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From the customer’s point of view the value of a service consists of two basic elements:

1. Utility is the functionality offered by a service to suit a specific need. Utility is also frequently described as “what a product or service does”. In addition to functionality it can also mean the removal of constraints for the business. Utility increases the performance of the enterprise.
2. The second element is Warranty, the commitment or warranty that a product or a service matches the agreed requirements concerning availability, capacity, continuity and security. The service warranty reduces the fluctuations in the service delivery.

Both elements – Utility and Warranty – are imperative and have to be taken into account and ensured to equal extent when designing and providing a service.

The business units don’t want to have to deal with the technology and the complexity of IT services. It’s the IT management’s task to reduce the complexity by encapsulating specialized functions and technologies within IT in a way as to provide the customer with simple and reliable access to the services. From his point of view the service is a ‘black box’ that works reliably. The following policies can be applied as guidelines:
 

1. Segregation of responsibilities for single service feature parts and consequently ensuring the quality through correspondingly specialized teams.
2. Simplification through modularization of IT services into manageable part services e.g. application, infrastructure or data centre services.
3. Loose coupling of the individual modules and their responsibilities as well as loose linkage of resources and users. This makes it easier and more secure to implement process and service improvements without endangering the stability for the customer.