When I teach ITIL foundation classes and we start talking about aligning IT strategy with business strategy, I usually see some puzzled looks on the faces of my students. So I thought I would give some basics on what we are trying to establish here. The purpose of strategy management for IT services is to create a process for defining and maintaining an organization's perspective, position, plans and patterns related to its services and the management of those services. The purpose of a service strategy is to communicate how a service provider will enable an organization to achieve the desired business outcomes and establish the criteria and mechanisms to decide which services will be delivered, to whom they will be delivered to and to establish the most effective and efficient way to manage these services. The objectives of strategy management for IT services are: Analyze the internal and external environments in which we (the service provider) exist and to identify