A cloud service catalog:@Contains a set of cloud services that an end user can request (usually through a web self-service portal).
Acts as the ordering portal for cloud end users, including pricing and service-level commitments and the terms and conditions for service provisioning.
Can also be used as a demand management mechanism, directing or incenting customers toward particular services or service configurations or away from legacy or declining services, as well as making sure of alignment with governance and standards through default configurations and service options.
Has a self-service look and feel; that is, it provides the ability to select service offerings from the cloud service catalog and generate service requests to have instances of those offerings fulfilled.
Is useful in developing suitable cloud-based solutions, thus enabling other IT and business services, which in turn create the value propositions for the investments in cloud architectures.
Contains features and characteristics (atomic items that can be configuredand preferably priced based upon a "cloud chargeback" mechanism) to fulfill a particular need.
Serves as the provisioning interface to automated service fulfillment using a cloud orchestration subsystem.