Service Management for Dummies®

Introduction

Welcome to Service Management For Dummies. We think a service-driven economy makes this topic increasingly important. Clearly, the way people manage business and IT services is changing dramatically. Companies get into trouble when they don't look at their physical and business assets as a unified measure of their ability to manage customers' expectations and experiences.

We think you should focus on the intersection of business strategy, IT strategy, planning, and operations. Companies that plan to create an integrated service management platform are in a great position to evolve as opportunities and threats emerge.

Service management isn't a quick fix: It's stages of maturity that make your company better able to compete in a changing world. We hope that this book inspires you to take a different look at this very complicated and important area.

About This Book

Service management is a big topic covering lots of important issues that you must understand, whether you're managing a data center, virtualizing your computing environment, looking for best practices, or getting a handle on all the technologies you need. We tie our service management discussions directly to the issue that companies care about most: meeting the key performance indicators for their businesses. We think that understanding service management from a business perspective better prepares you to help your company succeed.

We recommend starting with Part I, because it puts into context the new way of thinking ...