Addressing Non-Functional Properties of Services in IT Service Management

The assurance of availability and dependability for distributed applications is a challenging and nontrivial task. Massively distributed architectures are becoming more prevalent with the convergence of the Internet of Services and the Internet of Devices. Flexible provider models like Cloud Computing allow for nearly limitless scalability of applications, together with an attractive pay-as-you-go investment model. A key point that remains to be addressed is the assurance of service levels for end-user applications that rely on these provider models. This chapter describes an approach for addressing non-functional properties (NFPs) of services in service-oriented architectures (SOA). The approach is based on reference models such as the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and the SOA life cycle model. It has been applied in several industrial settings in the telecommunications sector. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-794-2.ch014