Answer by Doug Tedder

ITIL 4 defines a service offering as a description of one or more services, designed to meet the needs of a target consumer group.  This could include any combination of service actions, access to resources, or a transfer of goods.

ITIL V3 described a “service package”, which is a collection of two or more services that have been combined to provide a solution to a specific type of customer need or to underpin specific business outcomes.

The concepts are similar, but slightly different. Both ITIL 4 and ITIL V3 describe a service very similarly…a means of delivering value by facilitating outcomes that customers want without the customer owning specific costs and risks (ITIL 4 says “co-creating” instead of “delivering”). In ITIL V3, we had supporting services and business-facing services, as well as core services, enabling services, and enhancing services. (Oh my!) It was the combination of two or more of these types of services that could make up a service package.

ITIL 4 makes no such differentiation of types of services (supporting, core, enabling, etc.).

Personally, after I got my head around the ITIL 4 service concept, I found it to be much less confusing than how we discussed it in ITIL V3.  Having said that, I guess one could consider ITIL4 “service offerings” as an evolution of the ITIL V3 “service package” concept.