Services Inventory and Attributes

Applications enable Services. An Application is a software solution that runs in an operating environment to support one or more business or technical capabilities; a Service is a defined, governed offering that may be enabled by one or more Applications. The IF4IT Service Management Best Practices document is explicit that Applications are not automatically Services — the Application is an enabling asset, and the Service is the governed value-delivery offering it makes possible. The Services Inventory connects to the IF4IT Applications Inventory and Attributes through the Realizing Applications attribute in the Technical Attributes category.

The relationship is many-to-many: a single Application may enable many Services (a CRM application may enable customer onboarding services, account management services, reporting services, and notification services), and a single Service may depend on many Applications (an Employee Onboarding service may depend on the HR system, the IAM platform, the email system, and the ITSM platform). This relationship enables joint APM and Service Management analysis: which Applications would impact which Services if they were changed, retired, or unavailable; which Services would be disrupted by Application portfolio rationalization decisions; and which Services should be redesigned when their enabling Applications are modernized.