SOC 2 Definitions 1 slide-17

Some Clarifications

and Confusions

A Server is not the Service. The "bus service" is really the service itself, not the company that runs the buses.

When we describe a service, we usually mean the general provisioning of a service,
not an instance of it.

A web server provides web pages as a service.
In a specific instance, specific pages are served.
If we mean the specific instance of a service, we will explicitly say so.

The change of state may be a change in the consumer's knowledge or database. After a request, we may now know the weather today. Or our database may know your phone number now.

The provider (server) and the consumer (client) may be the same in a trivial case: e.g., you wash your own car.

One could distinguish the provider from the server: the provider provides the server that actually performs the service: e.g., the restaurant employees the waiter. We view the waiter as an "agent" representing the restaurant.

The service may or may not have the outcome expected by the consumer. The state changed may not be that of the consumer or anything belonging to the consumer.