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Master The Service Catalog Solution
Landscape In 2013
by Eveline Oehrlich and Courtney Bartlett, June 12, 2013 | Updated: June 21,
2013
For: Infrastructure
& Operations
Professionals
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The Shift From IT To BT Requires A Service Catalog As A Catalyst
Business technology (BT) is essential for success today. Te path to BT involves
identifying, and mapping together, business and technology strategies, which need to be
expressed in business and IT services. A service catalog is a catalyst for this intersection.
Service Catalog Benets Are Both Unique And Standard
No two service catalog initiatives are alike, as they support a variety of IT and business
needs. But all initiatives streamline the supply chain of services consumed by and
provided to business users with various service types, levels, and providers. Some benefts
are unique to your business, while others come from standard supply chain models.
Choose A Vendor Relative To Your Maturity Level
Managing via a service portfolio requires the implementation of service catalogs
with the right automation tools. Te process begins with the goals, associating and
prioritizing of the business goals, and demands and problems to solve, then continues
with identifying automation solutions that provide a service catalog solution to support
the goals.
2013, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available
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FOR INFRASTRUCTURE & OPERATIONS PROFESSIONALS
WHY READ THIS REPORT
Te successful IT organization no longer just keeps the lights on this organization enables the business
with technology, and it partners with the business to achieve organizationwide goals. To facilitate this shif,
IT organizations must now focus on the support, delivery, and operations of services rather than IT
technologies. To do this you must have a service catalog. But most service catalogs today simply describe
the capabilities and available services that IT ofers to the business. Forrester recommends IT infrastructure
and operations (I&O) leaders evolve their service catalog into a strategic control point for the business to
enable visibility, agility, and control. Without one, your business will struggle. Tis report examines the
service catalog imperative and helps I&O professionals understand their maturity level and get a hold on
the diverse service catalog solution landscape, as choosing the proper tool is vital to catalog success.
Table Of Contents
As IT Evolves, The Demand For Services
Catalogs Increases
Service Catalogs Deliver Benets That
Foster The IT To BT Transition
The Service Catalog Reference Architecture
And Maturity Levels
The Service Catalog Vendor Landscape
RECOMMENDATIONS
Take An Iterative Approach To Service
Catalog With The Right Vendor
WHAT IT MEANS
Service Catalog Shifts To A Strategic Control
Point
Supplemental Material
Notes & Resources
Forrester incorporated feedback from
numerous end user and vendor interactions,
as well as various other client inquiry and
consulting engagements.
Related Research Documents
Five Steps To Transform Your IT Service
Management Strategy Today
August 29, 2012
Role Overview: Service Catalog Manager
November 6, 2009
Master The Service Catalog Solution Landscape In 2013
Use Your Service Catalog As A Strategic Control Point
by Eveline Oehrlich and Courtney Bartlett
with Doug Washburn, Stefan Ried, and Elizabeth Langer
2
7
10
17
14
18
19
JUNE 12, 2013
UPDATED: JUNE 21, 2013
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AS IT EVOLVES, THE DEMAND FOR SERVICES CATALOGS INCREASES
Long ago IT evolved from being a peripheral part of organizations internal systems and technology
to playing a central and important role within the business. Ever-increasing business demands,
availability of new technologies, and new business models for acquiring technology have changed
how technology is managed today; Forrester calls this new era business technology (BT).
1
Te shif from IT to BT requires new models for how technology is delivered, operated, and
supported. Services must be defned, and there is no right or wrong way to do this. Te intersection
between what technologies the business consumes and what IT delivers is called a service, and
diferent organizations will have diferent preferences, approaches, and maturity levels for defning
their services. Forrester believes services should be primarily defned from a customer point of view,
or with a particular business outcome in mind.
As IT moves from being a provider of technologies to a broker of services involving technology, a
comprehensive service catalog becomes imperative for the health and future of the business.
The Service Catalog And Its Relationship To Service Portfolio Management
Based on nearly 300 inquiries over the past 18 months with Forrester clients about service catalogs,
weve observed a lot of confusion, especially as to how the service catalog relates to the service
portfolio, service models, and service assets. Tis section sets the stage for how to defne a service
catalog and the value it brings.
ITIL v3 defnes a service catalog as a structured database or document with information about all
live services, including those available for deployment.
2
Te service catalog should be published
in an easy to read and use format. But its important to remember that the catalog is only part of a
broader concept called service portfolio management (SPM), which ITIL v3 defnes as:
A complete list of the services managed by a service provider; some of these services are visible
to the customers, while others are not. It contains present contractual commitments, new service
development, and ongoing service improvement plans initiated by Continual Service Improvement.
It also includes third-party services which are an integral part of service oferings to customers.
3
In other words, SPM is the process of managing all of the components of the service portfolio. Its
the interrelationship of these components that defnes the value of a service, depending on context
and related assets. To make sure were all speaking the same language for the remainder of this
report, here are the key components of the service portfolio, including the service catalog:
Te service models are the capabilities. Service models are high-level constructs, or families
of services relevant and valuable to the business and IT. Tey are a way to organize diferent
relative IT capabilities and are building blocks for the service catalog. Within ITIL, service
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models are known as portfolio principles, which can be translated to the lines of services.
Service models are further detailed with service components, deliverables, prices, contact points,
ordering, and requesting procedures completed via a service catalog (see Figure 1).
Te service archetypes are the activities. Service archetypes describe what the service model
is and how it is used. Tey are business models, or activities, which act on the service models
and can be reused for diferent models or families. For example, within an application service
service model, the service archetypes are leasing, design, and development (see Figure 2).
Te service assets are the ingredients. Te next component that plays an important role
within the service portfolio is the service asset. At the highest level, these are the resources or
capabilities needed to support the activities (service archetypes) in the ongoing management of
the service models. Taking our application service model a step further, an example of a service
asset under the development service archetype would be a data warehouse application.
Te service catalog is the ofering. Te service catalog is how diferent service models,
including service assets, are exposed to business users. Te most basic version of a service
catalog is ofen compared to a restaurant menu: Te service catalog is how IT (the cooks in
the kitchen) communicates to the business (restaurant goers) what services (food and drink
options) are available for consumption, at what price and service level. Te future of the service
catalog is as a much more dynamic strategic control point, like a highly sophisticated vending
machine that works with automated chefs, in hybrid kitchens, 24x7.
Te service portfolio is the life cycle. Te service portfolio is the representation of all a business
service ofering across various phases: planned, currently designed, already in operation, retired.
Te management of this life cycle is called the service portfolio management process.
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Figure 1 Break Down Your Service Model First: Service Model Examples
Source: Forrester Research, Inc. 93821
Service model type Defnition Target audience Example Service archetype
Technical services Describes the
technical type of
the primary
component
Business user
IT user
Network
Database
Server
Desktop
Manage, operate,
maintain
Application services Describes the
application that the
business user
leverage
Business user Email
Sales automation
CRM
Lease, license,
provide
Business services A combination or
cross-discipline of
other services
supporting a
business process
Business user Online shop
Payroll
Quarterly fnancial
cycles
Process, fulfll,
record
Support services Capability of a
specifc IT capability
Business user
IT user
Desktop support
Mobile user support
Manage, operate,
maintain
Infrastructure
services
Core services
typically supporting
other service models
IT user File space
management
System access
Security services
Manage, operate,
maintain
Role-based services Services that are
related to a particular
role play
Business user
IT user
Consulting services
Project management
services
Reporting services
Facilities services
Design, develop,
engineer
Actionable services Services that fulfll
a specifc need
Business user
IT user
Software
provisioning
Hardware
provisioning
IMAC installation,
moves, and change
services
Connect, integrate
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Figure 2 Business Service Example: Onboarding Of Employee
Source: Forrester Research, Inc. 93821
Technical service:
assign desktop
Application service:
establish email
Support service:
enable desktop service
Infrastructure service:
enable security
Facility service:
set up physical workspace
Service Catalog Initiatives Are Fueled By The Business
No matter what kind of service catalog service request, service automation, or strategic control
point there must be a compelling business reason behind the initiative. Te needs and goals of
the business will not only determine the purpose of the service catalog, they will also aid in building
a business case. Here is a range of important reasons for a service catalog efort:
Te need to lef-shif the service support function. Lef-shifing is the process of identifying
where issues are resolved in the tiered support model (i.e., who resolves what), and then
targeting repetitive and reoccurring issues for resolution closer to the customer. One example is
implementing a self-service capability where business users can log their own incidents, check
the progress of those incidents, or skip the incident log altogether by use of knowledge articles.
Te success and purpose rests in eliminating calls into the service desk. Self-help is an example
of lef-shifing and can be implemented via a service catalog. A recent Help Desk Institute
(HDI) study showed that 12% of support centers have received a nearly 32% decrease in ticket
volume due to the introduction of self-help.
4
Te need for a central service request system. A central service requests system provides
a service request management process. Tis not only improves IT operational efciency, but
it also drives down both request fulfllment times and costs while giving business users a
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single place to submit requests. Tis single point of contact benefts business users and IT, as
it streamlines all IT and business requests, allowing the business to track forecasted demand
patterns and analyze service request metrics to optimize service delivery. One community
council uses its service catalog as a single source the community can consult for all public
services, from reporting road faults to severe weather information.
5
Its sometimes difcult
to show the benefts or cost savings of a central request system, but the community council
attached a dollar fgure to ensuing reductions in full-time equivalents (FTEs), change requests,
incidents, and service request tickets.
Te need for central brokering and orchestration of technology. Todays business users want
frictionless IT and the autonomy to choose and use whatever they want, while IT is concerned
with growing complexity and loss of control due to the fast development of new cloud and hybrid
service models. Tis is precisely where service catalogs become mechanisms of orchestration and
standardization, providing both choice and value. Te term standardization here means the
defnition of standard oferings in a catalog, described with clarifcation that a business user can
understand, confgure, and order via self-service. Tese services can then be automatically
translated into specifcations to drive automation of delivery of the services, while at the same
time allowing IT to govern the services relative to demand, service levels, cost, and performance.
Te need for agile business enablement. Business process management (BPM) solutions
have teamed up with document imaging and workfow to automate and streamline paper-
intensive business process. Tese solutions have their place in the enterprise and provide and
support the automation of business processes.
6
But in many organizations, BPM solutions cant
be changed or adopted fast enough to tackle simpler business challenges to improve business
users efciency and worker productivity. Tis is where business service catalogs can augment
or complement business process management solutions, as they can provide the automation
and correlation of a business service such as the onboarding of an employee, and all related IT
services are being implemented by business users and IT folks in conjunction with each other.
Te need for IT governance. End-to-end process governing and tracking the way assets enter
and exist in the organization are essential to achieve the highest return on investment (ROI)
for the lowest cost. One vendor stated that IT governance is imperative because you must have
a way to manage and document things, and service oferings within the service catalog are
a means to do this. Governance helps you understand the relationships and dependencies of
assets relative to the services they support, and it allows you to improve service availability and
reliability. As assets travel across the life cycle, from procurement to end-of-life, a service catalog
can be used to support vendor, contract, license, and fnancial managers, along with other IT
governance bodies, to manage and control IT assets.
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Te need to map business capabilities to business services. Tis is perhaps the most important
need and reason for a service catalog. A business service is set of processes, technologies, and
people, combined in an efort to enable a particular business capability. For example, an order-
to-cash business service requires people, processes, and technology resources to ensure cash
is received by the appropriate party when an order is placed. Business capabilities are typically
managed and supported by enterprise architecture groups, which understand how to map IT
assets to business services in support of business capabilities. Business service catalogs are top-
down capabilities that describe and defne ITs deliverables from a business perspective.
7
SERVICE CATALOGS DELIVER BENEFITS THAT FOSTER THE IT TO BT TRANSITION
Having a service catalog means you can go from being the department of no to the department
of know. Te benefts of the service catalog depend on its goals, purpose, scope, and the owner
of the initiative. In an October 2012 joint survey with the itSMF user group, Forrester found that
26% of organizations claim to have realized or exceeded the anticipated benefts (see Figure 3). Te
following lists the most common types of benefts all service catalogs can deliver:
Standard oferings and improved efciency. Standardizing service oferings means
maintaining fewer items, fewer images, and fewer confgurations. It also allows for version
control. Standardization helps BT organizations reduce or eliminate ad hoc requests that
otherwise require special handling. Because all services are defned and mapped to business
needs, you know exactly what you have, support only what you need, and ofer only what is
available. Tis streamlining improves efciency in service delivery and support, and it ultimately
reduces the cost of operations.
An empowered staf through self-service. Giving your employees the ability and autonomy to
solve their own problems via a unifed self-service platform not only increases their productivity
and job satisfaction, but it alleviates stresses on other areas of the business as well. Especially when
your service catalog is integrated and automated on the back end, calls into the service desk
decrease, as do request handling times. For example, one client cited an 80% reduction in handling
time. An engineering company always striving to help customers help themselves is constantly
adding self-service items to its catalog; the company has seen a signifcant reduction in level-one
support costs as a result. Self-service options allow business users to engage IT at their own
convenience, and they inspire rather than inhibit communication between the two. External
customers can also be empowered via an external service catalog with self-service options.
Service governance. Service governance gives you visibility that allows you to take proactive
control of your environment by understanding service demand, cost, and quality. Automated
approval processes enable intelligent asset provisioning and tracking to help you plan. You also
know what is in production, what versions are currently supported, and what has been retired.
Costs can be tied to diferent service levels (e.g., gold, silver, bronze), distributed across the
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organization, and tied back to the service catalog. Service-level agreements (SLAs), operational-
level agreements (OLAs), contracts, and ownership are maintained more easily because you
know whats available and who is accountable. You are constantly learning about your oferings
and environment and can therefore continuously improve both.
End-to-end value chain management. When the service catalog is not just an accessible front
end but also automated and integrated with a variety of IT processes (like problem, change, and
confguration management), IT operations teams are able to monitor, manage, and report on
requests from start to fnish. A service request from a business user sets of a value chain that
can be tracked within the entire IT organization, from the storefront request initiation to
product delivery or fulfllment. Many departments, providers, and partners are involved, and
the service catalog acts as service broker among service providers.
Enablement of new delivery models. When your service environment is streamlined and agile,
it can fuctuate with the business and embrace impending IT advancements. Opportunities such
as private and public clouds, data center migrations, and a growing mobile workforce can be
quickly leveraged and can be used as building blocks to a more successful future rather than as
obstacles to business operations.
Knowledge management. Knowledge management takes self-service a step further by giving
business users even more ways to solve problems on their own. Imagine typing a problem into
a search bar and being immediately presented with articles written by your peers relevant to
your issue, ranked by efectiveness. Knowledge management capabilities add convenience for
your employees, and they take even more stress of IT staf by allowing more time to be spent
on innovation. A midsized manufacturing organization credits its service catalog to freeing
up employees time to work on more strategic projects rather than fre-fghting. Over time, the
catalog only gets more sophisticated as more empowered employees add to the knowledge base.
Cost savings at the right place. According to fndings from HDI, 66% of surveyed
organizations saw an increase in ticket volume throughout 2012.
8
Growth of number of
customers, changes in infrastructure, and number of applications were the top three key reasons
for ticket growth, which is just a fact of business growth. However, 31% of organizations
experienced an increase of ticket volume due to supporting a mobile workforce. Forrester
Research data shows a growth from 15% to 29% in US and European information workers
working anytime and anywhere.
9
Inserting a service catalog that allows this mobile workforce
to receive, manage, and consume business and IT services will certainly reduce the cost of the
service support team.
Customer satisfaction. According to HDIs 2012 survey, 33% of all surveyed support centers are
conducting ongoing surveys of all closed tickets and another 36% respondents are conducting
ongoing surveys with random samples of closed tickets.
10
Tis seems to indicate that IT is
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interested in customer satisfaction. Customer experience is more than just closing tickets.
Establishing a single place for your business users to go where they can request and receive
services from either a business team or IT has immediate impact on customer satisfaction and
customer experience.
Figure 3 2012 Service Catalog Maturity Levels
Source: Forrester Research, Inc. 93821
Which of the following best describes your service catalog initiative?
We are not interested in a service catalog 2%
We are interested but currently lack the funds to
commence an initiative
12%
We are planning for a service catalog 16%
We are currently working on our
service catalog initiative
24%
We have a service catalog and have realized or
exceeded the anticipated benefts
18%
We have a service catalog but have not
realized the anticipated benefts
16%
We have killed our failed service catalog initiative 2%
Other 4%
Dont know 6%
Base: 192 IT service management professionals
Source: Forrester/itSMF Q3 2012 US ITSM Online Survey
But Lack Of Purpose, Proper Tools, Ownership, And Buy-In Inhibit Value
Along with service catalog successes, weve also seen service catalog failure. Tere are a number of
common barriers to adopting a service catalog, and, much like the benefts of adoption, they vary
from business to business. Here are a few common inhibitors to be aware of:
Lack of purpose. If a builder approached you with a mind to build a skyscraper but had no
architectural plan, no design conception, and no clue what materials were going to be used for
construction, youd be willing to bet that project would fail, right? Approaching a service catalog
with no clear goal, no clear purpose, and no desired outcome is just as crazy an undertaking,
and just as likely to fail. Understanding the purpose behind your service catalog is phase one
of your initiative. Its the blueprint and foundation. As maturity varies from one business to the
next, so will the sets of issues to solve, but a solid defnition of goals, scope, and purpose is both
paramount and constant for all organizations.
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Lack of proper tools. Weve all heard the saying there are no bad cars, only bad drivers. Te
same goes for service management and support tools. Many organizations struggle with a
history of bad tools and investments, a struggle that can be traced back to a purchase without
purpose. What tool your organization commits to is not a snap judgment, but one dependent on
the goals, scope, and purpose unique to your business. What works for one company may not
work for another, since maturity levels and purpose could difer. Te proper tool can help you
mature. For example, start with a set of tools that enable service request management, then grow
to service orchestration, and then to a service brokering model.
Lack of ownership. When we interviewed a large banking corporation on its IT service
management (ITSM) overhaul, it attributed an established and engaged team as the most
important component to the projects success. Why? Because it established ownership. Ownership
lends itself to accountability and pride, two ingredients for success. Without clearly defned roles,
management, governance, and maintenance lose direction. A service catalog owner or project
team responsible for the initiative itself, followed by the continuous refnement of existing services
and adding new services as needed, is vital to service catalog adoption and success.
12
Lack of executive buy-in. Executive sponsorship of your service catalog initiative opens a
number of doors. It enables funding, people, resources, and tools, and it is imperative for
success. Without it, you risk failure. But garnering executive support can be difcult. Build your
business case with a solid foundation (i.e., purpose).
THE SERVICE CATALOG REFERENCE ARCHITECTURE AND MATURITY LEVELS
To reap the most reward in the future from your service catalog initiative and the service catalog
vendor, you need to understand where you are today relative to your current maturity level. Te next
section describes the three levels of service catalog maturity, along with Forresters suggested service
catalog reference architecture. Te reference architecture is the ecosystem, and how the service
catalog communicates with that ecosystem determines the maturity level.
Three Levels Of Service Catalog Maturity
Te demand for a service catalog comes from a variety of constituencies, both in and outside of IT.
Depending on your organizations goals and reliance on technology, the demand and type of service
catalog will vary. Forrester defnes three levels of service catalog maturity, which build on each other:
Level 1: the service catalog as a service request model. Tis is a catalog based on the typical
infrastructure and operations model focusing on delivering IT services to consumers through
a standard set of choices and or requests. Choices are defned by families of either IT or
businesses services and include SLAs, costs, service options, and service owners. Abstract IT
oferings are expressed in human, understandable terms and choices. Examples of static service
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catalog oferings are the ability to request help around a specifc problem, the ability to log a
ticket, or even the ability to request an application or a sofware package (e.g., Microsof Visio).
Static service catalogs are a single point of entry both for requests from business users and for
the management of IT and the rest of the value chain. While automation can be focused on
certain tasks, its important to know that static service catalogs are just a front end to a variety of
activities and processes not yet automated.
Level 2: the service catalog as an enterprise service automation model. Two levels of
automation come into play in this second kind of catalog: process and decision. In addition,
policies and knowledge are leveraged from the confguration management database/service
information system (CMDB/SIS) throughout the process; all necessary updates and information
are stored in the asset management database, federated into the CMDB/SIS.
A great example of this is new employee onboarding. When a hiring manager enters a request
via the service catalog, a variety of IT or business services are initiated. One could be the
provisioning of a new laptop. Te request goes to the new hires manager for automatic approval
(decision automation), setting of a work order that enables a workforce computing member to
provision and ship a laptop (process automation) with all necessary confgurations and sofware
applications according to the individuals profle right to his or her desk.
Level 3: the service catalog as a service broker and strategic control point. Tis third model
is less a catalog and more a strategic control point. Task, process, and decision automation
orchestrate to manage a variety of processes and resources. Processes are integrated.
Information relative to actual workload, future workload, sourcing options, service agreements,
and other necessary details is available to the service consumer to balance supply and demand.
Service governance processes enable management of contacts, service levels, and policies, and
service integration is managed via tools spanning cloud and non-cloud resources. Tis cloud
broker model is a new business paradigm casting the service catalog as a strategic control point.
13
The Service Catalog Reference Architecture
Service catalogs comprise a variety of building blocks, which vary depending on the maturity and
goals of an organization. At the highest level, the service catalog focuses on demand from the
business and supply from IT. Tis is then supported by a number of other attributes. In all, this
creates the service catalog reference architecture, which includes three categories (see Figure 4).
Te highest level service catalog architecture comprises:
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Demand side from the business. Tis is the highest level of the service catalog. Its the front
end, the portal, or the menu that presents only services that solve business user problems
relevant to the demand of the business. It should be simple, intuitive, and in laymans terms
too much detail complicates user experience. Less is more. Te services should encapsulate all
underlying capabilities such as assets, equipment, applications, and IT processes, as well as tie in
SLAs and aggregate costs. Te demand side of a service catalog is focused on business demand,
not technical needs.
Supply-side capabilities of IT. Tis aspect of the service catalog is built to meet the demands of
the business; it is an ecosystem of what the business is capable of delivering. Again, less is more:
Tis side of the catalog should be established in as simple a structure as possible, be able to
capture contributions from business users, and be able to adapt when business and technology
drivers change. Te technical service catalog and the business service catalog (described in
greater detail below) reside here as communication platforms both visible to and requiring
input from business stakeholders: executives, users, account managers, service managers,
enterprise architects, fnancial controllers, and system technicians.
Te middle level service catalog architecture comprises:
Consumers of the service catalog. Consumers can be anyone, from internal non-IT employees,
to technical support staf, to C-level executives, business partners, contractors, external
customers, and beyond. Tese service catalog stakeholders all require services, and the service
catalog is where they will come to get them. Service catalogs ofer and encourage business
users to use a one-stop-shopping model for all consumers and therefore avoid the shadow IT
investments happening in many organizations.
14
Interfaces. Te interface is the access point for the service catalog users. Its through an interface
that a service is kicked of and the fulfllment process begins. Te interface could, and should,
be available from a desktop, laptop, mobile device, web browser, or any other kind of technology
used for communication purposes by the business during all hours. Te anytime, anywhere
workers trend is driving the adoption of service catalogs even more, as these workers are
consuming services from anywhere at any time.
15
Te business service catalog. Te business service catalog is what the business users and
external customers will see. It must be clearly organized, designed, defned, and aligned with
the needs of the business. Each business service can comprise any number of IT or technical
services. During the fulfllment process, requests move from the business service catalog to the
technical service catalog and vice versa.
Te technical service catalog. Te technical service catalog contains all of the IT services the IT
organization provides to the business or to other members of IT. Ofen these are building blocks
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for the services ofered within the business service catalog, but they can also be made available
directly to the business user or IT users. However, non-IT employees rarely work directly with
the technical services catalog. Technical service catalogs are typically used by (and can be
designed by) enterprise architecture, infrastructure, sourcing and vendor management, and
application development teams.
Te lower level service catalog architecture comprises:
Te service information system. Te SIS is the brain of your IT infrastructure; it contains
the details of all confguration items (CIs) in your environment.
16
When built and managed
correctly, this entity is continuously discovering the IT assets that are the building blocks of your
technical and business services. Once discovered, these assets are used to describe and detail the
diferent kinds of service models (described above). Service levels, operational levels, and other
details are part of the service asset, and they are described and communicated to the business
via the SIS.
External service providers and service delivery systems. IT portfolio management is
continuously changing. Forrester is seeing hybrid models of the data center, multiple
outsourcing partners, and cloud service providers emerging.
17
Tis portfolio of external service
providers and service delivery system inevitably complicates the service portfolio, as in many
organizations, cloud services complement internal service environments. Te service catalog
intermixes in-house resources and data with externally hosted resources and data, gathering all
of those choices under one clear roof.
Integration with IT systems and business applications. Both the business service catalog and
technical service catalog require workfow integrations with other business and IT applications
to efectively support business users and IT. Tese integrations can be grouped into two key
areas: integration with IT systems, and integration with business applications. An IT system
integration could be an ITSM solution integration aiding in back-end process management;
these kinds of integrations are key for supporting service availability and performance. For
example, a business user could kick of an incident management process via the catalog by
reporting an issue with application response time. Business application integrations augment
the service catalogs with additional process fows. One example is the human resources (HR)
system integration used to kick of an employee onboarding request.
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Figure 4 Te Service Catalog Reference Architecture
Source: Forrester Research, Inc. 93821
CMDB/
SIS
External service providers
S
e
r
v
i
c
e

d
e
l
i
v
e
r
y

s
y
s
t
e
m
Employees Contractors Partners Service providers
Demand Requests SLAs Prices Knowledge
KPIs
Any interface mobile and web
Customers
State/health
Business service catalog Technical service catalog
Cloud
services
Department
services
Supplier
services
IT services
OLAs
Costs
Workfow OCs
Databases Release
Middlew. Network Apps
Hardware
Integration ERP
LDAP
ITSM
CRM HR PPM
BPM
Asset management Homegrown
BC/DR
Software BC/DR
D
e
m
a
n
d
S
u
p
p
l
y

c
a
p
a
b
i
l
i
t
y
Business processes
THE SERVICE CATALOG VENDOR LANDSCAPE
Te service catalog vendor landscape is diverse. From standalone solutions to ITSM vendors large
and small, service catalog solutions are defned relative to the problem and maturity of the client
they are designed for and target (see Figure 5). No one vendor is better than another. Some vendors
focus on service request management needs, while others cater toward more mature customers with
clearly defned business and IT processes who are looking to hook them into a single self-service
portal. In Forresters assessment, the vendor landscape can be divided into the following categories
(see Figure 6):
Enterprise service request solutions. Tese are front-end solutions, capable of automating a
variety of tasks ranging from self-service requests to simple workfows that kick of process-
based solutions to fulfll specifc requests. Enterprise service request solutions can be standalone
solutions that can be integrated with other business systems and applications like customer
relationship management (CRM), ITSM, or HR to allow requests and actions to be automated
and fulflled. Many have a set of frequently occurring out-of-the-box service requests, and they
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can therefore manage and orchestrate the demand side from business users. Tis solution is best
suited for customers in the service request service catalog model.
Enterprise service catalog solutions. Tis type of solution is either part of a larger ITSM suite
or a standalone function that enables the orchestration of any variety of processes, from request
submission to fulfllment. Enterprise service catalog solutions have the ability to either defne
their own service models or receive models from the CMDB/SIS. Typically, these solutions are
found within mega IT management and ITSM vendor portfolios, as other service management
processes such as incident, problem, and change are required to take action on the services
within the service models. Many of these solutions can partner with other vendors, which
alleviates mobile, desktop, and partnering challenges. Customization requiring little coding to
build service models is another valuable aspect of this group. Tis solution is leveraged by more
mature customers looking to tie defned business processes and IT services into a single self-
service portal.
Enterprise strategic control point solutions. Tese solutions industrialize the delivery of any
variation of business technologies necessary to source and fulfll the requirements of the business.
Not only can enterprise strategic control point solutions automate service processes and requests,
they can also be leveraged to enable, manage, and optimize hybrid environments including
diferent cloud options. Brokering solutions are typically decoupled from ITSM solutions, but
they can be and ofen are integrated with other IT management solutions like performance
monitoring, workload, and provisioning solutions. Enterprise service brokering solutions are in
their frst stage of evolution, and they will continue to evolve given the growing need to advance
in the cloud management space. Customers of this solution are of the highest maturity.
Todays vendor landscape is focused on the immediate need to help business users manage the
demand and supply side of the services available. Some solutions can broker the demand and
supply of resources available from the diferent cloud models and internal available resources. Tese
solutions are extending their capabilities at the same time that new cloud business models are being
developed. Te future of service catalog does lie in the opportunity to bring together a variety of
cloud management infrastructure and automation process solutions that function as cloud brokers.
Te purpose of these solutions is to manage spare resource capacity of all three cloud domains
private, virtual private, and public clouds and to fnd enough resources to ofer to clients.
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Figure 5 A Large Service Catalog Vendor Landscape
Vendor Solution name
Service
request
management
Enterprise
service catalog
solutions
Enterprise
service
brokering
solutions
HP Service catalog part of IT service
management solution/HP service manager
O O
Serena
Software
Serena Request Center
Serena Enterprise Service Catalog
O O
CA
Technologies
CA Service Catalog
O O O
IBM SmartCloud Control Desk O O O
Cherwell
Software
Service catalog as part of ITSM solution O O
Axios Systems Axios assyst O O
EasyVista Service catalog as part of ITSM solution O O
ServiceNow Service catalog as part of ITSM solution O O
ITRP Service catalog as part of ITSM solution O
Enstratius*
Kinetic Data Kinetic Request request management O O
FrontRange Service catalog as part of ITSM solution O O
ASG Service catalog and request
management (CloudFactory)
O O
PMG O O
Cisco Systems Cisco Prime Service Catalog O
BMC Software Service catalog capabilities as part of
BMC Remedy ITSM Suite
BMC FootPrints Service Catalog
BMC Remedyforce Service Catalog
O
O
O
O
O
O
Biomni FrontOfce Essential
FrontOfce Express
FrontOfce Enterprise
FrontOfce Service Provider
O
O
O O
O O
O
O
O
Jamcracker* O
ServiceMash* O
O
*Evaluations of select vendors were based on published information, rather than interviews.
PMG Service Catalog Suite
O
O
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Figure 6 Service Catalog Maturity Model
Source: Forrester Research, Inc. 93821
Automation
maturity level
Low High
Business
impact
Tactical
Strategic
Excel sheets
PowerPoints
Word documents
Enterprise
request
management
solutions
Enterprise
service
catalog
solutions
Enterprise
service
brokering
solutions
RE COMME NDAT I ONS
TAKE AN ITERATIVE APPROACH TO SERVICE CATALOG WITH THE RIGHT VENDOR
A service catalog implementation can feel like an overwhelming task, starting with the defnition
of service models, service defnitions, and possible service costs. Its essential to understand the
immediate purpose and goal and therefore what benefts the service catalog will provide. To succeed
at your service catalog initiative, Forrester recommends that IT I&O professionals:
Determine goals and timelines but be realistic. When defning the goals for your service
catalog, its necessary to understand both the short- and long-term strategic business
goals. Tese will help you balance your investment and decisions on where to focus your
initiative. For example, if enabling your mobile workforce is a top business goal, emphasize
building a service catalog that allows the provisioning and support of devices, sofware, and
mobile support. Once youve determined your goals, the next step is to defne a timeline.
Service catalog initiatives require many steps: stakeholder defnitions, service catalog
design sessions, integration planning with existing tools and processes, tool selection, and
actual implementation, to name a few. To ensure progress and success, determine a realistic
timeline for your plan.
Pick one area to work on, and expand to others. Trying to tackle all technical and business
capabilities at once is a nice ambition, but its not necessarily a good goal. A better approach
is to choose one area, pain point, or domain to focus on possibly something where
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you can make a diference, and which is a good showcase for continual improvement and
expansion and then focus. Following this frst phase, its possible to build upon that
experience and learning with the next iteration and extension.
Assign ownership and involve stakeholders. Lack of ownership is a barrier to successful
service catalog adoption. One adopter established a project team composed of individuals
who had good process background and a good understanding of business requirements.
Tis team assigned roles and responsibilities and met frequently to check on progress. It
also brought in people from various departments and kept them informed of the impact to
their department relative to the service catalog initiative. Understanding the stakeholders is
a critical success factor for a service catalog initiative. Forrester recommends following the
stakeholder involvement model.
18
Be iterative, continually improve, and market your successes. A service catalog is
a continual improvement efort with a specifc start, but it has no real end. One major
ITSM vendor shared with us its own service catalog journey; it took the vendor six
implementations, mapping its business services down to their technical components, before
it could consider the project complete. Service catalog initiatives can start small, focusing
on a particular task, organization, or process. However, there are many business and IT
partners and other stakeholders that all could beneft from a service catalog. To grow your
service catalog into an enterprisewide initiative, its important to market and showcase the
work across the organization internally and externally of IT.
Tink tools for today and for tomorrow. Te vendor landscape is flled with tools that allow
you to make progress no matter where you are and where you want to go. Its important to
understand your goals and determine your vendor solution relative to them. Tools are there
to automate and support the use cases you have designed. Its essential to bring together all
key stakeholders in understanding their goal of service automation. In some cases, your
service catalog tied to your service desk or ITSM solution might be just good enough for
todays purpose. In other cases, you might need to grow and look at solutions that decouple
your service catalog from the service desk to support broader use cases in the management
and brokering of cloud services or beyond.
WHAT I T ME ANS
SERVICE CATALOG SHIFTS TO A STRATEGIC CONTROL POINT
In the future, the term service catalog may be rendered obsolete, as a service catalog initiative is so
much more than just a catalog its the management of the life cycle of various services demanded
and consumed by the business users and lines of business.
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Todays vendor landscape is still very fractioned into solutions that are all trying to broker that
ecosystem. Te service catalog, when seen as a broker, is a strategic control point to orchestrate,
optimize, and govern a variety of business technology resources to support the demands of the
business community. Tis service broker will become the one place that connects IT with the lines
of business to deliver:
Service excellence. Standard oferings and a streamlined portfolio allow IT to ofer services
more efectively. Compound that with intelligence gained by using demand, knowledge,
and fnancial management capabilities, and IT will be able to meet the high expectations of
business users while also lowering costs and allowing for adoption of new technologies and
business models, such as the cloud.
Operational excellence. Tis goes hand in hand with service excellence. Service catalogs
facilitate the automation of tasks, processes, and decisions, ofering a sustainable foundation
on which to deliver quality services.
Service catalogs and service broker solutions evolve todays IT closer to a true BT organization by
supplying the right service or resources at the right time and at the right price.
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
Companies Interviewed For This Report
ASG
Axios Systems
Biomni
BMC Sofware
CA Technologies
Cherwell Sofware
Cisco Systems
EasyVista
FrontRange Solutions
HP
IBM
ITRP
Kinetic Data
PMG
Serena Sofware
ServiceNow
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ENDNOTES
1
Forrester defnes the new operating model of empowered BT as the relentless revolution in which the
business is sourcing and managing more and more technology outside ITs direct control. For more
information on how this movement is afecting infrastructure and operations, and how I&O professionals
can successfully handle it, see the April 18, 2013, Reinvent The Role Of Infrastructure And Operations
Executive In 2013 report.
2
ITIL defnes a service catalog as: A database or structured document with information about all live IT
services, including those available for deployment. Te service catalogue is part of the service portfolio and
contains information about two types of IT service: customer-facing services that are visible to the business;
and supporting services required by the service provider to deliver customer-facing services. See also
customer agreement portfolio; service catalog management. Source: ITIL (http://www.itil-ofcialsite.com/
InternationalActivities/ITILGlossaries_2.aspx).
3
Source: ITIL (http://www.itil-ofcialsite.com/InternationalActivities/ITILGlossaries_2.aspx).
4
Source: Help Desk Institute (HDI), 2012 (http://www.thinkhdi.com).
5
Te Fife Council is a unitary authority that provides roughly 900 diferent services to more than 360,000
residents of Fife, Scotland. Fife Council implemented a service catalog using Axios Systems enterprise
service assyst solution with great success, and Forrester will be publishing a case study on their service
catalog next quarter.
6
Business process management has not only played a substantial role in driving back-ofce efciency,
process automation, and workforce productivity, but Forrester believes BPM will help businesses handle
the increasingly complex and disruptive IT environment. For more information on what Forrester has
identifed as the 10 most signifcant sofware providers in the BPM suite, see the March 11, 2013, The
Forrester Wave: BPM Suites, Q1 2013 report.
7
Business services connect people, processes, and technology resources to the business outcomes they
enable, and business service catalogs describe what oferings IT ofers to support the business. To ensure a
complete, connected, and successful business service catalog, you must get input from the entire business,
especially your enterprise architecture team, which can assist in mapping IT assets to business services. For
more information, see the March 26, 2009, Enterprise Architects Should Lead Business Service Portfolio
Definition report.
8
Source: Help Desk Institute (HDI), 2012 (http://www.thinkhdi.com).
9
For more information and a data-driven understanding of which devices, platforms, and apps matter to an
increasingly mobile, and global, workforce, see the February 4, 2013, 2013 Mobile Workforce Adoption
Trends report.
10
Source: Help Desk Institute (HDI), 2012 (http://www.thinkhdi.com).
11
We delve deeper into how to develop a service catalog to describe IT services supporting business services
that in turn support business processes. See the October 28, 2009, Service Catalog Your Prerequisite For
Effective IT Service Management report.
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12
Clear ownership, not just of the services within the service catalog, but of the catalog itself, is key for
success. For more information on the role and responsibilities of the service catalog manager, see the
November 6, 2009, Role Overview: Service Catalog Manager report.
13
We defne the current and future business models surrounding cloud computing and outline why the cloud
broker model is the most promising cloud approach, especially when it comes to service delivery models.
See the August 10, 2011, Cloud Broker A New Business Model Paradigm report.
14
Your customers are going to go afer what IT services they want and need to be more successful and
productive employees whether your IT department provides it or not. For more information on how I&O
professionals can make the transition from an internally focused ITSM model to a customer-obsessed,
service-focused, and automated service management and automation (SMA) paradigm, see the August 29,
2012, Five Steps To Transform Your IT Service Management Strategy Today report.
15
Te number of anytime, anywhere information workers those who use three or more devices, work from
multiple locations, and use many apps has risen from 23% of the global workforce in 2011 to 29% in
2012. With tablets tripling to 905 million in use for work and home globally by 2017, the anytime, anywhere
work trend is just getting started. See the February 4, 2013, 2013 Mobile Workforce Adoption Trends
report.
16
CMDB? SIS? Which one it is? Te SIS is the CMDB, reimagined. Te old-school confguration management
database is indeed a failure to avoid. Pursue a SIS instead. See the December 6, 2011, Reinvent The
Obsolete But Necessary CMDB report.
17
Te future of cloud computing will be driven by the enterprise requirements of the future, not the past, and
the landscape is shifing to cover a broader range of needs. Sofware-as-a-service (SaaS) and infrastructure-
as-a-service (IaaS) models are becoming more fexible, cloud infrastructures are evolving to provide a
virtualized match for nearly every infrastructure combination found in data centers today, and Forrester
believes cloud services and platforms will become core members of your IT portfolio during the next fve
years. For more information on the shifs taking place in the cloud landscape and how it afects businesses,
vendors, and service providers, see the December 10, 2012, Cloud Keys An Era Of New IT Responsiveness
And Efficiency report.
18
For an interactive tool and fve-step guide for properly identifying, assessing, and engaging key stakeholders
throughout your service catalog initiative, see the May 28, 2013, Five Steps To Assess The Real Power Of
Your Stakeholders report.
Forrester Research, Inc. (Nasdaq: FORR) is an independent research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to
global leaders in business and technology. Forrester works with professionals in 13 key roles at major companies providing proprietary
research, customer insight, consulting, events, and peer-to-peer executive programs. For more than 29 years, Forrester has been making
IT, marketing, and technology industry leaders successful every day. For more information, visit www.forrester.com. 93821

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IAN OLIVER, client persona representing Infrastructure & Operations Professionals
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