The MNM service model — Refined views on generic service management

Abstract

In the last couple of years service management has gained more and more momentum in the research community. Nowadays, as complexity of IT-services is increasing, these services are usually composed of interdependent, layered services hosted by various providers. Therefore, a strong cooperation of providers involved in service provisioning is needed, especially regarding their management processes and systems. One important step is to establish a common understanding about service-related terms in order to be able to specify service functionality and the resulting management tasks. Additionally, means to analyze and identify the necessary actors and the corresponding inter- and intra-organizational relationships are needed. This paper presents an extended version of the MNM service model which provides a generic model defining commonly needed service-related terms, concepts and structuring rules in a general and unambiguous way. Furthermore, we demonstrate the application of the MNM service model by modeling a user help desk service based on a concrete scenario. The experience gained from modeling is used to discuss the benefits of service modeling in general.