Service Catalog

What Does Service Catalog Mean?

A service catalog is a comprehensive list of IT services that an organization offers to its employees or customers. This catalog is the only portion of the company’s service portfolio that is published and provided to customers as a support to the sale or delivery of offered IT services.

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The catalog includes:

  • The service name and its description
  • All services listed by category
  • All supporting services to the main services
  • Service level agreements and fulfillment time frames for the services
  • Contacts and escalation points (owner and representative)
  • Service costs

Techopedia Explains Service Catalog

The service catalog is a part of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Service Design, which is a set of defined practices and guidelines for IT service management (ITSM) meant to align IT services with business needs. The service catalog allows a consumer or a business manager looking to buy a service to quickly narrow down where to find details on the services they are seeking. Service catalogs may also be offered online.

From a user perspective, the catalog will make it quicker to find out what services are on offer, their descriptions and how to acquire them or inquire about them. For a business unit manager in charge of selling a company’s IT services, the catalog serves as a way to publish appointed services to end users. This happens after the manager and analysts determine what questions to ask the users, any approvals that are required for the request, and all other requirements needed to fulfill the request for service.

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Margaret Rouse

Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical, business audience. Over the past twenty years her explanations have appeared on TechTarget websites and she's been cited as an authority in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine and Discovery Magazine.Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages. If you have a suggestion for a new definition or how to improve a technical explanation, please email Margaret or contact her…