Service Offerings

Service offerings provide the information consumers need to select the most appropriate services. Each service offering references a service design, which defines the service options and components of the service. You can tailor service offerings for each consumer group with details such as customized terms and conditions, option visibility, and pricing. Create a service offering from a sequenced or topology service design. When you are ready to expose the design to subscribers, publish the service offering in a catalog in the Marketplace Portal. You can create an offering from a sequenced or topology design. Pricing is configured on a service offering and supports initial, recurring, and option-specific pricing. You can choose to show or hide the initial or recurring price details to a subscriber or an approver in the Marketplace Portal. You can also attach documents to a standard service offering (such as service level agreements, terms, and conditions) and screenshots, which are images and captions that provide the user with a visual representation of the offering in the Marketplace Portal.

Customize service offerings

You can customize service offerings for different target groups. You can base customized service offerings on the same service design using different attributes for each group. You publish a customized service offering in a catalog that is visible to its target group.

You can configure the following service offering attributes:

• Offering name, description, image, and tags
• Option visibility for offerings based on sequenced designs
• Subscription pricing
• Attached documents such as service level agreements or terms and conditions
• Associated screenshots or other images
• Multiple versions per service offering

You link each service offering to its target group by publishing the service offering in a catalog for that group. CSA uses catalogs to constrain the service offerings displayed for each user. The Marketplace Portal only displays offerings published in catalogs associated with one of the user groups. Pricing details can be hidden from the subscriber or approver in the Marketplace Portal if configured in the service offering.

CSA manages catalog access through group memberships as configured in the organization’s identity management system. CSA does not directly manage the creation or maintenance of individual users or organizational groups. You specify an identity management system for each CSA organization you create. You then configure the groups that can access the organization user interface. You also configure catalog access for specific groups within an CSA organization. Each organization group memberships must exist or be created in its identity management system. Often, existing groups naturally correspond to CSA access control needs. Sometimes you will need to create new groups for specific needs.

Catalogs

Catalogs map service offerings to specific groups within a consumer organization. Publishing a service offering in a catalog makes the offering visible in the Marketplace Portal to the groups associated with the catalog. You can configure each catalog as visible to specific groups within the organization associated with the catalog, and you can also specify the default approval process and the available approval policies for each catalog. In addition, you can publish a service offering in multiple catalogs to make it visible to more than one set of consumers.

You can start by configuring the automatically created, default catalog (Global Shared Catalog), or you can manually create a new catalog and associate it with an organization. Multiple catalogs can be associated with the same organization, and any changes made to the Global Shared Catalog will be visible in the Marketplace Portal of every organization.