The purpose of the Service Continuity Management process is to ensure that agreed IT services will support business requirements in the event of a disruption to the business, based on the committed recovery schedule.

Definition of IT Service Continuity Management: “The Process responsible for managing Risks that could seriously impact IT Services. ITSCM ensures that the IT Service Provider can always provide minimum agreed Service Levels, by reducing the Risk to an acceptable level and Planning for the Recovery of IT Services. ITSCM should be designed to support Business Continuity Management.” ¹

¹ ITIL® V3 Glossary

Read the IT Service Continuity Management Key Concepts.

Important links

• IT Service Continuity Management Tool Mentors
• Tivoli® Open Process Automation Library Extensions for IT Service Continuity Management

Outcomes

As a result of the successful implementation of the IT Service Continuity Management process:

• A set of IT Service Continuity and IT Recovery plans are created, maintained, and tested that support the organization’s overall Business Continuity Plans
• Business continuity targets can be met through the recovery of agreed IT services and technical facilities to agreed timescales, under Change Management control
• Regulatory requirements for IT service continuity are met
• Business vitality and functions are maintained at agreed levels

Scope

The process fulfils its mission through risk reduction measures, controlled recovery options, and restoration facilities.

Includes

• Service capability for prioritized, critical business processes, and their attendant support requirements. Examples include:
  • IT application services
  • Organizational procedures
  • Consideration of facilities
  • Consideration of IT Services provided by business partners
• Specification of service continuity solutions
• Definition of circumstances and thresholds for continuity invocation
• Contributing to proactive prevention of IT disruptions (by identifying and analyzing risks, and sharing the analysis)
• Control of continuity solution invocation in the event of disruption
• Testing of the continuity solution

Excludes

• Normal operational fluctuations (Service Execution, Event Management)
• Minor technical faults that are covered by Incident Management
• Deliberate business strategy changes and long term risks such as business diversification or restructuring (IT Strategy)
• Responsibility for identification and prioritization of critical business processes (performed in a business impact analysis by the
• Business Continuity Management process: outside the scope of this model)
• Development and implementation of service continuity solutions (once agreed by Portfolio Management, these solutions are treated as any other solution through Realization and Transition)
• Contractual arrangements with third parties (Supplier Management)

Key performance indicators

• Number of agreed upon service level agreements (SLA) and operations level agreements (OLA) with service continuity metrics
• Percent of SLA and OLA service continuity metrics that can be proactively maintained through automatic failover actions
• Percent of IT services covered by SLA and OLA with service continuity metrics
• Customer satisfaction with SLA and OLA service continuity parameters and attainment
• Percent of SLA and OLA service continuity parameters attained (actual and periodic tests)
• The elapsed time and direct costs
  • In this process domain
  • In each process step and between steps

Relation to other processes

• Configuration Management data is used in the creation of service continuity plans.
• Change Management must assess proposed change requests for their potential impact on service continuity.
• ITSCM depends on Data Management to provide backups of all data needed to perform agreed-upon service level agreements.
• Proper Incident Management helps reduce or prevent the need for service continuity initiation.
• Service Level Management identifies service continuity needs for service level agreements.
• Incidents in Incident Management may turn into major outages, as may happen with problems in Problem Management.
• A major security violation (Security Management) may compromise the integrity of IT services, leading to a major outage.  

For more information

For more information, see Service Continuity Management in the ITIL documentation.

In addition, see the IBM® Service Management Web page.