How Is ITSM Different From Business Service Management (BSM)?

TSM and BSM are similar but are often confused as being the same thing; however, there are two key differences:

ITSM is about moving from IT support to service delivery. ITSM aids the change of an IT organization from a support group to a service group in which ITIL processes are introduced. This reorganizes the IT group from technical domains (e.g., network management) into process groups. New roles such as the business relationship manager, who is responsible for managing the relationship between IT and a particular line of business, are inserted into IT. Introducing ITSM into IT improves how the IT shop runs.

BSM is an IT service that is visible to and consumed by a business user outside of IT. BSM is the true alignment of IT to the business, as it lets business users know how well their business is running. BSM is the next level of maturity and a logical progression after the ITSM stage has been reached.

Business service management dynamically links business-focused IT services to the underlying IT infrastructure. A business-focused IT service may be a specific IT service or part of a business process, but it must support a significant, visible business metric for a business owner.

ITIL V3 - introduced in June 2007 - has a BSM flavor, as it addresses the strategy, design, and transition of a service into operations. The operational aspect was defined in ITIL V2 via the service delivery and service support frameworks, which included, among others, incident, problem, change, configuration, service level, and financial management.

Next: ITIL, BSI—And The Benefits Of ITSM