The purpose of the service portfolio is to accept or reject service proposals and maintain the overall catalog of services whether rejected, under development, deployed, or retired. One of the primary responsibilities of Service Portfolio Management is to make sure that the services accepted for development and deployment align with the strategic and business requirements of the organization and their customers. This includes continuous review that enables both the adjustment of services due to new requirements and the retirement of existing services due to lack of demand or replacement with a newer service.

The purpose of a service catalog is to maintain the active set of services. Active services are those either under development or currently being offered to customers for consumption in the vCloud environment. This refers to the service catalog in the context of the overall service portfolio as opposed to the consumer service catalog from which customers deploy service offerings. Ideally, the tool that supports the service portfolio and contains the service catalog provides a mechanism for automatically populating the consumer self-service catalog from the service offerings defined in the service catalog as part of the service offering release process. Regular reviews of the service catalog should be performed with adjustments made in line with any increased functionality provided by future releases of vCloud Director (VCD), vSphere, or any additional supporting products.