Managing IT Services From the Outside In

The processes and technologies employed to do Service-Level Management (SLM) in IT organizations have changed dramatically in recent years. Companies have been adopting the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) best practices to standardize and measure their own work processes and ensure better quality of service to their users. While the main impact of these improvements so far has been on management of the services and processes that IT itself performs (IT Service Management [ITSM]), some companies are also now beginning to monitor and measure the quality of services that IT actually supports (Business Service Management [BSM]).