Application Operations

Module 1: ITIL Introduction and Core Concepts

Capsule 2: ITIL Core Concepts

Audio Script

Slide 1: Background music.

Slide 2: Welcome to this video course on Application Operations.

Slide 3: You are now watching module 1 on ITIL introduction and core concepts. Capsule 2
discusses about ITIL core concepts.

Slide 4: Welcome back!

In the previous capsule you were introduced to the concept of ITIL.

We shall now go through the core concepts of ITIL that are essential to understand the ITIL
Service Lifecycle approach.

Slide 5: At the end of this video you will be able to.

 Define services, service assets, service provider and stakeholders.

 List the types of services, service providers and stakeholders
 And, describe processes, functions and roles.

Slide 6: Before we begin our session, let us refresh our memory. What is service?

Service is a means of delivering value to customers by facilitating the outcomes that the
customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks.

I T service comprises of three different components.

 Core Services.
 Enabling Services.
 Enhancing Services.

To understand these three types of services, you need to understand your customer and the
value they expect to receive from I T.

Slide 7: A core service is a service that must be there for any value to be delivered.

Enabling services are those that must be in place for a core service to be delivered. They are
generally never "sold" to a customer and the customer does not know that they exist.
Services that are added to the core service to make it more enticing to the customer are
called enhancing services. These services are not absolutely required. One must be careful
when providing enhancing services as it increases the cost of the service and may not result
in increasing the value as much.

Slide 8: Let us take an example of ATM machine to better understand the types of services.

As a core service, an ATM must provide the functionality to withdraw money.

For an ATM, enabling services would include the servers, database and network connectivity
needed to deliver the core service of cash withdrawal.

The enhancing services may include request for cheque book, ability to change the
communication address or contact number, or receiving the receipt through e-mail instead
of paper.

Service package is a combination of core, enabling and enhancing services that are offered
together to the customer.

Slide 9: Types of services change over time. Now we can make secure deposits into your
account through an ATM. This service was earlier considered to be an enhancing service,
which has now become a core service. Things that are new and innovative today can be a
requirement tomorrow.

Slide 10: Next, we shall go through the definition of Service Asset.

Service Assets consist of resources and capabilities that the organization uses to deliver the
value in the form of services.

Slide 11: Capability is nothing but what we are capable of doing. Examples of capabilities
include, knowledge, management capabilities, processes, and so on. We use our capabilities
to control, coordinate and deploy resources in order to create value for customers. It is
important to note that capabilities are intangible and not easy to create.

Slide 12: Resources are our assets that we use while creating services. Examples include,
hardware, applications, infrastructure, and so on. And, they are tangible and relatively easy
to acquire.

In short, every single aspect of a service is considered a service asset.

Slide 13: Let’s take a look at who are these service providers?

Service provider is an organization that supply services to one or more internal or external
customers.
For example, TCS is an IT service provider, providing various services like Data Centre
Management, IT Service Desk, Application Development and Maintenance to different
customers like American Express, Neilson, Deutsche Bank and so on.

Slide 14: ITIL talks about three types of service providers for providing IT service to the
customer. These include.

 Type one or internal.

 Type two or shared.
 Type three or external.

Slide 15: Type one is a service provider that is embedded within a business unit and
provides IT service exclusively for a specific business unit. In organizations, you have various
business units, so, if you involve an IT team with each business unit then you will end up
having as many IT teams as the business units. This model is fairly expensive and is not
optimized. You will have to recreate a number of roles and duplicate many activities under
every business unit.

Type two is an internal service provider that provides shared IT services to multiple business
units. So, if you pull out all the IT teams from the previous model and bring them together,
you will have a single group that is a centralized IT team. This central IT team will then
handle the task of providing I T service to all business units. This model is the most preferred
one and is optimized. The only drawback is that the business units may not get favoured
service which would have been the norm in the internal service provider model.

Type three involves a service provider that provides IT services to external customers. For
example, TCS as a service provider provides services to external customers like American
Express, Indian Passport Seva, and so on. Today most organizations are outsourcing their I T
support to organizations that specialize in this kind of arrangement.

Slide 16: So now you have a better idea about service, service package and service
providers.

But there is one more important aspect to this, the Stakeholders. Who are they?

A Stakeholder is anybody who can affect or is affected by an organization, project or service.

Stakeholders may be interested in activities, targets, resources or deliverables.

Key stakeholders in providing IT services include, customer, users, suppliers and service
providers.

Slide 17: A customer is anyone who pays the Service Provider for the service rendered.

For example, Indian Railways is a customer of TCS.

Slide 18: A user is anyone who avails the services provided.

Continuing with the Indian Railways example, a customer who avail the Indian Railways IT
services to reserve tickets will be termed as users to some of the services provided by TCS.

Slide 19: Supplier is nothing but a third party responsible to supply goods or services that
are required by the service provider to deliver the services.

For instance, if TCS utilises Tata Communications network line to deliver service to Indian
Railways, then Tata Communications will be called the supplier or third party vendor in this
scenario.

Slide 20: Service provider is anyone who offers service to a customer.

Here, TCS offers IT services to Indian railways and various organisations such as Neilson,
Deutsche Bank and so on. So TCS is a Service Provider here.

Slide 21: ITIL clearly explains the way ITIL processes work within the boundaries and
responsibilities of the organizational structure by defining the following parameters:

 Functions that perform the activity.

 Process that may extend across several Functions to accomplish the objective of the
activity.
 And, the Role that an individual within a Function plays when performing a Process.

Slide 22: Let’s explore the relationship between functions, processes and roles.

The term function refers to a group of people often aligned by a particular technical skill or
technology, such as system administrators, or Java programmers. These functions or
technical functional areas carry out various processes or activities.

A process, on the other hand, is a set of structured activities that achieve some specific goal
or objective, such as restore a service or find a problem. A process may involve the
participation of many functional areas to accomplish its objective. The staff members of the
functional areas perform the process by carrying out the responsibilities of various roles
assigned to them.

Processes, often cut across many functions and involve many different staff members, each
carrying out their roles. So, in order to implement the ITIL processes, it is really not
necessary, to try to organize the processes as functions.

Slide 23: We have come to an end of this capsule friends. Thank you for watching this
capsule on ITIL Core Concepts. Good bye!

Slide 24: Let’s take a look at key learning points in this video.

 Service is a means of delivering value to customers and is of three types, Core,

Enabling and Enhancing services.
  Service Assets consist of resources and capabilities that the organization uses to
deliver the value in the form of services.
 Service provider is an organization that supply services to one or more internal or
external customers. They are of three types, Type 1, 2 and 3.
 A Stakeholder is anybody who can affect or is affected by an organization, project or
service. They are classified in four categories, Customer, User, Supplier, and IT
Service Provider.
 And, ITIL processes work within the boundaries and responsibilities of the
organizational structure by defining certain parameters that consists of functions,
process and role.

Slide 25: Background music

Slide 26: Thank you for watching this video on I T I L core concepts.