An integrated service architecture framework for information technology service management and enterprise architecture

Abstract

Today, IT service providers are faced with the demands and challenges in implementation of different IT frameworks/standards in the same organization, which are intended to align business and IT investments to provide IT governance. This requirement has gained more attention in IT Service Management (ITSM), Enterprise Architecture (EA), Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Services Computing (SC) due to embracing the service oriented concepts. There are some evidences and motivations on integration of IT Service Management (ITSM) and Enterprise Architecture (EA) in academia and industry. Very few efforts have been done to define a relationship between ITSM and EA based on ITIL V2. The ITIL V3 and its new 2011 edition, offered an IT service lifecycle recommending on using EA in ITSM. The efforts for development of Service Oriented EA (SOEA) also support the idea of integration. This research has developed a research roadmap to propose a service based framework for this integration. The integration of ITIL V3 and EA has been launched by identification of Service Architecture Requirements (SARs) to develop a model for service architecture supporting ITSM. The research adapted case study strategy, design science research and Delphi expert panel survey. Exploration of five case studies in Iran and Malaysia investigated service architecture requirements of ITSM/ITIL and Success Criteria in Integration (SCI) of ITSM/ITIL and EA. Then, the proposed framework was established on common goals and architectures of EA and ITSM frameworks such as IT and business alignment, information sharing, application architecture, data architecture and technology architecture. Service architecture model was designed based on service architecture requirements. Subsequently, a service-based solution referred as Integrated Service Architecture Framework (ISAF), has been developed to resolve the research problem. Twenty experts were nominated using snowball sampling to participate in Delphi study. The proposed framework has been refined and matured through a three round Delphi process. This process also has ensured that the refined framework is capable of satisfying different aspects of the integration surrounding service architecture model.