A Review on Multiple Perspectives of IT Services in

Information Systems and Computer Science

(A Multi-disciplinary Overview)

Akbar Nabiollahi
Faculty of Computer science and
Information System
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM)
Johor Bahru, Malaysia
nabi_ir@yahoo.com
Rose Alinda Alias
Faculty of Computer science
and Information System
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM)
Johor Bahru, Malaysia
alinda@utm.my


Shamsul Sahibuddin
Advanced Informatics School (AIS)
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
(UTM)
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
shamsul@utm.my

Abstract Services innovations are intensively associated
with ICT innovations and adoption and diffusion of ICT.
Recently, various issues and views of services have been
addressed through new disciplines of services. This paper
attempts to review multiple disciplines of IT services in
Information Systems and Computer Science briefly. While in
SSME and ITSM, the focus is mostly on planning and
management of IT services, in Services Computing discipline
and in service oriented domains of services such as SOA and
SOI, the emphasis is on service design and operation. As we
discussed in this paper, there is a call to conducting research in
service-oriented technology and management for the coming
decade. Also there is a rich context for researchers on services
design, services development, services marketing, services
delivery, services management, and services operation from
behavioural, economics, technical, and organizational
perspectives in computer science, information systems, e-
commerce and management disciplines. For achieving any
research in this area, quantitative, qualitative and experiment
methods, case and field studies, and design science approaches
were encouraged to be considered.
Keywords: Service Science Management Engineering (SSME), IT
Service Management (ITSM), ITIL, SOA, Service Oriented
Enterprise Architecture (SOEA), Microsoft Operations
Framework (MOF), CMMI-SVC, ISO/IEC 20000,Services
Computing
I. INTRODUCTION
The service concept has different aspects and views.
Recently, several disciplines and domains have been defined
and developed in order to support different issues and
benefits of IT services. Also there is a call to conducting
research in service-oriented technology and management for
starting decade [1-2]. Major challenges and issues to
service sciences can be reside in computer science,
information systems, e-commerce and management
disciplines [3] in order to be resolved by researchers and
practitioners in academic and industrial domain. To respond
to this requirement in multi-disciplinary research, various
research paradigms and methods are advised [4].
II. SERVICE SCIENCE, MANAGEMENT AND ENGINEERING
(SSME)
IBM developed a new academic field named Services
Science, Management, and Engineering (SSME) in 2004
[5]. SSME involves three domains, namely, service science,
service engineering and service management. Services
Science is used as a way to create knowledge about services,
Services Engineering is defined as a way to create service
value by using use the knowledge, and Services
Management invests to improve the process of creating the
service value [6]. The goal of the SSME discipline is to
make quality, productivity, sustainability and innovation
rates across the service sector [2]. Services innovations are
intensively associated with ICT innovations and adoption
and diffusion of ICT, there is a rich context for researchers
on services design, services development, services
marketing, services delivery, services management, and
services operation from behavioural, economics, technical,
and organizational perspectives [2, 6].
III. SERVICES COMPUTING
Service Computing is developed by IEEE and is defined as
The use of information technology (IT) to support
customer-provider interactions. Topics include web
services, e-commerce, service-oriented architectures (SOA),
self-service technologies (SST), software as a service (SaaS)
and IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL). In Services
Computing discipline [7], service has been defined as a
represented type of relationships-based interactions
(activities) between at least one service provider and one
service consumer to achieve a certain business goal or
solution objective. Business services are realized by IT
software systems, called services systems. Therefore, a
services system can be viewed as a self-contained
encapsulated system providing some services to the outside
world [5]. The essential perspectives of a service system are
including model, technology, architecture and optimization
[2]. The software architecture of a services system provides
a guidance of designing and constructing a service system,
by identifying system components along with the
connections and interactions between them [7].
IV. IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT (ITSM)
ITSM is defined as a set of process that detail best
practices based on ITIL standards to enable and optimize IT
services in order to satisfy business requirements and
manage the IT activities [3]. ITSM is process focused and
shares common themes with the process improvement
movement (e.g., TQM, Six Sigma, Business Process
Management, and CMMI). ITSM provides a framework to
structure IT-related activities and the interactions of IT
technical personnel with business customers and users [3].
ITSM is often associated with the British Governments
Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL). The
definitions of IT service and IT service management have
been extracted from ITIL V3. IT Service is defined by OGC
as A Service provided to one or more customers by an IT
Service provider. An IT Service is based on the use of
Information Technology and supports the customers
business processes. IT Service Management also is defined
as The implementation and management of Quality IT
Services that meet the needs of the Business. IT Service
Management is performed by IT Service providers through
an appropriate mix of People, Process and Information
Technology [8].
In the following subsections main frameworks on
service management have been skimmed in summary,
namely, ITIL, ISO/IEC 20000, Microsoft Operation
Framework (MOF) and CMMI for Services (CMMI-SVC).
These frameworks have been surveyed in order to capture
any architecture solution for IT services. In spite of special
features of each one, except ITIL, none of these framework
doesnt provide any service architecture [9].

A. IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)
Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)
has been introduced by Office of Government Commerce
(OGC). The original version mainly was focused on IT
Infrastructure and includes 31 books. In next version which
published mid 1990s, it was concentrated more on service
delivery and support and includes 8 books [10]. OGC
published the latest version, ITIL V3, in 2007. This version
is focused on establishing Service Management across a
lifecycle and consists of 5 volumes as service life cycle
stages [11]. The aim of this library is to define a framework
and a source of good practice in IT service management (in
ITIL V2) and Service Management (in V3) [12].
B. ISO/IEC 20000
ISO/IEC 20000 evolved from the BS15000 and ITL V2
framework, and was influenced by other quality standards
(such as Six Sigma, COBIT and CMMI). ISO/IEC 20000
standard provides two reference guides, namely, ITSM-
Specification [13] and ITSM-Code [14], for organizations to
support them for implementation of service delivery and
service support processes only.

C. Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF)
Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) has been
developed by Microsoft Corporation and consists of
principles, integrated best practices and activities [15]. MOF
provide comprehensive guidelines for IT solutions and
services. MOF is a question-based guidance to determine
the needs of organization now and its requirements in the
future. This guidance encompasses all of the processes and
activities involved in managing IT services including
conception, development, operation, maintenance and
retirement. MOF organizes their processes and activities
into Service Management Functions (SMFs) that are
grouped in phases of IT service lifecycle [16]. MOF aims to
provide guidance on how to create, operate, and support IT
services. The IT service lifecycle (Figure 2.3) in MOF is
composed of plan, deliver and operate ongoing phases and
one manage layer which operates through other phases [15].
Figure 1 shows Microsoft core infrastructure optimization
model and MOF service lifecycle.

Figure 2 MOF Service lifecycle model [15]
D. CMMI for Services (CMMI-SVC)
Recently, in 2009, a maturity model for services has
been published by Software Engineering Institute (SEI)
which is called CMMI for Services (CMMI-SVC). The
scope of CMMI-SVC model is a guideline for CMMI
maturity model in service provider organizations [17]. The
CMMI-SVC, V1.3 model which is published in 2010
November [18], is a collection of best practices for service
from government and industry that is generated from the
CMMI V1.3 Framework [19].
V. SERVICE ORIENTED DISCIPLINES
The main goals and characteristics of Service Oriented
domains are Reuse, Service Encapsulation, Loose-Coupling,
Strong Cohesion, Service Granularity and Well-Designed
Services. As a difference between process and service it is
stated that processes are defined once and ideally within a
single context [20]. Services, on the other hand, are defined
once and reused many times over within diverse context
such as business process, IT processes and systems [21].
The main drivers for SO domains are to facilitate the
manageable growth of large-scale enterprise systems, to
facilitate Internet-scale provisioning and use of services and
to reduce costs in organization to organization cooperation.
A. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Reference Model
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) has received
significant attention within the computer science
community. OASIS has developed a reference model to
provide a higher level of commonality, with definitions that
should apply to all SOA [22]. The goal of this reference
model is to define the essence of service oriented
architecture, and emerge with a vocabulary and a common
understanding of SOA. In this reference model OASIS
defins Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a paradigm
for organizing and utilizing distributed capabilities that may
be under the control of different ownership domains. In
this definition, entities (people and organizations) create
capabilities to solve or support a solution for the problems
they face in the course of their business.
B. SOA Integration Model
SOA Alliance of The Open Group has defined three
domains for Service Orientation within the Information
technology: the Business Architecture, the Data and
Information Architecture and the Infrastructure Architecture
(Figure 2). This will align three other models defined using
different terminology: Service Oriented Enterprise, Service
Oriented (Application) Architecture and Service Oriented
Infrastructure [23].

Figure 2 The Open Group Service Oriented Integration Model

The Open Group defined a project to develop a reference
model for Service Oriented Infrastructure (SOI). SOI is one
of the three pillars of Information Technology next to
Service Oriented Enterprise (SOE) and Service Oriented
Architecture (SOA). Service-oriented infrastructure (SOI)
results from applying the principles of service orientation to
IT infrastructure [23]. The term Service-Oriented
Architecture most commonly refers to the application
service oriented principles to software application. SOI
should be viewed as a mechanism to deliver core
infrastructure services as a service to the business rather
than individual components [23].
C. Service Oriented EA
One of the main ideas of SOA is to bridge the gap
between the business process layer and the application layer.
The service layer is introduced for this purpose. Therefore
SOA influences the business process, the service and the
application layer [24]. Meersman suggests that integration
of SOA into the ongoing EA efforts will benefit all business
units of the target organization [25].
The trend of service-oriented EA is also considered at
foundation stage and the integration of EA and SOA is
needed [26]. Although the core of EA defines the
architectural models of an enterprise to meet requirements
of future changes in the efficient and planned manner, SOA
represents the latest potential to complement and improve
EA from [27]. SOA provides a unified foundation for
migration from legacy systems to a consistent service-
oriented framework [28-29]. The goal of using SOA to
enable EA more executable, while EA makes SOA more
manageable and organized [7].
VI. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
This paper has reviewed various disciplines on services
in Information Systems and Computer Science. This paper
shows that the service concept has different aspects and
views. Recently, several disciplines and domains have been
defined and developed in order to support different issues
and benefits of IT services. While in SSME and ITSM, the
focus is mostly on management perspectives of services, in
Services Computing disciplines and in service oriented
domains of services such as SOA and SOI, the emphasis is
service design and operation. Figure 3 draws our view on
these disciplines.
As we discussed in this paper, there is a call to
conducting research in service-oriented technology and
management for the current decade. Major challenges and
issues to service science that should be resolved by
universities can be resided in computer science, information
systems, e-commerce and management disciplines.

Figure 3 Service Disciplines in IS and CS
To respond to this call and to conduct multi-disciplinary
research, various research paradigms and methods are
advised. In addition for achieving any research in this area,
quantitative, qualitative and experiment methods, case and
field studies, and design science approaches are encouraged
to be considered.
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