A plain-English guide to managing IT from the customer's perspective Practical guidance on delivering and managing IT so that it meets the multiple needs and demands of a company and its customers and end-users-both inside and outside the organization-is hard to come by;

Manage your business from a services perspective What if technology was designed to serve the business - every time? That's service management! Done properly, it can make everybody happy - the customer, the service provider, and the business owner. Understand the value of managing your physical environments and IT systems with an integrated approach. Learn how real companies improve business performance by streamlining business processes and applying service management standards and best practices. * Define service - identify what the customer wants, how the business can provide it, and which technological tools will make it happen * Who's king? - whether you're the IT manager or the business owner, see how to think like the customer * Standards are key - understand the standards and best practices that can improve quality and reduce costs * Strategically speaking - develop and implement a service management strategy * What's it worth? - assess the costs and return associated with service management * Get down to business - discover how to manage data centers, support services, desktops and devices, IT security, and other business services * See it at work - explore case studies of service management in the manufacturing, retail, health care, hospitality, and other business sectors Open the book and find: * How the digital world has altered service * Service management assets and tools * Resources for best practices and standards information * Advice for defining, creating, and maintaining a service management plan * The six layers of service management * How to optimize a data center * Ideas for managing your business assets as services * The role of virtualization and cloud computing