When Infrastructure Management Just Won’t Do: The Trend Towards Organizational IT Service Management

4 Conclusion Management of IT systems and infrastructures faces a shift towards organizational management as technical potentials are fairly utilized. Consequently, standards for IT service management available today cover organizational as well as technical aspects. As the idea of continuous improvement gains increasing importance in IT service management, solutions and the standards they are based on have to be seen in close relation to the whole improvement life cycle. The presented taxonomy classifies existing standards and approaches in the area of IT service management relying on two fundamental characteristics: the life cycle phase an approach addresses primarily, and whether it is more technically or organizationally focused. We use this taxonomy to illustrate the relations between the various standards. Our survey showed a variety of standards deployable in specific segments of our taxonomy. However integral approaches (e.g. that cover the whole life cycle) are still missing. Further research will therefore focus on the integration of existing approaches to build a life cycle and aspect (technological or organizational) spanning set of standards and related tools.