Requestable offerings overview

A requestable offering is an aspect of a service offering that end users can request. Like a service offering, a requestable offering defines what service an organization provides and how it is provided. Requestable offerings provide options for how IT implements the service offering. Service offerings do not require a requestable offering but can have one or more. Each requestable offering defines a level of service for a price: it combines the service (utility), a service level target (warranty), and add-on options.

For example, the Calbro IT organization creates the following requestable offerings for its email service:

Create a new account.
Reset an account password.
Increase the inbox size limit.
Backup and restore email.

The Calbro Finance group has the silver email service offering. An end user cannot see or choose a service offering, such as gold or silver, but he can select from the requestable offerings. He already has an account, but because he deals with budget requests from several other groups, he needs a higher quota on his inbox size.

To deploy a requestable service in a cloud environment, the Service Catalog enables you to map service blueprints to the service offerings. The service offerings defined in the Service Catalog would utilize different underlying service blueprints.

BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management includes the following types of requestable offerings:

Request definition — Describes the details of the service offering, including the name, description, and one-time delivery price (which is different from the service offering price that describes the ongoing maintenance price). The cloud administrator can define only one request definition for a particular service offering, and a request definition must be created for the service offering to be available in the BMC My Services Cloud Console. Request definitions can be added to packages.
Post-deploy action — Represents an action an end user can take on a service instance after it has been provisioned. For example, after a LAMP stack has been provisioned, the user might request a different amount of memory or CPU. Post-deploy actions are not required, and the cloud administrator can create any number of post-deploy actions per service offering. Certain restrictions apply to post-deploy actions depending on your operating system.

Combining request definitions and post-deploy actions in a service offering allows the cloud administrator to provide a flexible service that meets end users' needs.

Requestable offerings overview

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