What is the purpose of an Outage in incident management?

The purpose of an Outage in incident management is primarily focused on tracking the downtime of a Configuration Item (CI). When an outage occurs, it indicates that a service or a component of IT infrastructure is not operational, which directly impacts the availability and functionality expected by users. By documenting the outage, incident management teams can monitor how long the outage lasted, what services were affected, and how it aligns with service level agreements (SLAs). This information is crucial for restoring services, communicating with stakeholders, and analyzing the impact of outages for future improvements.

The tracking of downtime helps organizations to identify patterns, root causes, and areas requiring attention to reduce the frequency and duration of outages in the future. This systematic approach not only aids in resolving the current incident but also informs ongoing service management practices, ultimately enhancing the overall IT service delivery and user satisfaction.

The other answer choices do not align with the primary goal of an outage in incident management. Managing requests for new software focuses on the service and request management processes rather than incidents. Evaluating past incident reports pertains to continual service improvement and learning from past incidents, which is different from tracking the immediate impact of an outage. Creating change requests for future upgrades relates to change management, which seeks to enhance services and mitigate