An Ontological Representation of ITIL Framework Service Level Management Process

Abstract

IT Service Management (ITSM) is an information system management approach that represents the information system in the form of a set of capabilities that bring value to customers in the form of services. ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) framework has positioned itself as a generic solution to tackle a broad range of ITSM issues and try to guide IT managers in their endeavors. Research on the subject has been mostly restricted to the implementation of the incident, problem and change management processes. Such approaches, however, have failed to address the deployment of the service level management (SLM) process. Yet, the SLM process has been criticized as the most important process in ITIL framework and that is highly dependent on the other processes. In this paper, an ontological metamodel of ITIL SLM process explicating its core concepts is presented; the goal is to provide a machine-readable document for modeling SLM domain knowledge according to ITIL V3 Framework. The proposed metamodel could be used for: (i) a deeper evaluation for comparing it to other ITSM models, and (ii) the integration of different frameworks and standards of IT governance such as Cobit and ISO 27001.