The functions of service operation are:
• The service desk: This conducts a number of processes, in particular incident management and request fulfilment. The service desk is made up of a group of staff trained to deal with service events. Service desk staff will have access to the necessary tools to manage these events. The service desk ought to be the single point of contact for IT users within an organisation.
• Technical management: This is the function that provides the resources and ensures that knowledge of relevant technologies is kept up to date. Technical management covers all the teams or areas that support the delivery of technical knowledge and expertise. This includes teams such as networks, mainframe, middleware, desktop, server and database.
• Application management: This will manage applications through the totality of their lifecycle. This starts with the first business ‘idea’ and completes when the application is taken out of service. Application management is involved in the design, testing and continual improvement of applications and the services that the applications support.
• IT operations management: This is responsible for operating the organisation’s IT infrastructure and applications on a day-to-day basis.
The area which delivers the value has been modelled and designed elsewhere, so service operation will have many interfaces to processes that are part of the other lifestyle phases, in particular service asset and configuration management, release and deployment management, knowledge management, IT service continuity management and service level management.