b) Incremental, because the studies are approached and recorded one by one until obtaining the systematic review results[10]. This iterative and incremental procedure is used due to its functionality in other systematic reviews. This section describes the process and criteria for studies selection and evaluation.

Studies Definition

The studies inclusion (IC) and exclusion criteria (EC) definitions [11] are as follows:

# Source

1 ACM Digital Library

2 IEEE Computer Science Digital Library

3 Springer Link

4 Science@Direct

5 Software Engineering Institute

Table 3. Source Lists

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Studies Types Definition

Initially all studies related to Service Level Management will be taken into account. However, the greatest interest will focus on studies that show results on Service Level Management for IT services in small and medium sized enterprise.

Procedures for studies selection

With regards to the selection criteria, the title was initially the main criterion; nevertheless, in some cases it did not provide enough information, thereby reading the summary of each of them was necessary and in some cases a review of the full text was required.

Selection Execution

• Initial Studies Selection. At first a search execution was conducted to verify the parameters used by each engine and adapt search string to them. Table 5 shows in the column “Found” the obtained value.

• Study Quality Evaluation. To determine the quality of the study, some participants of the research group, applying IC and EC, obtained the primary studies (see Table 5).

Acronym Criteria Description

IC1 Include papers whose titles are related to Service Level Management and IT Services and small and medium sized enterprise

IC2 Include papers that contain keywords that match with those defined in the search string

IC3 Include papers whose abstracts are related to the topic considered

IC4 Include papers after partial or total reading

EC1 Exclude those papers that do not match with the previous inclusion criteria

EC2 Exclude all duplicate papers

Table 4. Studies inclusion and exclusion criteria definition



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Next, a quality study is performed to obtain the assessment results that permit us to quantify those studies that effectively support the stated objectives.

The previous information constitutes the study basis for following the systematic review process, and checks the quality of the study.

2.1.4.6 Information Extraction This section begins once the primary studies are selected. In this section,

extraction criteria and results are described

Information Inclusion (ICinf) and Exclusion (ECinf) Criteria Definition:

Acronym Criteria Description

IC1inf Collect Information about the organization’s trend with respect to service level management.

IC2inf Classify processes followed by companies for IT service management.

IC3inf Identify proposed methodologies, methods and procedures in studies for IT service management

EC1inf Exclude the information that is not related to the inclusion criteria defined above.

Table 6. Information Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria Definition

Sources Search date Found Primary studies

IEEE 05/11/09 59 11

ACM 05/11/09 12 3

Springer 05/12/09 59 12

Science@Direct 05/13/09 42 3

SEI 05/14/09 10 3

Total 182 31

Table 5. Number of studies and results derived from each source

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Data Extraction Forms

To analyze data and information submitted in selected studies, relevant remarks of the main studies ideas were made and recorded in a document with a sequence number identification that matches with the sequential paper number given when it was stored as primary study.

Extraction Execution

The process to extract results from the primary study has been discussed below.

Objective Results Extraction

A complete and detailed reading from these studies allowed us to organize and classify them for a later analysis. With an unbiased evaluation of the information, identified and classified study records were generated in a structured table containing the following rows: Consecutive Study (sequential paper number), Study methodology (remarks of the main ideas concerned with the methodology), and Study outcome (data and information of the conclusion presented in each study).

Subjective Result Extraction

The following rows were added to the previous table: Data about Authors (full names and available contact information in the studies) and Additional Notes (a specific field to store general information related to subject covered in the study).

Resolution of divergences between reviewers

In the development procedure for the extraction of the information contained in the selected primary studies, different perceptions among authors of the studies were presented. However, none of them is considered as an important divergence, but rather, the findings were complemented to obtain a comprehensive analysis of the paper.

Here, in this section, the author has tried to find out current state of the art of the Service Level Management in small and medium sized enterprises using the defined protocol from Biolchini et al, [13] in a systematic way. Detailed finding from this systematic review is described in next section.

2.2 RESULTS OF THE SYSTEMATIC REVIEW After the systematic review execution (mentioned in previous section),

the results must be summarized and analyzed using statistical methods. This section presents a summary of the data resulting from the selected studies. This summary is obtained from statistical calculus.

2.2.1 Studies Trends In order to know organization trend respect to Service Level Management

(SLM), studies related to any aspect of SLM were classified; taking into account



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that "SLM" term refers to both Service Level Agreement (SLA) and Service Level Operation (SLO) terms.

Figure 1 shows two types of trends. 1) Between 2002 and 2006, there is a polynomial trend of order 3 because data fluctuate along the graphic. And, 2) from 2006 to 2008 data have a linear trend because the studies are increasing at a constant rate. The trend shows the increasing interest related to Service Level Management since year 2006.

Figure 1 Studies Trend

2.2.2. Studies Classification During the protocol development, by using the studies selection’s

methodology and information analysis found in each study, it was possible to determine that studies could be classified into four items.

Those studies covering: A) Topics related only to ITSM and SLM. B) Topics related only to ITSM and small and medium sized enterprises. C) A relationship of three topics (ITSM and SLM and small and medium sized enterprises), and

D) Other studies that have no relationship with these issues (ITSM and SLM and small and medium sized enterprises).

Figure 2 shows the studies percentage for each item according to the previous classification.

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Figure 2 Studies Classification

Figure 2 shows that 45% of the primary studies (see Table 5) are related to ITSM and SLM which confirms the trend shown in Figure 1. 26% shows information related to ITSM and small and medium sized enterprise. However, it is necessary to highlight that only 23% is related to item C) that grouped the three topics (ITSM, SLM and small and medium sized enterprise). Finally 6% has been eliminated by the exclusion criteria EC1inf.

2.2.3 Analysis of those studies covering the relationship of the three topics (ITSM, SLM and small and medium sized enterprises)

Figure 3 shows the results of the relationship related to topics (ITSM, SLM and small and medium sized enterprises). In the analysis, it is noted that 23% of the papers comprise the three aspects (basis of the ongoing systematic review). From here all analyses are referred to this 23% (item C).

Analysis by country The source of 23% of the papers is shown in Figure 3. United States of

America is one of the main countries involved in the study of ITSM, SLM and small and medium sized enterprises, with 29%. The remaining studies are related to the countries like South Korea, Sweden, French, Canada and Germany with 14% respectively.



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Figure. 3. Studies Classified by country

Analysis by company size Figure 4 shows information about companies’ size. Because most of the

studies are lack of information about companies, Figure 4 has been made taking into account two criteria: 1) the application of studies in the companies’ size, 2) the studies did not mention the companies’ size.

Hence, according to Figure 4, most of the companies that support their research are small companies; statistically there are 85.7% of such companies. For the remaining 14.3% companies, the sizes of those companies are not mentioned.

Figure 4. Studies by company’s size

Analysis by models With respect to item C (mentioned in 2.2.2) only 78% of the small and

medium sized enterprises have used ITIL or COBIT or ISO 20000 to manage their IT services.

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Fig. 5. Studies Classified by models

Clearly, this systematic review shows that there is not enough research works on SLM or ITSM in small and medium sized enterprises though small and medium sized enterprises represent major part of the market.

2.3 STUDY ON THE PROCESSES OF THE FRAMEWORKS As it is mentioned earlier there are some frameworks have been proposed to manage IT Services. But unfortunately none of those frameworks has been uttered about either IT services or its classification. Here, a brief discussion on the processes of those frameworks is presented.

2.3.1 IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)

ITIL is a framework that provides guidance on how to offer quality IT services. The newly released ITIL v3 has included deeper service management guidelines that will bring greater flexibility and efficiency to an existing IT framework. The ITIL v3 core volumes [38] are: • Service strategy, • Service design, • Service operation, • Service transition, • Continual service improvement.

For the IT service taxonomy, main focus of this work was on service strategy and service design. The main processes involved into these two volumes are discussed below.

2.3.1.1 Service Portfolio Management (SPM) Service Portfolios represent the ability and willingness of a service provider to serve customers and market spaces. This management process is a dynamic method for governing investments in service management across the organizations [38]. Moreover, effective service portfolio management helps to make everyone better informed and to make decision about outcome of the



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service. In a nutshell, Service Portfolio Management (SPM) delivers unprecedented levels of transparency into services, assets, and applications, enabling everyone to improve decision-‐making, reduce maintenance costs, and increase the value one bring to the business. Service portfolio management process is a dynamic and ongoing process. This process contains following work methods [38]: • Define: This step defines inventory services, ensures business cases and

validates portfolio data. • Analyze: This step maximizes portfolio value and ensures alignment,

prioritization and balance in supply and demand. • Approve: This step does finalize proposed portfolio and does authorize

services and resources. • Charter: This step communicates decisions, allocates resources and charter

services.

2.3.1.2 Service Catalog Management

According to ITIL Service Design Book, “the purpose of Service Catalog Management is to provide a single source of consistent information to all of the agreed service and ensure that it is widely available to those who are approved to access it” [1]. The goal of this process is to ensure that Service Catalog is produced and maintained, containing accurate information to all operational services and those prepared to be run operationally [1]. Besides, the objective of service catalog management is to manage the information contained within the catalog and to ensure that it is accurate and reflects the current details, status, interface and dependencies of the all services that are run or prepared to run, in the live environment. Hence, the scope of this process is to provide and maintain accurate information to all services that are transitioned or have been transitioned to the live environment.

2. 3.1.3 Service Level Management

Service Level Management negotiates, agrees and documents appropriate IT service target with representative of the business and then monitors and produces reports on the service provider’s ability to deliver the agreed level of service [1]. SLM is a vital process for every IT service provider organizations in that it is responsible for agreeing and documenting service level targets and responsibilities within SLAs and SLRs, for activity within IT. If these targets are appropriate and accurately reflect the requirements of the business, the service delivered by the service provider will be aligned with business requirements and meet the expectation of the customers and users in terms of service quality. If the targets are not aligned with business needs, service provider activities and service levels will not be aligned with business expectation.

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The goal of SLM process is to ensure that an agreed level of IT service is provided for all current IT services, and that future services are delivered to agreed achievable targets. The purpose of this process is to ensure that all operational service and their performance are measured in a consistent, professional manner throughout the IT organization, and that the service and the reports produced meet the needs of the business and customers [1].

Another objective of SLM is to define, document, agree, monitor, meausre, report and review the level of IT services provided and to provide and improve the relationship and communication between the business and customers. SLM process is also responsible formonitoring and improving customer satisfaction with the quality of service delivered. This process also ensures that IT and the customer have a clear and unambiguous expectation of the level of service to be delivered [1].

2.3.2 CMMI for Services (CMMI_SVC)

CMMI-‐SVC is a complete set of guidelines to help enterprises to establish and to improve the processes for delivering services. This framework ensures to adapt and extend proven standards and best practices to reflect the unique challenges faced in service industries. CMMI-‐SVC offers to the providers a practical and focused framework for achieving higher levels of service quality, controlling costs, improving schedules, and ensuring user satisfaction [8].

There are several process areas that are related to CMMI_SVC. Here the main process areas of CMMI SVC are discussed.

2.3.2.1 Service Delivery

The purpose of Service Delivery (SD) is to deliver services in accordance with service agreements. Specific goals related with this process area are to establish service agreements, prepare for service delivery and deliver services [1][39].

2.3.2.2 Capacity and Availability Management

The purpose of Capacity and Availability Management is to ensure effective service system performance and ensure that resources are provided and used effectively to support service requirements. Specific goals related to this process area are to prepare for Capacity and Availability Management and monitor and analyze capacity and availability [1][39].

2.3.2.3 Service System Transition

The purpose this process area is to deploy new and significant changed



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service system component while managing their effect on ongoing service delivery. Specific goal related to this process area is to prepare for service system transition and deploy the service system [1][39].

2.3.2.4 Service Continuity

The purpose of service continuity is to establish and maintain plan to ensure continuity of services during and following any significant disruption of normal operations. Specific goals of this area are to identify essential service dependencies, prepare for service continuity and verify and validate service continuity plan [1][39].

2.3.2.5 Service System Development

The purpose of service system development is to analyze, design, develop, integrate, verify and validate service systems, including service system components, to satisfy existing or anticipated service agreement. The specific goals of this process area are to develop and analyze stakeholders’ requirements, develop service systems and verify and validate service system [1][39].

2.3.2.6 Strategic Service Management

The purpose of strategic service management is to establish and maintain standard services in concert with strategic needs and plans. The specific goals related to this process area are to establish strategic needs and plans for standard services and establish standard service [1][39].

2.3.3 Control Objective for Information and related Technology (COBIT)

According to [5], “the Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT) is a set of best practices (framework) for information technology management created by the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA), and the IT Governance Institute (ITGI) in 1996”. This framework provides a set of generally accepted measures, indicators, processes and best practices to assist managers, auditors, and IT users in maximizing the benefits derived through the use of IT and developing appropriate IT governance and control in a company. COBIT covers four domains [40]: • Plan and Organize, • Acquire and Implement, • Deliver and Support, • Monitor and Evaluate.

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2.3.3.1 Plan and Organize

This domain covers strategies and tactics, and concerns the identification of the way IT can best contribute to the achievement of the business objectives. The consciousness of the strategic vision needs to be planned, communicated and managed for different perspectives [40]. The following table lists the IT processes contained in the Plan and Organize domain. • Define a Strategic IT Plan and direction, • Define the Information Architecture, • Determine Technological Direction, • Define the IT Processes, Organization and Relationships, • Manage the IT Investment, • Communicate Management Aims and Direction, • Manage IT Human Resources, • Manage Quality, • Assess and Manage IT Risks, • Manage Projects.

2.3.3.2 Acquire and Implement

The acquire and implement domain covers processes related to identifying IT requirements, acquiring the technology, and implementing it within the company’s current business processes. The processes of this domain have been mentioned below [40]. • Identify Automated Solutions, • Acquire and Maintain Application Software, • Acquire and Maintain Technology Infrastructure, • Enable Operation and Use, • Procure IT Resources, • Manage Changes, • Install and Accredit Solutions and Changes.

2.3.3.3 Deliver and Support

The Deliver and Support domain covers the delivery aspects of the information technology. This domain focuses on the execution of the applications within the IT system and its results, as well as the support processes that enable the effective and efficient execution of these IT systems. The processes of this domain have been mentioned below. • Define and Manage Service Levels, • Manage Third-‐party Services, • Manage Performance and Capacity, • Ensure Continuous Service, • Ensure Systems Security, • Identify and Allocate Costs,



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• Educate and Train Users, • Manage Service Desk and Incidents, • Manage the Configuration, • Manage Problems, • Manage Data, • Manage the Physical Environment, • Manage Operations.

2.3.3.4 Monitor and Evaluate

The Monitor and Evaluate domain covers the strategy of an organization in assessing the needs of the organization and whether or not the current IT system still meets the objectives for which it was designed and the controls necessary to comply with regulatory requirements. The processes of this domain have been mentioned below [40]. • Monitor and Evaluate IT Processes, • Monitor and Evaluate Internal Control, • Ensure Regulatory Compliance, • Provide IT Governance.

2.3.4 Microsoft Operational Framework (MOF)

2.3.4.1 MOF Process Model

The principles and practices of MOF are easy to incorporate and apply selectively or comprehensively. The objective of the MOF Process Model is to provide a simple representation of the complex components and their relationships within the model. According to [24], the MOF Process Model assists the delivery and support of IT services by addressing the following four principles:

• Structured architecture -‐ This MOF Process Model is built upon an architecture that is responsible for providing the structure for process integration, life cycle management, mapping of roles and responsibilities, and overall management command and control. It also provides the underlying foundation for technology-‐specific operations and process automation.

• Rapid life cycle, iterative improvement – MOF process model encourages

the concept of a rapid life cycle that supports the business to cope with the changes quickly and allows to continuously assess and iteratively improve the overall operations environment. This process model categorizes key operational activities into quadrant.

• Review-‐driven management – MOF offers several methods and

techniques in its Service Management Functions (SMFs) to assist management in the control and oversight of the environment. Moreover,

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in addition, this process model also includes Operation Management Reviews (OMRs) with its method and technique to get the most from the IT investment. These reviews evaluate performance for release-‐based activities and daily, operational activities. MOF makes these reviews an explicit part of the Process Model and provides detailed guidance on how to conduct them.

• Embedded risk management -‐ MOF promotes the management of risk to

its own discipline. This process model discusses risk in the context of each SMF and Team Model role cluster. MOF risk management discipline provides detailed guidance for operation risk management.

The Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) principles discussed above are instituted through the key components of the Process Model architecture, which are Quadrants, Operations management reviews, and Service management functions. Normal operations activities are defined and grouped into quadrants, each of which is focused on a particular set of processes and tasks. Significant milestones in the operations life cycle are represented by operations management reviews, which are major decision and review points in the Process Model. Service management functions document specific processes that are performed within each of the quadrants. These are typically quite specific and prescriptive toward a single activity -‐ for example, capacity management or help desk functions. MOF Service Management Function As noted earlier, service management functions (SMFs) are the underlying activities and processes within each MOF quadrant and support the mission of service for that quadrant. [40]. These SMFs are worked at the core of the MOF Process Model. Each SMF is assigned a "home" or "primary" quadrant. This assignment aligns the functions performed with the mission of service for that quadrant. This natural alignment also allows the IT manager to see the entire key SMFs in each MOF quadrant to effectively run the operations environment.

2.4 CONCLUSION

In this systematic review, most of the works have been performed in year 2008. According to the statistics in systematic review, from year 2005 the researches on Service Level Management have increased significantly. Although these works on SLM and ITSM in small and medium sized enterprises are not many, the numbers of the works are increasing over the years. This trend also confirms the interest over SLM process showed by Fleming [2] and CMMI-‐SVC reports [8].

Other relevant data showed in this work is that 45 % of the studied papers deal with IT service management in terms of SLM (including SLA and SLO). 26% of the studies are related to small and medium sized enterprises. Moreover, 23 % of studies are related to SLM and small and medium sized



29

enterprises. In addition to those results, the studies also show that ITIL, COBIT, and ISO2000 are the most important models in a Service Level Management context.

In contrast to all of those statistics related with SLM and ITSM, in this systematic review, there is no any information about IT service Taxonomy in SLM for small and medium sized enterprises has been obtained in ITSM domain. Moreover, in those studies, even categorization of the IT services in small and medium sized enterprises has not been discussed. Therefore, an idea can be obtained that there is no such categorization or classification of services.

Apart from that systematic review, according to the review of those frameworks (ITIL, MOF, CMMI_SVC and COBIT) and their processes, there is no discussion about classification or categorization of IT services. Even none of these frameworks discuss about specific IT services. ITIL, COBIT, MOF discuss how IT service should be managed and CMMI_SVC discusses what to do to manage IT service. There is no discussion of methodology of developing IT service categorization and defining specific IT services from the industry.

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CHAPTER 3:

RESOLUTION FOR IT SERVICE TAXONOMY


| R e s o l u t i o n f o r I T S e r v i c e T a x o n o m y

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3.1 INTRODUCTION The service industry is a basic engine for the development of world economy [8]. Service providers define a complete set of services in their Service Portfolio. Classifications and detail descriptions of IT services are key contributors to the design and development of the IT Service Portfolio and IT Service Catalog. In this chapter, the categorizations of the IT services have been termed as IT Service Taxonomy (ITST). To assist small and medium sized enterprises in Service Level Management, IT Service Taxonomy can play an important role. ITST not only can define the origin of the services but also can outline the boundary of the services. In addition to that, more generic and public (to the market) IT Service portfolio and IT Service Catalog can be developed based on this IT Service Taxonomy. In this chapter, the methodology of development of IT Service Taxonomy as well as the details of IT Service Taxonomy has been described.

Here, in this chapter, to develop the IT Service Taxonomy, the following definitions have taken into account:

Service:

• A service is a product that is intangible and does not store [8].

• A service is a means of providing value to customers by providing the results they want to achieve without generating costs and risks [1].

IT Service:

An IT service is a value that is based on the use of information technology to support the business processes of the clients. An IT service is composed of a mix of personnel, processes and technology that must be defined in a Service Level Agreement [8].

Taxonomy:

The taxonomy is a controlled vocabulary comprising preferred terms, all of which are connected in a hierarchy [11].

Service Component

According to ITIL [1], this term is used to mean, one part of the service, something more complex. For example, a computer system may be a component of an IT Service. Dependent System

A set of "related things" that work together to achieve an objective is called dependent system [1].

Assets of Services

According to ITIL [1], the asset of service means any resource or capability. Assets of a Service Provider include anything that could contribute to the

34

delivery of a service.

In next section IT service taxonomy has been discussed.

3.2 DEVELOPMENT OF IT SERVICE TAXONOMY IT service Taxonomy has been designed to support the service industries

in order to implement IT Services. It will help the small industries to manage these services by providing them most of the available IT services in the market. Hence, if the industries know the hierarchy of the services then it will be easier for them to choose the services and to make decision what services need to be implemented. This can ensure efficient and effective management of those services.

The development of this IT Service Taxonomy has undertaken the following activities:

3.2.1. Identify, establish and define categories

The main categories and their descriptions in the ITST are based on the reports from the state of the arts and trend of the use of IT services in Spain by the Spanish Association of Consulting (AEC) [17], the Association of Electronics Information Technology (AETIC) [18], Sopra Profit [19] and European Management Consultancy Market [20] as well as journal articles Computing [21] and Universia Business Review [22] [33].

3.2.2. Identify, establish and define subcategories and services

The following steps have been considered to identify, establish and define sub categories and services.

3.2.2.1 Selection of IT service providers In this step, the "search strings" has been developed to find out the most

important service industries in the domain of IT services. To satisfy the whole industry in a great extent small, medium and large enterprises have been taken into consideration while searching IT services. Some examples of these phrases are as follows:

'IT SERVICES "AND" HARDWARE "OR" SOFTWARE "OR" CONSULTING' OR 'OPERATION' OR 'OUTSOURCING' OR 'INTEGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT' AND (SMALL AND (COMPANY OR ORGANIZATION OR ENTERPRISE OR SETTING))

“IT SERVICES” AND (“HARDWARE” OR “SOFTWARE” OR ‘’CONSULTING” OR ‘OPERATION” OR “OUTSOURCING” OR “DEVELOPMENT” OR “INTREGATION”) AND (COMPANY OR ORGANIZATION OR ENTERPRISE)

The results of the search have been analyzed and reviewed to conform that search outcomes contain only IT service companies.



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3.2.2.2 Analysis the identified IT services from the IT service providers

In this step, IT services from those IT service providers have been identified. In fact, in this step, IT services are defined and analyzed so that they can be accommodated in IT Service Taxonomy.

3.2.2.3 Establish and describe the subcategories In this step, subcategories for the IT Service Taxonomy have been

described. The detail characteristics of the subcategories have been formulated in this stage for IT Service Taxonomy.

3.2.3 Assign the services to sub-categories After preceding steps, taking into account the characteristics of the

subcategories, IT services have been stated under corresponding subcategories. Later, based on the features of the categories, sub categories also have been defined under corresponding categories.

Subsequently, following the previous steps, around 101 small IT companies have been chosen based on that search string with the help of Google search engine. The IT services have been identified based on the websites of those IT service companies. These services have been reviewed to describe the contents of the services. These IT services, afterwards, have been stated under subcategories and consequently categories based on the description these contain. In this regards Mind Manager Pro 7.0 software has been used to develop the IT Service Taxonomy.

3.2.4 IT Services After reviewing around 100 IT service provider companies based on their websites and mentioned information, following lists of services have been identified. Brief description about the company can be found in appendix. No Name of the

Company Websites Services

1 Abacus Technology Corp

www.abacustech.com -Life Cycle Support, -Customized Application -Development, -Database and Data Warehouse Design, -Legacy Migration, -Web Design & Development, -Network Architecture -Analysis, Design and Installation, -LAN/WAN Operation & Management, -Systems Engineering Support & Network Management, -Desktop Integration Services, Ecommerce,

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2 Accenture www.accenture.com -Application Renewal, -Business Intelligence, -Data Center Technology & -Operations, -Data Management and Architecture, -Enterprise Architecture, -Global Delivery and Sourcing, -Human Capital Management Solutions, -Information Management, -IT Strategy and Transformation, -Microsoft Solutions, -Network Technology, -Open Source Solutions, -Application Outsourcing, -Infrastructure Outsourcing, -Business Process Outsourcing, -Bundled Outsourcing, -Customer Contact BPO, -Finance and Accounting BPO, -HR BPO, -Learning BPO

3 Advanced Concepts, Inc.

www.aci-hq.com -Biometrics -Secure Credentialing -Enterprise Access

4 Applied Computer Solutions

www.acsacs.com -Assessments -Design Architecture -Systems Integration -Implementation -Support

5 Advanced Computer Technologies

www.actweb.com -Infrastructure Planning -Server Migration -Disaster Recovery -Training -Support

6 Advanced Microelectronics Inc

www.advancedmicro.com

-Operational Cost Control Management Program -Resident Alert System -Business Process Automation -Risk Management Assessment Program -Strategic Operational Assessment Program -Value Added Staffing -Business User Efficiency Program -Administrative Investment



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Containment Program 7 Advanced

Consulting International, Inc. (A.C.I.)

www.advconsulting.com

-Database * Database Design * Data Warehouse Design * Real Application Clusters * Enterprise Licensing * Performance Tuning -Middleware * Service Oriented Architecture * Business Intelligence * Oracle Portal * Web Services * Content Management * Identity Management - Data Visualization * Executive Dashboard * Human Capital Management * Compliance Dashboards * Balanced Scorecard * Business Intelligence Dashboards -Data Mining & Migration *Web & Business Intelligence *SOA & WOA Enablement * Portal Generation * Content Migration *Automated Data -Migration, Collection & Manipulation -Data Warehouse * DW Appliance * Advanced Analytics * ETL & ELT

6 AE Business Solutions, Inc.

www.aebs.com -Storage Solutions * Enterprise Storage * Modular Storage * Storage Tiering * Storage Consolidation * Storage Area Networks (SAN) * Network Attached

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Storage (NAS) * Data De-Duplication -Archive and Compliance * E-Mail Management * Enterprise Archive -Systems & Application Management * Server Management * Desktop Management * Network Management * Storage Management -Server Infrastructures * Blade Servers * Unix Servers * Branch Office Consolidation -Data Protection * Backup & Recovery * Disaster Recovery * Data Encryption * Data Replication * Business Continuity -Virtualization * Server Virtualization * Storage Virtualization *Application -Virtualization * Desktop Virtualization * File Virtualization

7 All Covered: Small Business IT Consulting and Services

www.allcovered.com -Proactive Server and Desktop management -Remote Monitoring -Remote Support -On-site Support -Client Support -IT Procurement -IT Security -VOIP -Mobile Technologies

8 Alpine Computer Systems

www.alpinecsi.com -Cognizant Business Consulting -Application Service -IT Infrastructure Service -Business Process Outsourcing

9 Alta Plana www.altaplana.com -Software Integration,



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-Database Management System -Web and Application Server -Security services

10 American Computer Services

www.americancomputerservices.com

-Network file and Printing services -Electronic mail -Web Application -Point of Sale -Database Servers -Security Services -Content Management Application -Network Backup -Remote access

11 American Management Systems (AMS)

www.ams.com -System Integration and Consultancy Service -Managed Application Services -Technology Management -Business Process Services

12 Ananke IT Solutions

www.ananke.com -Web hosting service -Support services -Web Design Service -Managed Service

13 IT Support Services

www.ancarb.co.uk -Business Critical Support -Network Security -Anti-spam protection -Anti-virus protection -Customer relationship management -Web design -Web hosting -VPN solution -Disaster recovery

14 AvcomEast www.avcomeast.com -Security Assessments -Storage Resource Management Assessments -Application Performance Management Assessment -IT Skills Assessment -Disaster Recovery -Disaster Recovery -Storage Resource Utilization -Application Performance Management -Database Monitoring and Management -Security -Implementation Service

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15 BancTec, Inc. www.banctec.com -Consulting Service -AP Invoice Processing -Interactive Exception Processing -Image Capture -Hosted Image Archives -Inbound Mail Processing -Payment Processing

16 Beechwood Computing

www.beechwoodcomputing.com

-IT Resourcing -Application Development -Application Management -ERP Implementation & Support -Offshore Outsourcing

17 Berbee www.cdw.com -Network Connectivity -Data Storage -Data Backup -Disaster recovery -Intrusion prevention

18 Britec www.britec.com -Network Services -Custom Reporting and Database Administration -IT Security Auditing -Training -Website Design -Software Development -Support and Assessment

19 Buchanan Associates

www.buchanan.com -24 x 7 Service Desk - Infrastructure Services - End-User Desktop Services - Application Development - Managed Services - Automated Services - Project Management - Consulting Services

20 Business Solutions Enterprises, Inc.

www.bussolent.com -Project Management -Project Reviews (assessment, findings, recommendations) -Business Needs Analysis (requirements, recommendations, specification development, RFI/RFQ/RFP assistance) -IT project reviews (Quality Assurance, Capability Maturity Model evaluation) -IT System Management (requirements, design,



41

development, testing, implementation rollout) -Conducting feasibility studies, Business Case development, Business Plans

21 Computer Associates (CA)

www.cai.com -Application Performance Management -Business Driven Automation -EITM Mainframe Management -Infrastructure Management -Project & Portfolio Management -Security Management -Service and IT Asset Management

22 Computer Generated Solutions, Inc.

www.cgsinc.com -Application Development -BPO -Call Center/Help Desk -Channel Enablement -Infrastructure -Learning & Training -Managed Services -Messaging & Collaboration -Networking & Hardware -Staffing -Systems Integration

23 Chryxus www.chryxus.ca/ -Technology Review -Technology Planning -Data Management -Web Site Planning and Design -Virtual Directory of Information System

24 Computer Aid, Inc. (CAI)

www.compaid.com -Best Practices Consultancy -Application Support -Application Development -Desktop Service -Knowledge Capture

25 Compaq Services www.compaq.com 26 Compass

Consulting International

www.vantagetcg.com -Operations Analysis -Financial Analysis -Risk Assessment -Organizational Planning -Planning and Programming -Architectural and Design Support

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-System Design and Specification -Project Management

27 The Computer center

www.compcenter.com -Technical Consulting & Outsourcing -Training -Web Design and programming -Computer and Printer Repair

28 Compugen Systems Ltd.

www.compugen.com -IT Infrastructure Solution -Storage and Backup -Server Based Computing -Business Continuity. -Assessments -Procurement & Software Licensing -Maintenance & Support -Deployment -IT Optimization Service

29 Computech Corporation

www.computechcorp.com

-Transaction Processing Service -Customer Interaction Service -Application Development and Maintenance -Packaged Application Development -Enterprise Application Integration -Data Warehousing Services - Database Administration -Server Administration -Website design -Website maintenance

30 Computer Clearing House Inc

www.computerclearinghouse.com

31 American Cyber System

www.acsicorp.com -Consulting Service -Enterprise Application Implementation -Enterprise Application Integration -Application Development and Maintenance -Business Intelligence

32 Computer Repair in Phoenix, Arizona

www.computerrepairservice.net

-VPN-Mobile User Access -Emergency Data Recovery -Automated Tech Backup -Computer Networking -PC troubleshooting and repair -LAN Design and Installation



43

33 Computing Alternatives, Inc.

www.computing-alt.com

-Accurate Requirements Analysis -Iterative Software Design and Data Modeling -Superior IT Staffing -Unmatched Custom Client-Server Software Development -Website Design including e-commerce and database-rich web applications

34 CoreTech Consulting Group, Inc.

www.coretech.com -Support Solutions -Package Software Implementation -Outsourcing -Technical Consulting -Desktop Refresh

35 Corporate Software & Technology, Inc.

www.corpsoft.com -Enterprise Service for virtualization, database, reporting -Asset management, -Help desk -Hardware/Software Inventory -Server Management -Business Need Assessment -Technical Evaluation -Intrusion Detection Systems -Intrusion Prevention System -Managed Security Services -Email Archiving -Web Content filtering -Network Monitoring -Storage Management

36 Crowe Chizek & Co. LLP

www.crowechizek.com

-Risk Consulting -Corporate Performance Management/Business Intelligence -Performance Improvement and Implementation -Custom Web and Database Applications

37 CS Business Systems Inc

www.csbusiness.com -PC and Server configurations -Custom multi-vendor hardware integration -Software application installation -Operating system integration for Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Apple, Linux

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-Asset tag management and product labeling -Repair and warranty repair

38 Center for Scientific Computing (CSC)

www.csc.fi -Data Storage -Computing Services -Software and Database Services

39 CS Technology, Inc.

www.cstechnology.com

-Data Replication -Data Storage -Hardware Planning -Risk mitigation strategy support -Quality assurance

40 Computer Technology Associates, Inc. (CTA)

www.cta.com -Hardware Engineering -Knowledge Management -Program Management

41 Cognizant Technology Solutions

www.cognizant.com -Advanced Solutions Delivery -Business Process Management -Customer Relationship Management -Data Warehousing & Business Intelligence -Industrial Operations Management -Oracle Solutions -Portals & Content Management -SAP Solutions -Supply Chain Management -Testing Services -Consulting and Professional Services -Remote Infrastructure Management Services

42 CVS IT www.cvsit.com 43 Datamedic Corp. www.datamedics.com -Computer Repair

-Data Recovery -Data Base station -Networking -Virus & Spy ware removal

44 DataSource Hagen www.datasource.net -Server Service -Storage Solution -Network Management - Security Management -Disaster Recovery service -Infrastructure Consulting and



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Assessment -Managed End User Services

45 Datatel Inc www.datatel-systems.com

-IVR Development -IVR Hosting -IVR Support

46 Digital Consulting & Software Services, Inc.

www.dcss.com -Digital Consultancy -Software service

47 Delec www.delec.com -Internet Solution - Hardware Support

48 Digitaris Technologies

www.digitaris.com -Change management -Continuous improvement -Extended enterprise relationship management -Human, material, financial and information resource management -Performance management -Production of studies, analyses and guidelines -Project management

49 Executive Information Systems

www.dkms.com -Expertise transfer -Management coaching -Solution development -Strategic alignment

50 DMR Consulting www.dmr.com 51 DPE Systems www.dpes.com -Technology Assessment &

Planning -Network Design and Installation -Network Management -Network Security -Data Protection and Disaster Recovery -Software Audits and Compliancy Service -Hardware Maintenance and Repair -Storage Solution

52 Data Processing Sciences Corporation (DPS)

www.dpsciences.com

-Routing and Switching Infrastructure -Wireless – Access, Management and Security -Data Connectivity Products, VPN Appliances -Clientless, SSL Based VPN Access -Quality-of-Service and Traffic

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Shaping -Server, Link and Firewall Load Balancing -Network Fault Detection Tools and Analysis -Network Performance & Management Products -Hosting, Co-location & IDC facilities -Firewall/VPN Products -Virus Detection/Prevention Solutions -URL Content Filtering -Email Spam Prevention -Intrusion -Prevention/Detection Solutions -Wireless Security -Token-Based User Authentication -Secure Single Sign-On -Clientless, SSL Based VPN Access -Security Consulting Services -Off-Site Web Management and Firewall Monitoring

53 Data Systems International

www.dsionline.com -Data Center, data collection solution -Implementation service -Global 24*7 support -Wireless infrastructure and device hardware management

54 Steelcloud www.steelcloud.com -IT Services -Security Consulting -Service Desk Solution -Technology Integration

55 Dynamix Group Inc

www.dynamixweb.com

-Warranty Repair -System Design -Phone Support

56 eSystems Design www.e-systemdesign.com

57 Core 180 www.core180.com -Access -Multiplexing -Private Line -Point to Point -Capacity Distribution -Ethernet Services

58 Edgewater Technology, Inc.

www.edgewater.com -Management Consulting -Technology Consulting



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-Enterprise Performance Management

59 eDynamic Softech Solutions

www.edynamic.ca -Web & Enterprise Content management -Web Design & User Experience -Web Strategy & Consulting -Online Marketing -Ecommerce -

60 Enterprise Engineering

www.eeng.co.uk - Systems Consultancy, -Management Consultancy, -IT Strategy, -IT Interim Management, -Systems Management, -Service Delivery -Operational Research -Telephone Systems for Small Offices -Enabling Small Business Owners to take time off

61 Emtec Inc www.emtc.com -ERP System -Application Development -Database Development -Business Analytics -Software Quality Assurance and Testing -Business Analysis and Business Systems Analysis

62 Enigma www.enigmaconsulting.com

-Performance testing -Functional testing -Project Scoping -Test Architecture -Training -Agent less Monitoring

63 Envision, Inc. www.envisioninc.com -Implementation -Training -Customer support -Business consulting -Integration and System testing -Solution Design

64 The Ergonomic Group, Inc.

www.ergogroup.com -Security Solution -Storage Solution -Networking Solution -Capacity planning -Life Cycle Management

65 eSource Group www.esourcegroup.com

-IT outsourcing -Business Continuty

66 SYBASE www.sybase.com -Product Consulting

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-Strategic Services -Mobility Solution -Industry Solution -Application Development and Maintenance -Enterprise Management -Custom Solution

67 Eurosoft, Inc. www.eurosoft-inc.com

-IT Consultancy

68 Electronic Warfare Associates, Inc.

www.ewa.com -24/7 Operations Center Management -Threat and Vulnerability Analysis -Training and Certification -Risk Management Planning and Implementation -Managed Security Software Engineering Services -System Security Engineering -Systems Architecture and Integration Services -Testing -Information Technology -Information Technology Security Training

69 Exalt Systems www.exaltsystem.com -IT consultancy -IT outsourcing -BPO services

70 Exodus Communications Inc.

www.exodus.net -IT support services -Security Services -Network services -Data Centers -Storage and backup -Managed Application -Hosting

71 Lockheed Martin Management & Data Systems

www.mds.external.lmco.com

-Business Process Management -E-Government -Enterprise Architecture -Homeland Security -Information Assurance -Systems Development and Integration

72 Federal Data Corp. www.datafederal.com -Business Process management -System Planning and Integration -Technology Consulting and Planning -Prototype Development



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73 Computer Solution www.comsoltx.comint.com

-Custom Development -Data Management -System Consolidation, integration and migration -Software Implementation -Business Intelligence -Security Service -Data Center -Disaster Recovery

74 Fischer & Associates

www.fischerint.co.za -Information systems -Operations research -Education and training -Organization and organizational analysis -Financial analysis -Protocol and policy development -Development of management systems

75 Force 3 Inc www.force3.com -Unified Communications -Mobility -Security -Data Center -Virtualization Technologies

76 Forsythe Solutions Group Inc

www.forsythesolutions.com

-Align & Operate IT -Manage Risk -Protect & Manage Data -Optimize the Data Center -Enhance IT Infrastructure -Source & Manage Technology

77 Geac Computer Corp. Ltd

www.geac.com -Performance management -Equipment Sales -Spares Supply -Servicing

78 German IT Development Ltd

www.gitd.net -Industrial automation solution -Database -Multimedia

79 GERS Retail Systems, Inc.

www.gers.com -Business & Strategic Consulting -Education & Training -Technical Support Service -Web Design & Site Maintenance -

80 Information Systems Support Inc.

www.issi-gis.com -Application Development -Internet Map Services -GIS Mapping -Systems Integration -Database Design

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-Data Conversion -GPS Data Collection

81 Government Micro Resources Inc

www.gmri.com -Data Center -Storage Service

82 Greenpages Inc. www.greenpages.com -Application Solution -Data Management Solution -IT Management & Business Solution -Network and Infrastructure Solution -Technology Procurement Solution

83 Gulf Computers Inc

www.gulfcomputers.com

-Electronic Document Management Systems (EDMS) -Geographical Information Systems (GIS) -Staff Augmentation Services -Document Conversion and Archiving Services -Linux Consulting Services -Infrastructure Maintenance and Upgrades -Call Centre Services -Help Desk Support Services

84 Control Consulting Corporation

itaudit.hypermart.net -Backup & Restoration controls -Physical security -Version Management -Data Center -Risk assessment -Testing

85 Information Communication Action

www.ica.com -Strategy Consulting -Telecoaching -Assessment

86 Boston IT Consulting

www.icorps.com -Network Integration -Business Application -Development -Web-Based Solutions -Support -Security Solution -Consulting Service

87 Independent Computing Group

www.icglp.com -Website hosting -Website development -Web Marketing

88 IMCI Technologies www.imci.net -Network Design -Product Development -Integration Service -Field Deployment

89 Bay Area IT Consulting

www.infinitconsulting.com

-Desktop Monitoring & Management



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-Business Intelligence -Server Monitoring & Administration -Business Continuity Planning -Server & Application Hosting Solutions -Backup & Disaster Recover -Database Warehousing

90 Kaslen Group: Quality Management for IT

www.kaslen.com -Process Solutions -Testing -Strategic Planning -Quality Management -Process Management -Measurement -Surveys

91 Computer and Internet Services

www.lojix.co.uk -Internet Services * Website Promotion * Website Design & Hosting * Ecommerce * Email -Computer Services * IT Support * Maintenance * Security * Disaster Recovery * VPN / Remote Access -Computer Sales * Computer Hardware * Computer Software -Computer Networks * Network Services

92 Information Technology Consultants

www.marathonus.com -Custom Application Development -Internet Marketing -IT Advisory Services -IT Staff Augmentation -Industries and Applications

93 ASI/MRK Technologies Ltd.

www.mrktech.com -Security & Compliance -Storage Strategies -Business Service Management

94 IT Support - London, UK

www.networklondon.co.uk

-Computer Support -IT Systems -Remote Access

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-Remote Desktop -Blackberry Mobile -IT Consultancy -Hosted Exchange -Hosted Microsoft CRM -Wireless Networks -Disaster Recovery -VMware Installs -Terminal Services -Managed Hosting

95 Omni Consulting Group

www.omniconsultinggroup.com

-Technology Valuation -Technology Strategy -Technology Acquisition and Product Counsel

96 Information Technology (IT) Services

www.onshoretechnology.com

-Software Development & Integration -Testing -Business Intelligence -Maintenance & Support -Consulting

97 Perot Systems www.perotsystems.com

-Application Services -Business Process Services -Consulting Services -Infrastructure Services -Modular Services -Virtual Services

98 Xpragma www.xpragma.com -The Agile Virtual Enterprise -Reverse Interaction Modeling. -Business Process

99 Xwave Solutions www.xwavesolutions.com

-Business Intelligence -Risk Management -Enterprise Resource Planning -Consulting Service -Advanced Technology Solution -Managed Services

100 Xways Soft Ltd www.xways.net -Software solution -Web solution -Bandwidth solution -Telecom product -Network product

101 Zero One Technology

www.zero-and-one.com

-Support service -Installation and Maintenance program -Training -Hardware supply.



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3.3. IT SERVICE TAXONOMY IT Service Taxonomy has been organized in 7 main categories: Support,

Operations, Training, Consulting, Outsourcing, Integration and development and other services. Each of the main categories has been divided into subcategories and IT services have been defined under those subcategories.

In the following subsections, the categories and subcategories have been stated in the proposed IT service Taxonomy. Furthermore, this ITST has defined all of the identified IT services from small, medium and large enterprises.

Figure 6 shows the categories and subcategories established.

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Figure 6: Categories and Subcategories of IT services



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3.3.1 Category: Support Services This category includes those IT services that provide support with hardware or software to a computer, or some other electronic or mechanical device connected with IT. In general, these technical services are trying to help the user to solve specific incidents / problems in a product or service (not including user training). Figure 7 shows the Support services category, subcategories and services based on it.

Figure 7: Support Service Category

3.3.1.1 Subcategory: Network Services

This subcategory of network services (MNS: Network Services Management) provides monitoring and management of wide area networks (WAN: Wide Area Network) and local area networks (LAN: Local Area Network).

Figure 8 shows the services of this subcategory.

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Figure 8: Network Service Subcategory

The detail of the services of this subcategory has been discussed below,

Solution for Intelligent building This service includes services design, implementation, integration and support for high-‐tech buildings, including university campuses, hotels, public and educational institutions and office buildings.

Management Services (for network) This service is responsible for helping in maintaining and managing the network in full operation by 24 hours a day, 7 days in a week, and 365 days in a year.

Integration and Implementation Services This is the service that helps to integrate the hardware, operating systems and network-‐oriented software components for optimal utilization and performance of the installed network infrastructure.

Assessment Services This service helps to systematically identify risk areas, make recommendations and set priorities for improved infrastructure.

Network Architecture Analysis, Design and Installation Service This service is responsible for the analysis, design and installation of communications systems as well as IP data networks, multiservice voice and data.

Support for Network Device Service This is the service that helps to monitor, improve performance and availability of network devices installed in the infrastructure of the organization.



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Support for Network Environment This service provides optimization solution in network design.

Management and Operation of LAN/ WAN This service provides telecommunications solutions, administration and management, modular and scalable data networks. This service helps to establish a delegated administration WAN / LAN, improve service quality and reduce operating costs, increase availability of services, helps to establish flexible Service Level Agreement (SLA) contracts. This kind of service also helps to establish a single point of contact for the administration and management of data network.

3.3.1.2 Subcategory: Security services The security services are those that establish and maintain anti-‐virus

management and planning support encryption, log-‐on procedures, provisions for the protection of information and other activities to protect both physical and logical aspects of the IT.


Figure 9: Security Service The detail of the services of this security service subcategory has been

discussed below,

Network Security This service is responsible for controlling access and information

exchange between company networks and Internet by using hardware and software.

Remote Access Security This service provides helps to develop and implement protocol and

secure application for remote access, denying access to unsafe machinery.

Security for e-mail This service is responsible for reviewing email messages for viruses,

worms or other security threats to the network before passing those to the servers.

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Internet Security This service is responsible for ensuring the confidentiality and integrity of

user data and validates the authentication and subsequent authorization to resources.

Intrusion Prevention This service is responsible for virus scanning, dynamic protection against

spy ware, intrusions, dynamic update of database of virus definitions, application control, development of protocol and reports on intrusions.

Security in Local access This service provides help to establish, develop and implement

mechanisms and guidelines for the risks involved in local access to computers and computer systems.

3.3.1.3 Subcategory: Service Desk Services

This services are responsible not only for incidents, problems and queries, but also for a contact point for: requests for change by customers, maintenance contracts, software licenses, service level management, configuration management, availability management and financial management of IT services.


Figure 10: Service Desk Services

The details of the service desk services have been discussed below,

Network Operation Center This service provides help to monitor the network system, manage the hardware and software of the system, do security monitoring, do analysis and do reporting on bandwidth that includes service availability, break, inventory, security and performance.



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Call Center Services This service is professional treatment of large volumes of phone calls. It is used usually in telemarketing services, in consumer services (banking, insurance, etc.).

Help Desk This is the service that helps to manage, coordinate, and resolve incidents as quickly as possible, and ensures that no notification is lost, forgotten or ignored is belonged to his kind of service.

3.3.1.4 Subcategory: Maintenance services Maintenance services are those that help to prevent and fix problems with

the hardware and software. Figure 11 shows the services of this subcategory.

Figure 11: Maintenance Services

The detail of the services of this subcategory has been described below,

Hardware Maintenance Services The hardware maintenance services provide full support for desktops,

laptops, servers and any device or computer peripheral equipment. It ensures equipments are working properly.

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The detail of the services of this sub subcategory has been described below,

Parts and spares This service is responsible for providing parts and spares for repairing of

the desktops, laptops and computer peripheral equipments. Spare parts to the devices ensure that those IT equipments work like new machines.

Adapting PCs This service is used to adjust and design the computer system according

to the specific needs of the user or customer.

Incident Control hardware This service keeps track of the cost of servers, PCs, peripherals and all the

equipment tied to the PC.

Hardware Integration This service is responsible for integrating heterogeneous systems into a

single environment. It reduces the number of IT components in the business. Thus, by optimizing existing systems, improving performance and maximizing the availability of applications and information, it reduces total operating costs.

Managing Hardware Changes This service provides visibility and control that is needed for better

planning, implementation and documentation of hardware changes, in order to maintain IT services functions.

Removal of old computer equipment This service collects obsolete computer equipments.

Repair of equipment on site This service is responsible for restoring the hardware in case of failures in

the affected computer location.

Review and test hardware This service is responsible for doing diagnostic service for connectivity,

operability and functionality of the hardware. It consists of a rigorous testing process to test all system components of computer hardware.

Technical reports of hardware This service produces technical report of the hardware components based

on the technical analysis.

Guarantees of hardware This service supports the entire IT environment for hardware. This

service offers a variety of maintenance programs designed to meet specific business needs.



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Printers This service is responsible for repairing or replacing any broken printer

in the business unit.

Optical components This service is responsible for repairing or replacement of any optical

device that needs to be fixed.

Hardware upgrade This service is responsible for improving the hardware of IT components.

It checks for new versions of hardware and the compatibility with the software that runs on that hardware. This service updates the hardware in the system based on business demands to achieve desired objectives.

Support mission-critical This service is responsible for maintenance of the hardware on which IT

applications run. This ensures hardware must be available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Cleaning equipment This service is a preventive service that keeps clean the components of

the computers. This service is closely related to the review and testing of hardware because these include an internal cleaning of the hardware.

Self / remote support This service is responsible for supporting the hardware remotely. It

ensures connectivity, operability and functionality of the hardware from offshore.

Improved maintenance This service is a sort of evaluation services to improve the maintenances.

Hardware configuration This service is responsible for configuring the resources that have been

assigned to a particular device based on customer requirements.

Software Maintenance Service The software maintenance services help to improve performance and

availability of the software installed or to be installed on the hardware of the computer systems.

The details of the services of this sub subcategory have been discussed below,

Renewal of the Application This service is responsible for making assessment for optimization

applications. It makes a demonstration of the value that would result in making the transition from the current environment to another platform.

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Internet service This service is provided through Internet using established infrastructure

resources and protocols.

Server Service This service optimizes the technology for servers, allows quickly and

successfully implementation of the systems and increases the efficiency of their operations.

Preventive software maintenance service This service is responsible for maintaining software diagnosis, operation

and functionality.

Software security logic This service is responsible for ensuring the logical security of computer

system for software delivery, installation, configuration and management.

Operating systems This service is responsible for doing delivery, installation, configuration

and administration of operating systems in computers.

Specialized Application Software Service This service is responsible for delivery, installation, configuration and

management of specialized software used by the user and peripheral devices.

Optimization of operating systems This service is responsible for improving the performance of the

operating systems used in IT system.

Service desk Service desk service is responsible for installation, configuration and

management of operating systems and office applications for desktop computers, laptops and PC notebooks upon requests.

Service media This service is responsible for managing permissions, priorities and

printing problems.

Service performance monitoring software This service is responsible for measuring and monitoring performance of

mission-‐critical software.

Database Support This service is responsible for installation, configuration and management

of databases.



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Price, contracts and software licenses This service is responsible for price management, contracts and software

licenses. This service generates reports on pricing, software contracts. It is accountable to renew or to extend the software licenses.

Software Update This services is responsible for installation, configuration and to update

application software and operating systems.

Remote maintenance applications This service provides remote assistance on maintenance of installed

application in IT systems via the Internet or private network.

3.3.1.5 Subcategory: End User Services The end-‐user services are responsible for providing assistance to people

or organizations that actually use a product, in contrast to persons or organizations that authorize, order, procure or pay for it.

Figure 12 shows the services of this category.

Figure 12: End User Service

The details of the services of this subcategory has been discussed below,

Integration and Platform Development Service This service is responsible for implementing business applications and information communication systems and the development of bespoke projects in the IT field.

Asset Recovery Solution This service helps the organizations to recover the assets in an affordable,

manageable and flexible way. It provides flexibility to decide the fortune of unwanted IT equipments, helps to bring back IT equipments from other locations of the company.

Platform Management Service This service is responsible for operating and managing the various technologies involved in service delivery to IT users.

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Storage Service This service manages the storage allocated to users and used by them.

Support Service for End User This service is responsible for addressing the complex problems of the end users that require special attention. By continuous analysis this service can identify common mistakes and make recommendations for possible improvements.

3.3.2 Category: Outsourcing Services This category includes those services that enable the management or

daily execution of some function of the IT services of the organizations by an external service provider.

Figure 13 shows the services of this subcategory

Figure 13: Outsourcing category, subcategories and services

3.3.2.1 Subcategory: Applications Outsourcing Services The application outsourcing services consist of managing, maintaining

and improving customer applications. These kinds of services do focus on organizational advantages to align IT strategy with business objectives by delegating all or part of the functions of information systems of the company by the external partners.




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Figure 14: Application Outsourcing Service


Application Management This service is responsible for improving application support and maintenance by managing and monitoring databases, applications, operating system, version control and configuration management, problem solving related to updates, patches and upgrades by external partner.

Testing and Application This service helps to maximize the quality, performance and availability of software applications, through rigorous testing methods and industry standard processes of quality assurance.

Modernization of Business Application This service is responsible for accelerating the adoption of service-‐oriented architecture (SOA: Services Oriented Architecture) in the organization by reducing costs, time and resources.

3.3.2.2 Subcategory: Application Development Services The outsourcing application development services ensure the requested

applications from the IT organization and try to reflect business processes according to customer needs and business.


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Figure 15: Application Development Service


Application “On Demand” This is comprehensive development service that helps to create new software tools or specific applications that has not been developed so far. It also helps to define the specific needs of each company to develop software "on demand" when standard programs are not sufficient to meet the requirements of the company.

Design, Development and Execution of Application This service is responsible for providing specific solutions to design, develop and maintain a complete solution over time.

Application Outsourcing based on Ability This service is responsible for improving, maintaining and managing IT applications with a comprehensive service approach based on measurement and control.

Development of Commercial Application This service is responsible for developing applications to sale or to rent these to the large population.

Application Reengineering Migration and Portability This service is responsible for establishing and implementing the design and application to meet the current need of the organizations. This service is not included in host application system.

Selection and Employment of Application Providers This service provides methods and techniques to select the service providers and to recruit them.



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3.3.2.3 Subcategory: Systems Integration Services The systems integration services bring together the components of

subsystems within a single system and ensure that the subsystems function together as one system. In IT, system integration is the process of linking different computer systems and software applications physically or functionally.


Figure 16: System Integration Service Subcategory

The detail of the services of this subcategory has been described below,

Business application integration

This service offers the business the means to modernize, consolidate, and coordinate operations in the enterprise.

Business integration

This service conducts thorough review of your needs, performs gap analysis between current state of the business and proposed outcome. This service is also responsible for tracking the project and provides ongoing status report.

Ecommerce and web portal integration

This service is responsible for implementing, integrating, configuring and customizing a wide range of shopping carts, third party Internet and ecommerce products, tools, application and services for the specific organization.

Enterprise architecture and technology integration

This service serves the dynamic needs of companies and governments by solving business challenges through the integration of technology. It ensures customer IT projects meet time, budget and business expectations, following best practices and methodologies for decision-‐making and resource efficiency through business continuity, technology consultant, information management.

Networks integration

Network Integration helps businesses of all sizes efficiently and securely to connect and manage their IT systems. This service helps to tailor network design to respond to changing business requirements, improve network

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availability and performance and reduce the risks associated with making change of the network

3.3.2.4 Subcategory: Business Process Outsourcing Services (BPO) BPO services involve the outsourcing of business process functions by

service providers, whether internal or external to the company, usually in places with lower costs. The Business Process Outsourcing involves the management and operation of certain processes that shape the client's business. It is the delegation of one or more business processes to an external supplier who is responsible for implementing and managing processes based on performance indicators defined and agreed.


Figure 17: Business Process Outsourcing Subcategory

The detail of the services of this category has been discussed below,

Contact with the client

This service is a quickest way to answer the questions of the clients about services of the business. This can be offered by online form or emails or phone.

Finance and accounting

This service provides accurate, timely and usable financial information and statistical data to meet the legislative and regulatory reporting needs of managers and executives of the business.

Profit recovery analysis

This service is responsible for helping organizations from every industry drive toward high performance with innovative prevention, detection and recovery services applied to the procure-‐to-‐pay process.

Supply chain management

This management service is responsible for information about all movement and storage of raw materials; work in process inventory, finished goods from point of production to point consumption.



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Customer relationship management

This service is responsible for addressing the problems of dealing with customers on a day-‐to-‐day basis. It assists in dealing with the customers effectively and efficiently.

3.3.2.5 Subcategory: Infrastructure Outsourcing Services The infrastructure outsourcing services help companies to outsource

everything related to the computer desktop, the platform of servers, networks and printing services for affordable cost.


Figure 18: Infrastructure outsourcing

The detail of the services of this subcategory has been discussed below.

Hosting and IT

This service allows the organizations to do hosting their websites in servers, most cases servers that belong to the third party.

Service desk (outsource)

This service allows the customers of the organization to get support over phone or Internet by the third party.

Application support (outsource)

This service is responsible for giving support for the application of the organization from the outside of that organization.

Server support

This service provides support for the server of the application in the organization by the external service provider.

Storage management

This service is responsible for managing storage for an organization for the database application by the external service provider.

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Output management

Output Management Services provides customized, scalable, mission-‐critical enterprise output management solutions. External service providers design the solution according to the requirements of the organization to accomplish the goal.

Data centers

Data center services are a collective term for the supporting components necessary for the proper operation of a repository for storage, management and dissemination of data organized around a body of knowledge or pertaining to an enterprise. As such, data center services can involve hardware, software, processes and personnel.

3.3.3 Category: Consulting It includes those professional services with a high degree of expertise and

experience in the IT area to advise individuals, businesses and groups of companies, countries or organizations in general.

Figure 19 shows the services of these subcategories.

Figure 19: Consulting Category and its Sub Categories

3.3.3.1 Subcategory: Customer Relationship Management Service (CRM) This management services provide customer relationship technology

solutions that will strengthen communication between the company and its clients to improve relationships with customers through the automation of the presale, sales, customer service management and aftermarket. CRM aims to increase proximity to customers to meet their needs and turn them into loyal customers.



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Figure 20: Customer Relationship Subcategory

The details of the services of this subgroup has been discussed below

Customer Service

Customer service consultancy is responsible for creating and improving customer service culture. It improves customer facing work processes and better understands customer needs. It also improves on the phone customer service and offer new approaches to internal customer service

Sale consulting

Sales consulting can help the organization to adapt and optimize the sales systems in order to capture more profitable business.

Marketing consulting

Marketing consulting service is responsible for consulting for the companies to increase their brand, market share, website's traffic, qualified leads, sales and most of all a return on investment.

Aftermarket This service is responsible for consulting with the key peoples of the organization to identify target market. It also consults about service marketing strategies and service revenue goal of the company.

3.3.3.2 Subcategory: IT Services Strategy Consultancy services in IT strategy are those that help to plan an

appropriate IT structure to meet the organizational needs to offer promised services or products to the customers.

The IT strategy considers the changes through which an organization can gain potential opportunities. These opportunities may include ways to use technology to gain competitive advantage, reduce costs, increase revenues, and so on. These opportunities are measured against the strengths and weaknesses of the current IT environment, both technological and organizational, to set IT strategy to be adopted.

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Figure 21: IT Service Strategy subcategory


Corporate Strategy

This service is responsible for creating a successful strategy to help the client consistently outperform their competitors by accessing market accuracy and relevant steps tot achieve this goal.

Price and Profit optimization

This service helps the organizations to build, implement and sustain advanced pricing capabilities through a closed loop approach that includes strategy, analytics, price setting and execution.

Sustainability

Sustainability Consulting provides organizations with the tools and expertise that they need to actively manage their social and environmental impacts.

Growth and Innovation

This service is responsible for identifying and assessing key trends and factors that provide opportunities for growth. It provides advanced customer insight that leads to different value propositions and develops a go-‐forward growth and innovation agenda.

Organizational strategy

Organizational strategy is concerned with envisioning a future for the business, creating values to the customers, and building and sustaining a strong position in the marketplace.

3.3.3.3 Subcategory: Product Chain Management Service This product chain management service is responsible for helping

effectively to manage the best price and flows, movements, inventories of finished products and information relating to it and to improve and automate the supply by reducing the inventories and delivery times. The term production “just



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in time” characterizes the concept of minimizing inventory throughout the entire production chain.


Figure 22: Product Chain management subcategory

The details of the services of this category has been given below,

Design and manufacturing

Design and manufacturing service provides advanced engineering & tooling services to the organizations. This service ensures the highest quality engineering design and tooling products.

Product chain planning

This service is responsible for reducing supply chain cost; improve product margins and increasing manufacturing throughput.

Product chain strategy

Product chain strategy focuses on identifying and quantifying supply chain improvements and assisting clients in transforming their operations, from suppliers to the ultimate customer, to enable real strategic change and competitive advantage.

Contracting and Procurements

This service is responsible for negotiating leases, and procuring professional, construction, and service and supply contracts on behalf of the organization. The role of this service is to obligate the organization for contractual services and to procure quality supplies and equipment as economically and conveniently as possible.

Product life cycle innovation and management

This service is responsible for providing solutions to support strategic road mapping, idea development, product portfolio management and the creation, commercialization and replacement of products.

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3.3.3.4 Subcategory: Organizational Performance Services Consultancy services in organizational performance services are those

that monitor and measure multiple dimensions such as financial performance, customer service, social responsibility and human resource management of the organization.


Figure 23: Organizational Performance Service


Financial performance

This service is responsible for measuring overall financial health of the organization over a given period of time. It compares similar organizations across the same industry.

Human resource management

The Human Resources Management service is responsible for identifying the needs of staffs in the organization; select the contractor to recruit people, training the employee. This service ensures personnel and management practice conform to various regulations

Workforce performance

This service is responsible for helping organizations substantially increase productivity, market share and shareholder value by ensuring that they have the right people, with the right skills in the right roles.

Social Responsibility

This service is responsible for improving factory conditions and helping women advance. Moreover, it designs more sustainable stores and products, and gets creative about protecting natural resources.

3.3.3.5 Subcategory: Consolidation Services Consolidation services are those that help IT technology more effective,

efficient and agile. They provide a data center systems and infrastructure,



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architecture, IT strategy, technology solutions and IT processes that need to achieve their business objectives and service level.


Figure 24: Consolidation subcategory

The detail of the services of this subcategory has been mentioned below,

Business impact consulting

This service is responsible for identifying which business processes and assets require the highest level of protection. It defines recommendation on possible recovery strategies and alternatives. This service also provides financial data to help to choose appropriate level for business protection.

Design and integration consultancy

This service is responsible for coordinating; designing and developing integrated systems solutions that support the business. This consulting service helps to deploy these solutions ensuring delivery schedule and budget targets.

Migration service

This service is responsible for fully migrating application, database, configurations and websites in working order to the new site.

Server deployment support consultancy

This service is responsible for consulting about installation of connection infrastructure, troubleshooting vicious server errors/remote access, problems to implementation of server updates.

Selective and total outsourcing consulting

This service is responsible for consulting about selective and total outsourcing. It defines how much budget of the organization should be outsourced to the external vendor.

Consulting for planning and strategy

This service is responsible for defining mission, objective and strategy of the business. It provides on spot support and guidance for the length of the business.

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Storage consolidation

This service is responsible for centralizing data storage among multiple servers. The objective is to facilitate data backup and archiving for all subscribers in an enterprise, while minimizing the time required to access and store data.

3.3.3.6 Subcategory: Security Services The security consulting service provides solutions, resolves doubts and

offers a reliable guide to safety.


Figure 25: Security Service Consultancy subcategory

The detail of the services of this subcategory has been give below,

Consulting in security risks

This service is responsible for helping organizations prepare for the unforeseen by combining extensive risk management capabilities with technical and industrial operational experiences. This consulting service does risk assessment, security plan and design for the organization.

Security inspection service

This service reduces the risk of exploits to the organizational system by proactively identifying vulnerabilities found in information systems and by deploying both vendor and industry best practices in order to remove or mitigate the severity of those vulnerabilities.

Security consultancy service

This service ensures IT security policy development, IT security procedures, risk analysis, security audits, and business impact analysis. It carries out risk assessments to identify the strengths and weaknesses in the organization and advises on adequate security arrangements.



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3.3.3.7 Subcategory: Business Continuity Services Business continuity services are to help companies maintaining and

recovering their mission-‐critical processes from all kinds of interruptions, including natural disasters and caused by human hands, as well as critical flaws in hardware or software.


Figure 26: Business Continuity subcategory

The detail of the services of this category has been given below,

Business continuity planning

This service is one that guides the response of the organizations in case of disaster. It is responsible for designing a solid data center foundation with multiple levels of redundancy to meet specific recovery-‐time objectives and budget.

Infrastructure planning consultancy

This service is responsible for preparing proposal relating to the IT infrastructure installation. It maintains liaise with suppliers and contractors to discuss and evaluate technical requirements. It provides an assessment of infrastructure installation standard and supports the infrastructure design.

Design and planning

The responsibility of this service is to identify the most cost effective disaster recovery solution that meets two main requirements from the impact analysis stage.

Implementation

This service is responsible for implementing designs and roadmaps of the organization for risk management and disaster recovery.

Integrated Strategic planning consultancy

This service focus is on connecting strategic thinking and planning at the executive level with departmental strategies and multi-‐functional implementation.

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3.3.3.8 Subcategory: Risk Management Services Consulting services in risk management are responsible for identifying

vulnerabilities, the impact on operations. These services take counter action based on the identified threats.


Figure 27: Risk Management subcategory

The detail of the service of this subcategory has been given below,

Enterprise risk management

This service is responsible for helping identify potential risks, evaluate them and provide recommendations to mitigate the identified risks.

Mergers and Acquisitions

This service is responsible for increasing market share, adding capabilities, establishing new growth platforms. It is also responsible for extending geographic coverage and divesting to focus on core business. It reduces deal risk and proactively monitors deals performance.

Financial risk management

This service is responsible for creating economic value in the organization by using financial instruments to manage exposure to risk.

3.3.3.9 Subcategory: IT Architecture Services Consulting Services of IT architecture, provide an understanding on the

status of IT infrastructure, so that it can identify opportunities to improve efficiency, business value and growth and to create a roadmap with clearly defined steps lead to improvement.

Figure 28 shows the services of the subcategory



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Figure 28: IT architecture subcategory


IT management consulting

This service is responsible for measuring the business value of IT investments and creating a specific, executable plan quickly. It is also responsible for improving IT services delivery quality, speed and reliability and increasing customer satisfaction.

Service oriented architecture

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a business-‐centric IT architectural approach that supports integrating the business as linked, repeatable business tasks, or services.

3.3.3.10 Subcategory: Business Service This service focuses on maximizing business technology investments

made by customers.


Figure 29: Business Service

The detail of the services of this subcategory has been given below,

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Policies and process

This service is responsible for defining policies and processes required for business services. This service ensures processes that bridge the gap between the business policy and technology of the organization.

3.3.4 Category: Training Training services are those that provide courses, workshops, laboratories

and any other activity related to staff training. Aim of this service is to gain knowledge, learning and skills to use IT and to improve performance, efficiency and effectiveness.

Figure 30 shows category of Training and its related services.

Figure 30: Category of Training and related services

The detail of the services of this category has been discussed below,

Service in classroom training The classroom training services are typically those that are provided by

instructors in the classrooms. These help to improve the performance of the company’s personnel and update them about current IT.

e-Lab Service The e-‐lab services are responsible for live and remote practicing, reserved

exclusively for each user. It allows working in the laboratories that include online support and assistance and review questions.

E-learning Service The e-‐learning services are responsible for distance learning that

integrates the use of information technology and other tutorials to deliver the training to the personnel over Internet or webs.

Service live web experience The Live-‐Web service is responsible for providing a classroom equipped

with web-‐based on the desktop of the laptop or desktop via the Internet. It allows to do interact with a team of experts, mentors and supervisors of support. Allows learning by doing "hands in a laboratory and real world simulations.



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3.3.5 Category: Operation It includes those services that reach the effectiveness and efficiency in the

delivery and service support, and ensuring value for the customer and the service provider. These services include all activities and measures necessary to provide and maintain the optimum use of systems and information technologies and communication in order to achieve the Service Level Agreements and business objectives. These services are related to installation, testing of the applications.

Figure 31 shows the category of operation, subcategories and services based on it.

Figure 31: Operation Service Category and its related sub category

3.3.5.1 Subcategories: Management and control systems Management services and control systems are those that determine the

use of processes and methods to manage information systems.

The services of this subcategory are

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• Availability management, • Capacity management, • Storage space management, • Change management, • Configuration management, • Performance management, • Incident management, • Problems management, • Backup and recovery management.

3.3.5.2 Subcategory: Restoration Services The restoration services are those services that allow receipting, testing,

auditing, reconstruction, reconfiguration, storage, inventory tracking, reporting, shipping and / or disposal of IT equipment.

The services of this subcategory has been mentioned below,

• IT equipment receipt/delivery, • IT equipment testing, • IT equipment auditing, • IT equipment reconfiguration, • IT equipment monitoring, • IT equipment tracking.

3.3.5.3 Subcategory: Application Performance Management The application performance management services provide solutions

"end to end" customers in terms of performance management. Some services include the monitoring of applications, performance, diagnosis, root causes, and application availability.


• Customer Experience Management, • Web applications monitoring, • Databases management, • Operating system administration.

3.3.5.4 Subcategory: Performance Engineering Services The performance engineering services help increase system performance

and applications that require business solutions.


• Implementation of performance engineering, • Performance diagnostic, • IT architectures evaluation, • Performance and capacity modeling.

3.3.5.5 Subcategory: Business Continuity Services The business continuity services help companies to maintain and recover

their mission-‐critical processes from all kinds of interruptions, including natural



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disasters and those caused by human hands, as well as critical flaws in hardware or software.


• Operational Recovery Services for data center, • Disaster Management Services, • On-‐site services and consulting facilities, • Recovery service.

3.3.5.6 Subcategory: Other Operating Services Services subcategory “other operating” services are those that cover any

IT service under the category operation are not considered, due to its characteristics.


• Requirement reporting, • Consolidation and relocation, • Support for pre-‐production activities, development and testing.

3.3.5.7 Subcategory: Server services The server services are those that help to reduce the complexity of IT

infrastructure, reduce operational management costs and increase adaptability to facilitate change and growth of business. They also provide the skills, knowledge areas, processes, tools and methodologies necessary to optimize the management of server environment.


• Transition Services, • Enterprise Servers, • Integration and implementation services for server, • Mobile Information server, • Server support services, • Application server service, • Emerging technology services, • Optimization and integration server service, • Storage services, • Training on servers

5.3.5.8 Subcategory: Operational Security Services The security services develop a detailed document that defines the agreed

safety checks and collect, among other information, the relationship of responsibilities and safety measures to fix.


• Security Management, • Physical security,

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• Access control software, • Security in the LAN and WAN.

3.3.5.9 Subcategory: Microcomputer Operating Facilities Microcomputer services are those that provide basic assistance to solve

problems, doubts or contingencies that could arise in connection with the use of software, personal computer, Internet, local area networks, firewalls or antivirus.


• Inventory Management, • Incident management (user support), • Managing backup and recovery server, • LAN Management, • Approval of hardware and software.

3.3.5.10 Subcategories: Operations and monitoring services This service is responsible for helping to diagnosis of the functionality of

computer systems in order to monitor their operations.


• Batch operations control, • Printing environment control, • Monitoring of the operations, • Operations improvements.

3.3.5.11 Subcategory: Mission Critical Services The mission critical services can provide specific functionality throughout

the year in reliable and productive way.


• High availability, • Recovery of IT, • Support mission-‐critical, • Storage for mission-‐critical services.

3.3.6 Category: Integration and Development Services Integration services are in charge of merging the various IT components,

hardware, operating systems and software components to achieve optimum utilization and system performance. And Development services help to develop specific software for the integration or any other need of the organization.

Figure 32 shows the integration and development category, subcategories and services based on it.



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Figure 32: Details of Integration and Development Service category.

3.3.6.1 Subcategory: Systems integration and implementation Services Systems integration and implementation services make sure to integrate

sub-‐components of the IT systems together within a single system and ensure that the subsystems function together as one system. In IT, system integration is the process of linking different computer systems and software applications physically or functionally. System integration could also be described as planning, design, implementation and management solutions that meet specific business or technical demands of customers. This service involves developing systems and custom applications, as well as deployment and integration of enterprise software packages.


• Hardware / Software and Software / Software integration testing, • Device Emulation: Global Positioning System (Global Position Systems, GPS), Infrared, Radio Frequency Identification (Radio Frequency Identification, RFID), • Simulation of the system under test interfaces with other systems, • Black Box and Gray Box Testing, • Validation and Verification of developments, • Structural testing of software, • Planning of infrastructure / network analysis, • Training of end users and administrators, • Support contracts, • Integration of SOA and middleware platforms, • Integration of business management systems (Enterprise Resource Planning, ERP), • Device integration, • Data combinations and compositions, • Computed telephony integration (Computer Telephony Integration, CTI), • Extract, transform and load, and data integration, • Transition Services, • Global Deployment Services,

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• Volume Deployment Services, • Integration of COTS destination systems.

3.6.2 Subcategory: Software Development Services This service is the set of activities that produce the software products in

the long run. Software development includes research, new developments, modifications, reuse, reengineering, maintenance, or any other activity that produce software products.


• Custom applications development, • Client server technology and Peer-‐to-‐Peer development, • Database development, • Design, integration and system testing, • Website Development, • Program management, • Integration and testing of COTS, • Development of user applications, • Design, development and support of system architectures and communication networks, • Design, development, integration and testing of software, • Configuration management, • Definition and analysis of requirements, • Management and preparation of budget for application development, • Management of system acquisition, • Ecommerce, • Support lifecycle of software development, • Custom Application Development, • Data Warehouse Design, • Migration of legacy systems, • Web Design & Development, • Developing Multimedia components.

3.3.7 Category: Other services Apart from the services from IT Support, Operations, Training, Consulting,

Outsourcing, Integration and development category other services are in this “Other Service” category.

Figure 33 shows the subcategories and services of this category



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Figure 33: Category of other services, subcategories and services based on it.

3.3.7.1 Subcategory: Security Management Services The security services are those that help reduce security risks and

operational costs and maintain compliance with safety regulations and policies.


• Enterprises Architecture for E-‐Security and E-‐Privacy, • Internet Security Systems, • Threat mitigation services, • Data Security, • Government security, • Identification and Access Management, • Physical security, • Design and evaluation of information security.

3.3.7.2 Subcategory: Risk Management Services The risk management services are accountable to manage the uncertainty

regarding a threat, through a sequence of activities. These services are responsible for reducing the various IT-‐related risks focus on containing risk for physical or legal causes.


• Risk Analysis Services, • Risk Planning Services, • Service Monitoring and controlling risks.

3.3.7.3 Subcategory: Cost Management Services The cost management services are all about balance and cost statistics to

inform and control the various business costs.


• Pricing for hardware and software business, • Management and evaluation of data center, • Data warehousing for study of business models, • Control the level of efficiency in production management, • Simulations of activity levels, • Monitoring of sales prices and / or price lists,

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• Strategic analysis of costs, assessing the value added and / or expenses, • Requirement planning, • Monitoring levels of productivity and efficiency, • Determination of non-‐quality costs, • Opportunities for improvement and cost rationalization.

3.3.7.4 Subcategory: Print Management Services The print management services are responsible for providing the costs

associated with printing and allow the elimination of administrative costs, phone calls, inoperability of printers, multiple orders and invoices for consumables


• Access management and priorities, • Custom Printing, • Document management, • Management of printer status.

3.3.7.5 Subcategory: Relationship management services with suppliers (Supplier Relationships Management, SRM)

Supplier Relation Services are responsible for using technology to improve the supply mechanism of its suppliers. SRM helps the company to improve communication with its various suppliers, share the commercial terms and information and improve familiarity between them in order to optimize the delivery process. In turn, the SRM is also intended to familiarize providers with the core business of the company and its various products to ensure a personalized delivery process.


• Relationship with the Vendor and Product Ratings, • Design, • Identification of suppliers, • Selection of suppliers, • Negotiation, • Review of the Services.

3.3.7.6 Subcategory: Data Storage Services The data storage services help to have an efficient storage and efficient

access to data. They also help to increase security, stability, operational efficiency and scalability of storage.


• Data Mobility, • Information Life Cycle Management, • Data Storage Management, • Services for data storage products, • Optimization and integration of storage, • Data Management Services,



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• Service to add more storage, • Services for planning the storage strategy, • Deployment services for storage solutions, • Support for storage systems, mission-‐critical, • Evaluate high availability storage solutions, • Data services.

3.3.7.7 Subcategory: Infrastructure Management Service Infrastructure Management Service is responsible for maximizing

availability and performance of IT services. It optimizes the efficiency of operation and management personnel and facilitate the consolidation of operations.


• Optimization, • Risk analysis, • Infrastructure applications, • Structured wiring rooms Data Processing Center (DPC), • Infrastructure services and environments, • Design of special environments, • Design for high availability centers (CPD), • Maintenance contracts for hardware infrastructure and servers, • Support, monitoring and technical training in CPD infrastructures, • Evaluation of high-‐availability storage, • Services for the design of an IT management strategy, • Design and planning of infrastructure,

• Management Services infrastructure

3.4 CONCLUSION IT Service Taxonomy has been described based on the IT services fetched from the IT service industries. Services are here based on 101 small, medium and large companies around the world. Then those services have assigned to the corresponding category and subcategory based on the service description. The service industries can use this taxonomy to develop their service portfolio and service catalog. This is the initial step of the IT service taxonomy, more services can be added and same times can be removed based on further research.

3.5 APPLICATION OF PROPOSED IT SERVICE TAXONOMY: IN IT SERVICE PORTFOLIO AND IT SERVICE CATALOG DEVELOPMENT IT Service Taxonomy is not only to create hierarchy of most of the IT services in industries but also service industry can follow it to prepare their IT Service Portfolio and IT Service Catalog for Service Level Management. Here in this thesis a lab of Dpto de Lenguajes y Sistemas Informáticos e Ingeniería del Software in Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (UPM) has been selected as a smple service industry.

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3.5.1 Method to develop IT Service Portfolio using ITST Here, in this subsection a partial IT service portfolio [1, 25] has been tried to propose for the lab using IT services taxonomy. As an initial step, all the IT services of this setting are identified. IT services are defined based on the information found in the university website and by visiting the lab. Printing service, email service, hardware support service, software support services etc have been recognized as IT services for this lab. For the ease of the explanation, only email service has been discussed here. To define the IT Service Portfolio for this lab, the methodology mentioned in ITIL [1, 26] has been applied. The proposed ITST has been used in the third steps of IT service portfolio development. According to the first step to define IT service portfolio, service component of email services has been identified. The components are IMAP server access, mailing list. Then, as a dependent system of those components, IMAP server access has been identified. For IMAP Server access, virus filtering, backup has been recognized. Afterwards, virus software, front end have been found as the assets of the dependent system. In second step, the lab will define the cost of those services and related components. In this case, they can use cost model to define cost of each component. In third step, IT services should get approved. Email service, virus filtering, IMAP server access have to be defined in this steps. Here, virus-filtering service indicates that it is responsible for filtering the virus to protect the system. If proposed ITST is considered then there is no such service mentioned in it. But if contents of that service are taken into consideration then it will be under Support Service. There is Antivirus Service with same contents. So, to keep uniform vocabulary, instead of virus filtering “Antivirus Service” label can be introduced in this IT Service Portfolio. Moreover, for IMAP server access, there is no such label mentioned in proposed taxonomy. So IMAP Server Access should be defined with same title under Server Service. Same way ‘email service’ will go under Support Service. In Figure 34, Service portfolio for lab support has been presented. Services related lab support and other related components, assets have been shown here.



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Spam software

Antivirus

Front End

IMAP Server Access

Backup

Email

Mailing List

Lab Support

Local Area Network

Figure 34: IT Service Portfolio (Partial Picture)

So, when a small setting offers a service that is already mentioned in proposed ITST then that small setting should confirm the vocabulary. But if no such service is in ITST, then based on the service characteristics it can be defined under suitable category or subcategory.

3.5.2 Method to develop IT Service Catalog using ITST In this section, an attempt to develop a service Catalog based on the IT

service taxonomy has been discussed. If the entire service industry uses same approach using proposed ITST to develop IT Service Catalog then all of the service providers will be able to communicate with each other in a flexible way.

Here, IT Service Catalog has been proposed for the lab (UPM lab) used in previous section for IT Service Portfolio. In this lab, for example, has hardware maintenance service, which also responsible for providing Hardware upgrades service. According to the proposed service taxonomy, this hardware upgrade service is under support category and hardware maintenance subcategory. So it is easier to know the root of the service. In below an IT service catalog for Hardware maintenance service has been depicted. The structure of the catalog has been considered from ITIL [1] with little modification.

Table 7 shows the IT service catalog for Hardware upgrade service for the UPM lab.

Service Portfolio

IT Services Service Component

Assets Dependent System

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Table 7: IT Service Catalog

Service Name Hardware Upgrade

Service Description This service is responsible to improve the hardware of IT components. It checks for new versions of hardware and the compatibility with the software that runs on that hardware. It updates the hardware in the system based on business demands to achieve desired objectives. This service also responsible to use the results of the technical reports of hardware service, review it and test hardware.

Service Category Support

Service subcategory Maintenance. Hardware Maintenance

Supporting Services Help Desk, Communication Services

Business Owner Laboratory Users

Business Unit Personal Computer System, Printer

Service Manager Md Forhad Rabbi

Business Impact It will ensure availability of the system.

Business Priority High

SLA If any hardware of the system does not work properly or system needs more advancement to process any application, it will be replaced within 2 hours

If entire service industry follow same IT Service Taxonomy, then it will ensure same language with same meaning for service catalog throughout the service market. It will give the opportunity to the all-‐small settings to communicate with each other and/or with customers.


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CHAPTER: 4

CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE

WORK



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Recently, IT service management is getting attention from researchers. As part of my thesis I have done systematic review to know current state of the art of this field in industry. Mainly my focus was on small and medium sized enterprises.

In my research I have found some imperfections in Service Level Management (SLM). In this thesis, I have tried to mention those shortcomings in current IT service management. I believe, if those problems are removed from SLM, then enterprises will be able to provide better quality service.

In my thesis, I have tried to give solution for one of those problems. I can’t claim I have given complete solution for that problem. But I believe, it can show the way to get complete solution. Proposed IT Service Taxonomy defines the categories and subcategories for most of the IT services in small settings to make this SLM domain more organized.

In addition to categorization of IT services, this IT Service Taxonomy can play an important role to develop IT Service Portfolio and IT Service Catalog for small settings. According to proposed ITST, IT Service Portfolio and IT Service Catalog will be more acceptable and understandable to the market.

But still for this ITST, lots of things have to do. Most importantly, this taxonomy should get commercial shape. This categorization should be agreed with the representative market. At the end more modification might be needed in the classifications of IT services.

Moreover, there should be some researches to come out with common naming convention for ITST. So that, using common vocabulary for the services, everyone can recognize those services easily. It demands more investigate. In this case, my future plan is to work on naming convention for IT services in IT service Taxonomy. In that regard, it is possible to take concern of medical taxonomy. In Medical science they use some sort of naming convention to define related medical terminology.

Apart from that, service pattern will be another more focus area for my future work. IT service patterns can offer better service packages to the customer according to their requirements and based on their feedback. In my future work, I will concentrate on the means to collect feedback from the customers about the services and develop follow up compliance.

IT service management is a new area for the academy to do research. I want to contribute in this area by my research. More research in this domain can give perfect shape to better service delivery and service support. This thesis is one of the first steps to do contribution in this arena.



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[1]Rudd, V.L.C. ITIL: Service Design. First ed. Office of Government Commerce, ed. O.G.C TSO: London. 2007 [2] Fleming, W. Using Cost of Service to Align IT, Presentation at ItSMF, Chicago, IL, 2005 [3] National Academy of Engineering. The impact of Academic Research on Industrial Performance. The National Academic Press, Washington, DC, 2003. [4]Eileen Forrester, CMMI for Service (CMMI-‐SVC) Overview, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, USA, 2009 [5] IT Governance Institute, Cobit 4.1, ISA, 2007 [6]ItSMFUSA, ITSM - IT Service Management, www.itSMFUSA.com, Retrieved on March 20, 2009 [7] Stuart, G., Ronald, D., Jim, J.Q, Sue C, Information Technology Service Management-An Emerging Area for Academic Research and Pedagogical Development, SIGMIS-‐CPR’07, St.Louis, Missouri, USA, 2007 [8] CMMI Product Team, CMMI® for Services, Version 1.2, Technical Report CMU/SEI-2009-TR-001, SEI Program, Software Engineering Process Management Program, CMU, USA, 2009 [9]Office of Government Commerce, The official introduction to the ITIL Service Lifecycle, the Stationary Office, 2007 [10] Pino J.F.G.F Piattini M., Software Process Improvement in Small and Medium Software Enterprises: ASystematic Review. Software Quality Springer, 2008. [11]ANSI/NISO Z39.19-‐2005, Guidelines for the Construction, Format, And Management of Monolingual Controlled vocabularies, NISO Press, Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.A, 2005 [12] Kitchenham, B. A., Dyba, T. and Jorgensen, M., Evidence-based Software Engineering, 26th International Conference on Software Engineering, USA, 2004 [13] Biolchini J., GomesM.P Cruz N.A Horta T.GSystematic Review In Software Engineering, RT ES679/05, 2005 [14] ItSMF, IT Service Management, an introduction, itSMF, 2004. [15] Johnston, R.Benyon, R., Service Agreements- A management Guide. First ed. ITSM Library, Van Haren Publishing, 2006 [16]AEC, La consultoría en España”, AsociaciónEspañola de Empresas deConsultoría. El sector en cifras, 2007

[17]ACS,Consulting in Spain: El sector in figures 2007. Spanish Association Of Consulting, 2007 [18]AETIC. AETIC Report 2007: The ICT-‐sector macro is worth more than 100 billion Euros. Association of Electronics, Information Technologies and Communication of Spain, 2007 [19]Cobo, C., Trends in the Outsourcing Market. Sopra profit. 2007 [20]FEAC, European Management Consultancy Market Report. 2006/2007. European Federation of Management and Consulting, 2007 [21]Borras, C., Evolution of IT services in Spain. Computing Magazine, No. 561 pp. 20, 2006 [22]Reyes, M., J. Gasco, Llopis J.The information Systems Outsourcing: A Longitudinal Descriptive Study. Universia Business Review, ISSN: 1698-‐5117. 2007

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[23] Directorio Central de Empresa DIRCE, Empresas españolas (estrato de asalariados y porcentaje del total) DIRCE 2007. [24] Microsoft, Microsoft Operational Framework, Version 4.0, MOF Overview, 2008 [25] Janssen M., Feenstra R.W. 2006. From Application to Service Portfolio Management: Concepts and practice. In Proceedings of The European Conference on eGovernment (ECEG) 2006, Marburg, Germany. 2006 [26] Jeffrey, M. and Leliveld, I. Best Practices in IT Portfolio Management. MIT Sloan Management Review. 2004 [27] Office of Government Commerce, ITIL: Service Strategy, The Stationary Office, November 10, 2008 [28]Cohen, S,Service Taxonomy A Common Language for SOA and More, Microsoft Corp, 2007 [29] Tim, M, A Web Services Taxonomy: not all about the data. v.1.1, OCLC Online Computer Library Center, 2009 [30] Calvo-‐Manzano Jose, Cuevas Gonzalo, Gómez Gerzon, Rabbi Forhad, San Feliu Tomás, Service Level Management for IT Services in Small Settings: A Systematic Review, 16th EURO SPI Conference, September, Spain, 2009 [31] Mathias Sallé,Steve Rosenthal; Formulating and Implementing An HP IT program strategy using CobiT and HP ITSM, Proceedings of the 38th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences – 2005, Hawaii, USA, 2005 [32] Gabi Dreo Rodosek , A GENERIC MODEL FOR IT SERVICES AND SERVICE MANAGEMENT, Integrated Network Management 2003: 171-‐184 [33] F. Marimon, Casadesús M., Heras I. The consultancy in Spain: Search or inculcation of principles?Universia Business Review, ISSN: 1698-‐5117. 2006 [34] Available at www.bisk.com; Retrieve on August 13, 2009 [35] J.W. Croswell, Research Design Qualitative, Quantitative and Mixed Method Approaches, 2nd Edition, Sage Publication, 2003 [36] Leopoldi, R, IT Service Management: A Description of Service Catalog, RL Consulting, 2002 [37] Available at http://www.sei.cmu.edu/iprc/ipss.html. Retrieve on January 11, 2009 [38] Office of Government Commerce ITIL: Service Strategy. First ed. Office of Government Commerce, ed. O.G.C TSO: London. 2007 [39] Available at sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/tools/.../CMMI-‐SVC-‐Quick-‐Reference-‐v1-‐2-‐ 02262009.pdf [40] Guldentops E, Governing Information Technology Through COBIT, IT Governance Institute, USA, 2004

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PUBLICATION Euro SPI2’09 During my thesis work, I published one research paper into Euro SPI2’09 (European Software & Software Process Improvement and Innovation) conference held at Spain.

This publication was about the state of art of Service Level Management

in small settings. The title of the paper is “Service Level Management for IT Ser- vices in small settings: a Systematic Review”.

This work presents the application of a systematic review protocol for

Software Engineering. This protocol is used as a formal model by applying systematic review to Service Level Management. The objective is searching for papers related to Service Level Management for IT Services in small settings (including small and medium enterprises). Results obtained show that Service Level Management area is an increasing research field and there is a need for more in-‐depth studies.

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APPENDIX

1.1TEMPLATE FOR SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

1. Question Formularization 1.1. Question Focus: 1.2. Question Quality and Amplitude -‐ Problem: -‐ Question: -‐ Keywords and Synonyms: -‐ Intervention: -‐ Control: -‐ Effect: -‐ Outcome Measure: -‐ Population: -‐ Application: -‐ Experimental Design: 2. Sources Selection 2.1. Sources Selection Criteria Definition: 2.2. Studies Languages: 2.3. Sources Identification -‐ Sources Search Methods: -‐ Search String: -‐ Sources List: 2.4. Sources Selection after Evaluation: 2.5. References Checking: 3. Studies Selection 3.1. Studies Definition -‐ Studies Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria Definition: -‐ Studies Types Definition: -‐ Procedures for Studies Selection: 3.2. Selection Execution -‐ Initial Studies Selection: -‐ Studies Quality Evaluation: -‐ Selection Review: 4. Information Extraction 4.1. Information Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria Definition: 4.2. Data Extraction Forms: 4.3. Extraction Execution -‐ Objective Results Extraction i) Study Identification

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ii) Study Methodology: iii) Study Results iv) Study Problems: -‐ Subjective Results Extraction i)Information through Authors: ii) General Impressions and Abstractions: 4.4. Resolution of divergences among reviewers: 5. Results Summarization 5.1. Results Statistical Calculus: 5.2. Results Presentation in Tables 5.3. Sensitivity Analysis: 5.4. Plotting: 5.5. Final Comments -‐ Number of Studies: -‐ Search, Selection and Extraction Bias: -‐ Publication Bias: -‐ Inter-‐Reviewers Variation: -‐ Results Application: -‐ Recommendations:

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1.2 PAPERS USED FOR SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

[1] NeilMcBride, “Exploring service issues within the IT organization: Four mini-‐case studies”, International Journal of Information Management, 2009 [2] Stefan Thanheiser, Lei Liu, HartmutSchmeck: “Sim-‐ SOA: an approach for agent-‐based simulation and design-‐ time assessment of SOC-‐based IT systems”, Proceedings of the 2009 ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC), Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, March 9-‐12, 2009 [3] CMMI Product Team, “CMMI® for Services, Version 1.2”, Technical Report CMU/SEI-‐2009-‐TR-‐001, Software Engineering Institute, USA, March, 2009 [4] Mira Kajko-‐Mattsson and Christos Makridis, “Evaluating SLA Management Process Model within Four Companies”, The Third International Conference on Software Engineering Advances, Sliema, Malta, 2008 [5] Thomas Schaaf, Michael Brenner, “On Tool Support for Service Level Management: From Requirements to Sy-‐ stem Specifications”, Proceedings of BDIM 2008, 3rd IEEE/IFIP International Workshop on Business-‐Driven IT Management, Salvador, Brazil. IEEE 2008 [6] GenadyGrabarnik, Heiko Ludwig, Larisa Shwartz, “Dynamic Management of Outsourced Service Processes’ QoS in a Service Provider – Service Supplier Environment”, International Workshop on Business-‐Driven IT Management, BDIM 2008: Salvador, Brazil, 2008 [7] Adrian Paschke, Martin Bichler, “Knowledge representation concepts for automated SLA management”, The Computing Research Repository (CoRR), Decision Sup-‐ port Systems 46 (2008) 187–205, 2008 [8] Jung-‐Oh Park, Sang-‐Geun Kim, Byeong-‐Hun Choi, Moon-‐Seog Jun, “The study on the maturity measurement method of security management for ITSM”, International Conference on Convergence and Hybrid Information Technology, Gyeongbuk, S. Korea, 2008 [9] Rajeev Gupta, K Hima Prasad, MukeshMohania, “Automating ITSM Incident Management Process”, Inter-‐ national Conference on Automonic Computing, Chicago, IL, USA , 2008. [10] Haining Wang, ShouqianSun,Yanan Huang, ShiweiCheng, “An ITIL-‐Based IT Service Management Model for Garment Enterprises”, International Conference on Information Management, Innovation Management and Indus-‐ trial Engineering, 2008. ICIII '08, Taipei, Taiwan, 2008 [11] Nabiollahi, Akbar bin Sahibuddin, Shamsul, “Considering service strategy in ITIL V3 as a framework for IT Governance, International Symposium on Information Technology”, ITSim 2008, 26-‐28 Aug. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia,

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2008 [12] Jin, K. Ray, P. “Business-‐Oriented Development Methodology for IT Service Management”, Proceedings of the 41st Annual Hawaii International Conference on Sy-‐ stem Sciences, Hawaii, USA, 2008 [13] Philip Bianco, Grace A. Lewis, Paulo Merson, “Service Level Agreements in Service-‐Oriented Architecture Environments”, Technical Note CMU/SEI-‐2008-‐TN-‐021, Soft-‐ ware Engineering Institute, 2008 [14] Michael Brenner, Gabi DreoRodosek, et al, “Provisioning: Challenges, Process Alignment and Tool Support”. Handbook of Network and System Administration, 2008, Pages 855-‐904 [15] Larisa Shwartz, Naga Ayachitula et al, IT Service Provider’s Multi-‐Customer and Multi-‐Tenant Environments, The 9th IEEE International Conference on E-‐Commerce Technology and The 4th IEEE International Conference on Enterprise Computing, E-‐Commerce and E-‐Services (CEC-‐ EEE 2007), Tokyo, Japan, 2007 [16] Christian Braun, Robert Winter, “Integration of IT service management into enterprise architecture”, Symposium on Applied Computing archive, Proceedings of the 2007 ACM symposium on applied computing table of contents, Seoul, Korea, 2007 [17] Jiangping Wan Yunfeng Wang, ChuweiZheng, “Research on IT Service Management Knowledge Support Structure”, International Conference on Wireless Communications, Networking and Mobile Computing, WiCom 2007, Shanghai, China, 2007 [18] Larisa Shwartz, Naga Ayachitula, Melissa Buco, MaheswaranSurendra, Christopher Ward, “Service Provider Considerations for IT Service Management”, 10th IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network [19] Rob Addy, “Effective IT Service Management”, ISBN 978-‐3-‐540-‐73197-‐9 Springer Berlin Heidelberg New York, 2007 [20] Halina Kaminski, Mark Perry, “Employing Intelligent Agents to Automate SLA Creation”, Whitestein Series in Software Agent Technologies and Autonomic Computing Book Emerging Web Services Technology, 2007 [21] Brenner M., DreoRodosek G., Hanemann A., Heger-‐ ing H.-‐G., König R. “Service Provisioning: Challenges, Process Alignment and Tool Support”. Handbook of Net-‐ work and System Administration, J. Bergstra, M.Burgess (editors) Elsevier, 2007, ISBN 978-‐0-‐444-‐52198-‐9. [22] Hao Wang Bo Yang Liang Liu Qian Ma Ke Wei Sun Ying Chen, “Knowledge Enhanced IT Service Man-‐ agement”, IEEE International Conference on e-‐Business Engineering, ICEBE 2007, Hong Kong, 2007.


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[23] Sven Graupner, Nigel Cook, Derek Coleman, TiloNitzsche, “Platform for Delivering IT Management Ser-‐ vices”, Hewlett-‐Packard Laboratories, 1501 Page Mill Road, Palo Alto, CA 94304, USA, 2006 [24]Software Engineering Institute, “Improving Processes in Small Settings (IPSS) A White Paper”, The International Process Research Consortium (IPRC) Pittsburgh, PA 15213, 2006 [25] Michael Brenner, “Classifying ITIL Processes: A Taxonomy under Tool Support Aspects”, IEEE/IFIP Inter-‐ national Workshop on Business-‐Driven IT Management (BDIM 2006) Vancouver, Canada, April 7, 2006 [26] Rodrigo BonfáDrago, Rodolfo da Silva Villaça, “A Proposed Web Tool for IT Environment Service Management”, Proceedings of the Advanced International Conference on Telecommunications and International Conference on Internet and Web Applications and Services (AICT/ICIW 2006), Guadeloupe, French Caribbean, 2006 [27] AkhilSahai and Sven Graupner, “Enterprise Management and Web Services, Web Services in the Enterprise”, Springer US ISBN 978-‐0-‐387-‐23374-‐1 (Print) 978-‐ 0-‐387-‐27597-‐0 (Online), 2005 [28] Thorsten Anders, “Development of a generic IT ser-‐ vice catalog as pre-‐arrangement for Service Level Agreements”, 10th IEEE Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation, 2005. ETFA, Catania, Italy, 2005. [29] Jos J.M. Trienekens, Jacques J. Bouman, Mark van derZwan, “Specification of Service Level Agreements: Problems”, Principles and Practices, Software Quality Journal, Volume 12, Number 1 / March 2004, Springer Netherlands. [30] Claudio Bartolini and Mathias Sallé, “Business Driven Prioritization of Service Incidents”, 15th IFIP/IEEE International Workshop on Distributed Systems: Operations and Management, DSOM 2004, Davis, CA, USA, DSOM 2004, LNCS 3278, pp. 64–75, 2004. [31] V.P. Wade, “Service management and the telecommunications information networking”, Computer Communications 22 (1999) 1633–1637, Elsevier Science B.V. Dublin, Ireland.


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1.3 REVIEWED IT COMPANIES

A Abacus Technology Corp Management information system technology, engineering analysis, and management consulting services to both the public and private sector. www.abacustech.com Accenture Formerly part of Arthur Andersen worldwide, this management consulting practice provides services in areas such as customer relationship management, enterprise business solutions, finance and performance management, and collaboration and knowledge... www.accenture.com Advanced Concepts, Inc. Provider of I.T. consulting services including systems integration services. Provider of custom software development services. Also, a provider of custom engineering, design and prototyping services for digital signal processing equipment. Se... www.aci-‐hq.com Applied Computer Solutions California based design and integration and information technology consulting specialists with experience in LAN/WAN and systems design, database systems, Internet security, web and Internet applications. www.acsacs.com Advanced Computer Technologies Information technology consulting on thin client, systems integration, staff augmentation, ecommerce and application hosting services. www.actweb.com Advanced Microelectronics Inc LAN/WAN Network Design and Implementation, Telecommunications, Software Development/Office Automation, Training, and Sales Solutions. www.advancedmicro.com Advanced Consulting International, Inc. (A.C.I.) Full-‐service consulting firm that specializes in database design and administration, system administration, and installation and integration of popular applications vendors such as PeopleSoft, SAP, Oracle, Baan, Cognos, and Platinum Technology. www.advconsulting.com AE Business Solutions, Inc. Provider of system integration services. Services are provided to the higher education industry, schools K-‐12 and state and local governments. www.aebs.com All Covered: Small Business IT Consulting and Services Nationwide information technology services. IT strategy, IT management, computer security, network support, and more. On-‐site and remote 24/7. www.allcovered.com

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Alpine Computer Systems Managed IT Services and Consulting. www.alpinecsi.com Alta Plana Provider of management information system architecture, database design, and software development services for data management and analysis, decision support, business intelligence, and data warehousing. altaplana.com American Computer Services Consultants specializing in network installation and management, remote access, remote network administration and desktop support. www.americancomputerservices.com American Management Systems (AMS) International consulting firm providing ebusiness, customer relations management, project management, systems development, data warehousing and more. www.ams.com AMS Technology Group Management Process/Control Consulting A professional services company that specializes in EDP audit, software distribution and technical consulting services. amsgrp.com Ananke IT Solutions Affordable, quality IT services for your business needs including managed, professional, staffing and small business services. www.ananke.com IT Support Services Supply and Support for IT solutions, accredited Microsoft Certified Partner and Microsoft Small Business Specialist. www.ancarb.co.uk AvcomEast Provides IT support and network services as well as systems integration. www.avcomeast.com B BancTec, Inc. Texas-‐based IT consultants providing hardware and software services, network management services, asset management and system end-‐of-‐life services. cns.banctec.com Beechwood Computing Provider of IT consulting services, including development and integration of a variety of applications across heterogeneous computing platforms. www.beechwoodcomputing.com Berbee Implementing strategic information technology systems. Integrated services including Internet Access, Strategic Consulting, Security, Network Design and E-‐business. www.berbee.com Britec Provider of computer and information technology services. www.britec.com


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Buchanan Associates A professional services systems integration firm in 13 cities throughout the US and Canada providing network services, ebusiness services and end-‐user services. www.buchanan.com Business Solutions Enterprises, Inc. Provider of information technology consulting solutions. Services feature project management and reviews, findings and recommendations, business needs analysis, IT project reviews, IT system management including design, development, testing and... www.bussolent.com C Computer Associates (CA) Islandia, N.Y., IT consultants and providers of mission-‐critical business software, services and consulting, in areas including database, security, enterprise management, network management, change and configuration management and predictive man... www.cai.com Control Data Systems Inc Provider of IT and telecommunications consulting. www.cdc.com Computer Generated Solutions, Inc. Network services, help desk support, outsourcing, call center management, technical training, and imaging solutions. www.cgsinc.com CGT Consulting Firm providing contract, contract-‐to-‐hire and permanent IT candidates. www.cgt-‐consult.com Cheeze-‐n-‐Chive.co.uk Provides professional web design and information technology (IT) services, including sole trader and database development. www.cheeze-‐n-‐chive.co.uk Chryxus Management consulting firm dedicated to helping clients find innovative business-‐driven ways of exploiting the value of their information resources. www.chryxus.com Computer Aid, Inc. (CAI) Provides application development and maintenance, desktop, helpdesk, network, project management and ecommerce solutions. www.compaid.com Compaq Services Provides hardware, software, electronic business and infrastructure services. www.compaq.com Compass Consulting International Provider of telecommunications consulting, Internet systems consulting, network consulting, systems integration, project management and business consulting. Products and services are sold to multiple industries. www.compassconsulting.com

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Matrix Integration Provider of voice and data solutions. Consulting & Design, structured cabling, local area networks/LAN, wide area networks/WAN, Macintosh & Publishing, telecommunications service & support. www.compcent.com Compugen Systems Ltd. Provides technical, configuration, and professional services. www.compugen.com Computech Corporation Provider of custom client/server software programming services, Enterprise Resource Planning consulting services, Internet consulting services and Year 2000 consulting services. Products and services are sold to multiple industries. This compa... www.computechcorp.com Computer Clearing House Inc Building custom document management software solutions. www.computerclearinghouse.com Computer Managers, Inc. Provider of information technology consulting services in support of functions such as systems analysis and design, feasibility studies, project management, programming, networking, software and hardware selection, downsizing, conversion and doc... www.computermanagers.com Computer Repair in Phoenix, Arizona We are dedicated to improving your computer system uptime. Eliminate the uncertainty of fluctuating support costs with our managed services offerings. www.computerrepairservice.net Computing Alternatives, Inc. Providers of IT consulting services and customized computer software. Services are provided to multiple industries. This company was capitalized by private investment. www.computing-‐alt.com CoreTech Consulting Group, Inc. An e-‐business professional services firm that provides network architecture, security, and platform integration solutions. www.coretech.com Corporate Software & Technology, Inc. Provider of software procurement and custom software programming services specializing in desktop and network operating systems, enterprise messaging, Internet/Intranet, electronic commerce, help desk and electronic systems management. This com... www.corpsoft.com CPT of South Florida Inc Systems services and network integration company in South Florida. www.cpt-‐florida.com Crowe Chizek & Co. LLP Consulting practice in specialty areas, including manufacturing, agriculture, automotive, construction, commercial, government, health care, insurance, transportation, and financial institutions. Industry-‐specific, low-‐risk solutions


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and proven ... www.crowechizek.com CS Business Systems Inc IT consultants and computer and networking solutions provider. www.csbusiness.com Center for Scientific Computing (CSC) Specialist in the provision of scientific computing and communications services. www.csc.fi CS Technology, Inc. Provider of architecture, engineering and consulting for technology infrastructure. Provider of technology representation services, requirements analysis services, growth modeling services, voice systems services, site selection and facilities ... www.cstechnology.com Computer Technology Associates, Inc. (CTA) Provides enterprise solutions such as strategic consulting, network/security engineering, software customization and creative design. www.cta.com Cognizant Technology Solutions Solutions for Internet, data warehousing and object-‐oriented software development, as well as legacy and client-‐server applications. www.cts-‐corp.com CVS IT Provider of IT-‐related consulting, services and products. www.cvsit.com D Datamedic Corp. Developer and provider of integrated computer-‐based patient record and practice management information system solutions for healthcare professionals. www.datamedic.com DataSource Hagen Technology solutions: Hardware & Software Solutions, Systems Integration, Network Services & Consulting, Internet Services IT Sourcing, Training Programs Help Desk Services, Configuration Services, Nationwide Service Capability, and Profession... www.datasource.net Datatel Inc Technology organization specializing in telecommunications, electronic call processing and Internet development. www.datatel-‐systems.com Digital Consulting & Software Services, Inc. Provider of software consulting in Open VMS, UNIX and PC client/server environments. The company also provides custom applications software programming, systems support and training services. Services are provided to multiple industries. www.dcss.com Delec Computer and network solutions provider. www.delec.com

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Digitaris Technologies Provider of services including network infrastructure and administration, custom software development, Internet strategy and fulfillment and intranet development. www.digitaris.com Executive Information Systems Provider of distributed knowledge management systems, information technology consulting services and training. www.dkms.com DMR Consulting International provider of econsulting services and business solutions to the Fortune 500, governments and organizations of all sizes. www.dmr.com DPE Systems Seattle, Washington based company that offers solutions for hardware maintenance, product acquisition, networks, messaging applications, LAN/WAN and enterprise back-‐up. www.dpes.com Data Processing Sciences Corporation (DPS) LAN/WAN network integrator, systems management and network consulting firm in the Midwest. www.dpsciences.com Data Systems International Information technology company delivering the skills, experience, products and services necessary to plan and implement effective automated business applications. www.dsionline.com Dunn Computer Corp Provide a full line of IT products and services for the IT manager's day-‐to-‐day and new project needs. www.dunncomputer.com Dynamix Group Inc Turnkey solutions for the video industry. www.dynamixweb.com E eSystems Design IT infrastructure capable of connecting and communicating. specializing in network integration, technology procurement, and a complete technology service provider. www.e-‐systemsdesign.com EAC Network Integrators Open systems enterprise integration group specializing in information technology solutions. www.eac.com Edgewater Technology, Inc. Providing internet strategic consulting, designing, building, and deploying large-‐scale enterprise-‐wide systems. www.edgewater.com


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eDynamic Softech Solutions Company providing integrated software solutions, IT and telecommunications human resources on an international scale. www.edynamic.ca Enterprise Engineering Management and systems consultancy with expertise in information technology and systems management. www.eeng.co.uk Emtec Inc Network technologies with consulting expertise to develop IT solutions. www.emtc.com Enigma IT consultants specializing in customer relationship management, billing and sales/service systems. www.enigmaconsultants.com Envision, Inc. Software, multimedia and graphics company specializing in Internet business to business and entertainment sites. www.envision-‐inc.com The Ergonomic Group, Inc. Offers computer solutions specializing in client/server, advanced network computing technologies, and systems. www.ergogroup.com eSource Group (The) Provider of IT consulting, including application development services, data backup, disaster recovery, integration, hosting, tech support and project management. Services are provided to small and medium size businesses. This company was capit... www.esourcegroup.com Enterprising Service Solutions Co. Provider of multi vendor II services including maintenance, depot repair and professional services. The company also provides systems integration and computer consulting services. Services are provided to multiple industries. This company was... www.essc.com Essential Strategies, Inc. Assist companies use enterprise architecture to take advantage of the latest technologies, plan information systems and analyze the requirements needed to make systems a reality. www.essentialstrategies.com Eurosoft, Inc. Provider of IT consulting services for technical and scientific applications. The company also is a distributor for FTN 77(tm), a family of FORTRAN compilers for MS-‐DOS and UNIX systems; PluFort(tm) which are FORTRAN engineering tools; and GKS-‐... www.eurosoft-‐inc.com Evolutec (in French) Swiss company providing integrated management information systems. www.evolutec.ch

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Electronic Warfare Associates, Inc. Provider of information technology services ranging from environmental management systems to military command and control systems, digital signal processing, fuels management systems, data visualization and information protection and assurance. ... www.ewa.com Exalt Systems IT company delivering ebusiness solutions, including customer relations management (CRM), wireless application prtocol (WAP) implementation, content management and high-‐end databases. www.exaltsystems.com Exodus Communications Inc. Internet data center. Provider of complex Internet hosting for enterprises with mission-‐critical Internet operations www.exodus.net Lockheed Martin Management & Data Systems Provider of strategic and tactical information management solutions for defense, civil, international and commercial customers. mds.external.lmco.com F First Consulting Group Provider of information-‐based consulting, integration, and management services to healthcare, pharmaceutical, and other life sciences organizations in North America and Europe. www.fcg.com Federal Data Corp. Provider of computer systems integration and engineering, data mining and warehousing, Y2K consulting and EDI services. Parent/holding company with a high-‐tech unit that provides biotechnology and software services. Services are provided to fe... www.feddata.com Advanced Command Systems, Inc. Developer of FirePoint(tm), a management information systems software. The software runs on Macintosh and all Windows applications. Products are sold to fire departments. This company was capitalized by private investment. www.firepoint.com Fischer & Associates Headquartered in South Africa, the company provides services in information systems, operations research, organization analysis, and protocol and policy development. www.fischerint.co.za Force 3 Inc Integration of technologies, network architectures, topologies, and manufacturers. www.force3.com Forsythe Solutions Group Inc Provider of technology products, services and serving as a customer's single point-‐of-‐contact for technology requirements. www.forsythesolutions.com


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G Geac Computer Corp. Ltd Mission critical software and systems solutions to large and medium sized corporations around the world. www.geac.com Genesis Development Corp. Provider of M.I.S. architecture consulting services, software consulting services, custom applications software programming services, custom systems software programming services and E-‐business consulting services. Products and services are sol... www.gendev.com GERS Retail Systems, Inc. Developer of enterprise-‐wide software solutions for the business-‐to-‐business consumer marketplace. Products are sold to the retail industry. This company was capitalized by private investment. www.gers.com Information Systems Support Inc. Provides a wide range of automated mapping (AM), facility management (FM) and geographic information system (GIS) services to private and public sector clients. www.gis-‐issi.com Government Micro Resources Inc Network integrator and applications developer of large-‐scale open systems and client/server solutions for large or small organizations. www.gmri.com Greenpages Inc. Conception to deployment providing sound solutions to your IT business needs by identify the best computer hardware and software solutions. www.greenpages.com Gulf Computers Inc Full service provider of information technology consulting and software services. www.gulfusa.com H Control Consulting Corporation Nation-‐wide information technology (IT) consulting and auditing firm. itaudit.hypermart.net I i-‐bridge Information technology management company that focuses on helping mid-‐market and large businesses manage their infrastructure through enterprise hosting services and service level management tools. www.i-‐bridge.com IBM Global Services www.ibm.com Information Technology Services Improve IT Visibility & Automation. Download the IBM ITIL e-‐Kit. www.IBM.com

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Information Technology Services Solve Simple & Mission-‐Critical SOA Tasks. Read the IBM White Paper. www.IBM.com Information Technology Services Qualify to receive up to $200K in Server Makeover Services from IBM. www.IBM.com Information Communication Action (ICA) Integrated marketing communications and information technology consulting service. www.ica.com Intelligent Computer Enterprise A computer, network, internet, and server systems, consultation and service company. www.icesystems.net Indepedent Computing Group Consultants with expertise in custom programs for customer relationship management, web site design, development and web hosting. www.icglp.com ICIM International Inc Provider of software contract staffing services in mainframe, midrange and client/server technologies. www.icim.com Boston IT Consulting Boston MA, iCorps’ IT consulting experts analyze and optimize your network's performance. IT outsourcing, consulting and management capabilities. www.icorps.com Innovative Interfaces, Inc. Developer of state-‐of-‐the-‐art software and hardware provided to college, university, public, law, medical and special libraries worldwide. The software runs on multiple platforms including UNIX and Windows. www.iii.com IMCI Technologies Provider of network and facility management products and enterprise operational support services. These include systems integration, software development, data center outsourcing, data backup, disaster recovery and help desk support. The compa... www.imci.net Impact Information Technologies, Inc. Provider of IT solutions and services. Services include management information system planning and design, installation and migration, hardware and software maintenance, operational management, performance monitoring and optimization, backup an... www.impactit.com Bay Area IT Consulting InfinIT Consulting is a Bay Area IT consulting services provider specializing in IT infrastructure design, network support & IT managed services. www.infinitconsulting.com InfoGain Corp. Provider of design, development and implementation services for IT solutions.


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Services include databased architecture, database modeling, client/server integration and database maintenance and support. Also a provider of GUI development servic... www.infogain.com Information Builders, Inc. Developer of decision making expert systems, application development tools and machine connectivity software. The software runs on IBM PCs and mainframes, VAX, Tandem, HP, Wang and UNIX based systems. Provider of information systems consulting... www.informationbuilders.com Intelligent Decisions, Inc. / Professional Services Division Provider of IT consulting services. Services are provided to multiple industries. This company was capitalized by corporate investment. www.intelligent.net IPC Technologies Inc Consulting and systems integration firm that specializes in the development, integration, and implementation of leading edge information technology. www.ipctech.com IQ4hire, Inc. Provider of IT solutions consumer marketplace community services. The company specializes in providing an innovative, collaborative digital marketplace that brings together buyers and sellers of complex IT solutions. This company was capitaliz... www.iq4hire.com International Resource Management A data and technology consultancy providing clients with tailor-‐made information systems and technology solutions. irmincorporated.com Integrated Systems Group Systems Integration and Consulting firms provider of data and networking services that span from cabling and the physical layer to Wide Area Network design. www.isgny.com ISM Information Systems Management Information technology (IT) service provider. www.ismbc.com Information Systems and Services, Inc. Provider of information support services including software development, computer consulting, facilities management and systems and network integration. Parent/holding company with a high-‐tech unit involved in developing graphics software. Pro... www.issinet.com ITech Consulting Partners Provider of IT consulting services. Services are provided to multiple industries. This company was capitalized by private investment. www.itechcp.com Intertrade ITS Slovenia-‐based information technology company providing hardware and

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software. www.its.si IT Support Fed up with poor IT support? For first class IT support from a company that really cares contact ITVET now! www.itvet.co.uk K Kaslen Group: Quality Management for IT Assist information technology organizations in the effective and efficient delivery of technology. www.kaslen.com Kommunedata (KMD) Provider of information technology to the public sector specializing in IT systems to enhance workflow management and the development of Internet services. www.kmd.dk L Lahore Technologies IT consultants offering systems integration, web site and database development, performance tuning, software maintenance and network support services. www.lahoretechnologies.com Computer and Internet Services We offer website promotion as well as computer services to SME's. www.lojix.co.uk IT Services and Solutions -‐ Long View Systems Long View Systems is a leading IT services & solutions organization with over 500 technical consultants across North America. Complete IT solutions. www.longviewsystems.com M Mainline Information Systems, Inc. Provider of mainframe consulting, systems integration, systems engineering and custom software development services. Reseller of computer products. Services are provided to multiple industries. www.mainline.com Makarts Consultancy service focusing on marketing, systems architecture, project and account management and a backup of hardware services. Main emphasis is promotion of ecommerce and hardware in Pakistan. www.makarts.com Management Smarts Inc. Consulting company that helps clients successfully manage IT-‐dependent organizations and leverage information technologies like the Internet to business advantage. www.managementsmarts.com Manhattan Associates Supply chain synchronization systems, providing warehouse and transportation management solutions for manufacturers, distributors, retailers, suppliers, transportation providers and consumers. www.manh.com


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Information Technology Consultants Marathon Consulting is a technology services company that uses proven methodologies to achieve world class results on a wide range of IT services. www.marathonus.com Meridian Technology Group, Inc. Providers of IT integration and management information system consulting services. Services include web design, software consulting, hardware consulting and software programming services. Services are provided to multiple industries. This com... www.meridiangroup.com Metters Industries Inc Solutions for systems and database development, electronic data management systems. www.metters.com Microsoft People-‐Ready Business IT Services People Drive Success. Learn How to Unlock the Potential of Your Workforce with People-‐Ready Business Solutions. Microsoft.com/PeopleReadyBusiness Midland Computer Inc Technology product and service company. Networking, integration, internet/intranet consulting, design, and implementation www.midcomp.com MimEcom Corp. Provider of IT system management services for high-‐performing, high-‐traffic e-‐commerce sites and online companies. Services include data center, network, server and application design and architecture; web site launch services; 3rd party contac... www.mimecom.com Melillo Consulting Inc Provides solutions that solve complex business problems through advanced technologies. www.mjm.com MNET Systems Corp. Provider of network integration consulting services. Reseller of computer hardware and software. Services are provided to multiple industries. This company was capitalized by private investment. www.mnet-‐computers.com Modcomp Inc Solutions for ecommerce and business-‐to-‐business. www.modcomp.com Momentum Full-‐service integrator of web technologies including Internet business development, integration and design. www.momentuminteractive.com ASI/MRK Technologies Ltd. Total Enterprise Solutions, technology integration, value-‐added services and technical expertise. www.mrktech.com

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MSI Systems Integrators Builds and supports information technology solutions designed specifically for business-‐critical requirements. www.msiinet.com N NetResolvers Information technology specialists offering services inWindows 2000, Active Directory and the new Microsoft .Net Servers design, migration and implementation. www.netresolvers.com IT Support -‐ London, UK IT support services by Network London. Remote desktop systems with disaster recovery via Terminal Services, Citrix and VMware & hosted exchange email. www.networklondon.co.uk Nexus Management An international information technology service provider specializing in providing information systems and technology solutions to small and medium-‐sized businesses worldwide. www.nexusmgmt.com NimBUS Monitoring Solutions Nimsoft provides next-‐generation solutions for monitoring the performance/availability of the entire IT infrastructure, both physical & virtualized. www.Nimsoft.com Norrell Information Services A strategic workforce management company that integrates workforce and client business strategies to strengthen organizational effectiveness and flexibility. www.norrell.com O Oak IT IT services company providing project and program management, consulting and management training. www.oakit.com Omni Consulting Group A technology management conulting firm providing economic advisory and assurance services for the global technology marketplace. www.omniconsultinggroup.com OMP Computer Internet services and IT solutions provider. www.omp.de On 365 Server Management Providing IT and server support services. Site includes company information and product selector. On 365 are IT specialists based in Loughborough UK. www.on365.co.uk Information Technology (IT) Services Information Technology Services from Onshore Technology. We offer a cost-‐effective yet risk-‐averse solution to offshore outsourcing. Call now! www.onshoretechnology.com


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Orases Information technology company specializing in databases, dynamic content and ecommerce. www.orases.com Origin Global information technology consulting and services company providing IT services for multinational companies and other large enterprises all over the world. www.origin-‐it.com IT Services & Support OsBTI provide IT support, solutions, consultancy, advanced data & networking, unix support and tailored Junk Email & Web Security solutions. www.osbti.com.au Your BMC Software Specialists We specialize in providing implementation and optimization of BMC PATROL, BMC Event Management, AlarmPoint and other infrastructure management tools. www.ostusa.com IMRglobal Corp Outsourcing services for the financial services, insurance, and utilities industries. www.outsourcing-‐suppliers.com P Platinum Equity Holdings Specialists in the acquisition of technology businesses with a multi-‐million dollar asset base of technology companies. Services include: worldwide product support personnel, service locations in nine countries, information systems consulting p... www.peh.com Performance Technology Group (PTG) Provider of information technology consulting and technical resource management and staffing services, specializing in the areas of process engineering, project management, applications development, systems integration, systems management, train... www.performance-‐us.com Perot Systems Develops and supports business and information technology. www.perotsystems.com Progressive Business Technologies (PROGRESSIVE) An information technology service company aimed at the small to medium enterprise market, consisting of network services and ebusiness solutions. www.progressivebiz.com R R Squared Computing A computer and network consulting company specializing in digital nervous system/intranet design and implementation, systems engineering, web site hosting and design, corporate user training and database design. www.r2computing.com

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RDA Consultants Ltd e-‐solutions provider and advanced software-‐based solutions for major firms. www.rdaconsultants.com Real Time Enterprises Network consulting firm offering computer network services, including installation and maintenance. www.real-‐time.com Renaissance Worldwide Global IT and management consulting firm providing innovative business and technology services. www.rens.com RHO Inc. Information technology consulting company providing a wide range of consulting and software support products and services. Located in Hillborough, New Jersey. www.rhoinc.com Rothstein Associates Inc. Provides original articles, a disaster recovery forum, business survival newsletter, industry news and consulting services. www.rothstein.com S Sapient Corp IT consultants providing Internet strategy, sophisticated end-‐to-‐end solutions, and launch support. www.sapient.com Sarcom Inc Enterprise technology services and solutions. www.sarcom.com Information Technology Services Offers Application development, Data migrations, RDBA, 24x7 monitoring, DB maintenance and administration, Performance tuning, and other IT services. www.sats.net Severn Group International project management consultancy focused on the management of information technology and business change. www.severngroup.com SmallCart Systems An IT Service Management Consulting company that improves organizations' internal IT processes by applying best practices & ITSM Software using ITIL. www.smallcart.com Source One An ebusiness solutions provider of Web and Palm based software applications, networking architecture, and technology consulting. www.source1solutions.com SRA International Inc Information technology firm that provides systems integration, consulting, and electronic commerce services and solutions. www.sra.com


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Strategus Partners Provider of information technology consulting services and training. www.strategus.com.hk Information Technology Services Desktop to Data Center Protection. Reduce backup storage costs. Visit the Official Symantec Website! www.symantec.com Synertech Provider of network design, database structure and system design, analysis, and consulting. www.synertech.net Sytel Inc. eBusiness consulting and network services to commercial and government enterprises. www.sytel.com T Technatomy Corporation Sspecializes in information technology, program management, and logistics and engineering services. www.technatomy.com TechWeb Technologies IT consultant specializing in end-‐to-‐end ecommerce solutions, networking and integration, enterprise resource plannning (ERP) and multimedia packages. www.techwebindia.com Telos Corp. Information technology corporation that develops Internet and enable Business-‐to-‐Business (B2B) and Business-‐to-‐Government (B2G) e-‐marketplaces. www.telos.com Total Tec Systems Inc Premier enterprise solutions integrators focused on providing comprehensive IT solutions. www.totaltec.com Hands-On, Instructor-Led Computer / IT Training Instructor-‐led information technology (IT) training in 75 cities. Learn Java, SQL, NET, and more. On-‐site training available. Request a free proposal. www.traininghott.com Triad Centers Firm specializing in software applications, databases, network and Internet/web development. www.triadcenters.com Troux Technologies Provider of application relationship management solutions designed to enable IT organizations to blueprint the inter-‐dependencies that exist between application components within their IT environment. www.troux.com U UNI.C Government institution under the Danish Ministry of Education that connects schools in Denmark to the Internet. Also provides IT solutions to the business

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community in areas including security and virtual reality services. www.uni-‐c.com WebMessenger International software engineering and IT consulting services company providing architecting, integrating and managing solutions to specific industry groups in the medical, wireless, telecommunications and digital media areas. www.unisystems.com UNITECH Provides design, development, implementation, and verification of information technology oriented products and management information system services. www.unitech1.com Integris Provider of mission-‐critical open systems, large-‐scale data center outsourcing, with a particular focus on distributed systems management, managed extranet services, managed network services, and infrastructure hosting. www.us.integris.com Userface Provider of user interface design and usability evaluation, with expertise in PC, Internet, intranet, touch-‐screen, iTV and wireless platforms. www.userface.net V VEGA Group Information technology (IT) services company providing consultancy and applied technology to help companies optimize business processes, implement new technology and develop staff. www.vegauk.co.uk VendorSolutions Provider of technology consulting, web site development, database programming and software integration. www.vendorsolutions.com Verizon Information Technologies, LLC Provider of information technology (IT) services, such as data center processing and outsourcing. www.verizon.com Vital Networks -‐ Focus On Your Business, Let Us Handle IT Vital Networks, Inc. provides professional IT consulting and outsourcing services to small and medium-‐sized businesses in the Sacramento area. www.vitalnetworks.com Voyus IT consulting firm possessing expertise in Microsoft, Novell, Citrix and Linux, offering services to small and mid-‐sized businesses. www.voyus.com W Wareforce Inc Single-‐source provider of information technology (IT) systems & services to large and mid-‐sized corporate. www.wareforce.com


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Whittman-‐Hart Inc. ebusiness solution providers, strategy, systems architecture and development. www.whittman-‐hart.com Wide Point Consulting company focusing on implementing strategies through custom application development, systems integration and web design. www.widepoint.com WS Atkins Worldwide provider of technology-‐based consulting and support services. www.wsatkins.co.uk World Wide Technology Inc Provider of ebusiness solutions, oracle solutions & services, document management & conversion services, and systems networking. www.wwt.com X Xantrion -‐ Computer Network Support Computer technical support -‐ Xantrion offers computer network support that allows growing businesses to compete and do more with fewer resources. www.xantrion.com Xpragma Provider of independent information technology consulting in areas such as ebusiness strategy, IT business alignment, IT strategy development and enterprise application integration (EAI). www.xpragma.com Xwave Solutions Canadian company that provides engineering software solutions, systems integration, IT consulting and enterprise management for both national and international clients. www.xwavesolutions.com Xways.net Provider of web development, web hosting, software development, news service and training. www.xways.net Y Yomi Oyj Finnish technology company serving the telecommunications and information technology sector. www.yomi.com Z Zero One Technology Outsourced IT support & consultancy services offering affordable, bespoke managed IT solutions & hardware supply to SME & large corporate businesses.

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