Services and projects are often seen by IT departments as antagonistic. However, services constitute a recurring activity of these departments. The "Information Technology Infrastructure Library" (ITIL) is the most suitable and detailed framework of best practice as well as the standard for the delivery of quality IT services and their management.

Since its creation, ASK has aimed to promote the help desk and service desk concepts and functions as the seed for a full-blown client interface within IT departments where, to the detriment of services, administrative and operational tasks were traditionally prioritized.

It is only with the widespread use of networked PCs in the workplace and the resulting ever-increasing demand for technical support that management changed their thinking pattern and habits. The main consequence was the outsourcing of the support function to third parties. These first contracts foreshadowed the introduction of the "Service Level Agreement" (SLA) concept at a time when the idea of “client” was foreign to IT Production. An appropriate management of services is now based on both the ITIL framework of best practice and a partial externalization of the activity.