Business Service Management (BSM) is a key area in today's IT management arena. In the context of IT infrastructure management, there has been a major shift in the decision making process. The questions driving these decisions have moved from why do we need this to how can we achieve this. The answer to this question requires IT management to be viewed as a business enabler as opposed to a support function.

This chapter will highlight the importance of BSM in today's IT space. We will illustrate the challenges in managing today's data centers, with an emphasis on the industry standard guidelines for managing these complexities. We will also cover the concept of modeling IT infrastructure as systems and services. We will touch upon the details of sharing IT resources across different verticals and the related management issues. The chapter will also highlight how BSM can be one of the solutions to the various complexities that plague today's IT infrastructure landscape. In addition, this chapter will also highlight the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL v3) guidelines on BSM. The topics covered in this chapter are relevant to the BSM area and are not specific to Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM).