Alignment here represents more operational alignment of IT and business functions than the strategic alignment observations in the Business and IT Alignment discussion.

Service delivery and service support are based on the ITIL frameworks. ITIL version 2 centers on processes that can be independently implemented to manage and improve IT's support for the business. ITIL version 3 supports the same processes but focuses on the lifecycle of defining, implementing, and improving these processes.

While ITIL's focus is on standardizing IT processes and metrics, business processes also need to be standardized and measured by carefully chosen metrics.

Business continuity is concerned with governance and response to disaster scenarios, assessment of criticality of business processes and associated systems and data, defining interim work processes, and the use of recovered systems to resume business interactions with customers, perhaps with degraded capabilities and capacity, while remaining in regulatory compliance.

• Service Delivery
• Service Support
• Standards & metrics
• Business Continuity