An organization moves its email from self-hosted servers to a subscription service. It no longer buys or patches mail servers, but it now pays a monthly fee and must train its service desk on the new administration console. Which statement correctly classifies these costs from the consumer's perspective?
ITIL 4 Foundation, objective 1. Key concepts of service management hard
Draft — not checked yet. This question was written from the published exam objectives and cites the clause it comes from, but nobody has yet read it against that clause and signed for it.
It is kept out of search results and out of mock exams until they have. Read the source below before you take the answer as settled.
The options
Not correct The fee is a cost imposed, but staff training is a risk imposed rather than a cost
Wrong. Training is money and effort spent, so it is a cost of consumption. A risk is a possible event that could cause harm or loss, not a known planned spend.
Not correct All of these are costs imposed by the service, because the consumer still pays for all of them
Wrong. Server purchase and patching effort disappear from the consumer entirely — those are precisely the costs the service removes.
Correct Buying and patching servers are costs removed by the service; the fee and the training are costs imposed by the service
Correct. Costs removed form part of the value proposition; costs imposed are the costs of consumption, which include the price charged and other costs such as staff training.
Not correct Only the monthly fee counts as a cost, because costs are defined as money paid to the provider
Wrong. Cost is the amount of money spent on a specific activity or resource — not only money paid to the provider. Training spend counts.
Why
ITIL analyses costs from the consumer's viewpoint in two directions. Costs removed from the consumer by the service are part of the value proposition. Costs imposed on the consumer by the service are the costs of consumption: the price charged plus other spend such as training, network utilization and procurement effort. Both sides must be weighed to judge value.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- ITIL 4 syllabus clause 1
- What it says
- From the consumer perspective a service both removes costs and imposes costs (the costs of consumption, including price and e.g. training).
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a set from objective 1 and space the ones you get wrong.