Best practices dictates that the ability to consistently and reliability deliver an application to the market can be achieved by utilizing an integrated and well defined set of operational processes such as provided via the ITIL framework. At the onset, this can seem to be a daunting and overwhelming challenge and expense. One approach is to adapt a simplified ITIL framework that first targets key process areas. We recommend a service strategy consisting of three main components:

• Service Management - supports the delivery and measurement of customer service;
• Configuration Management - the maintenance of IT asset inventory to appropriately supported configuration levels as well as the forward looking capacity levels sufficient to support evolving service requirements; and
• Service Operation - the core processes supporting the delivery of your application.