Summary
Due to customer and market pressures, organizations are transitioning from an IT products mindset to an IT services model. To prepare for the transition to IT services, organizations must become service-oriented first and seek technology afterward.
Unfortunately, there are many emerging perspectives on services in the IT industry resulting in unnecessary confusion. Some view it as a technology issue (web services). Some view it as an architecture issue (services-oriented architecture). Others view it as a process issue (business process management). Finally, there are those that view it from the customer perspective (services).
All of these views are relevant and pertinent. However, we need a frameworka services blueprintthat ties together all these viewpoints. Without a clear services blueprint, companies will make suboptimal decisions that waste time and resources.