For more than a decade, true Business Service Management (BSM) has been a goal for businesses, as well as a promise from potential providers. In reality, a good BSM plan goes beyond the standards of typical IT management; it fuses the goals of IT and business. This white paper introduces the use of a Business Service Platform (BSP) as the foundation of an effective BSM solution. By employing a BSP solution, the entire business uses tools that monitor, report, and manage business services. In addition, the overall strategy includes a powerful relationship mapping data repository as the foundation of a robust and versatile cross-platform configuration management database (CMDB). Ultimately, a BSP will provide real-time monitoring of business service health and status.