oss essentials

Terplan; OSS Essentials, TTY/ Leo Sutinen 22.9.2003

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OSS Essentials

TTY, Automaatioverkkojen erityiskysymyksiä

Leo Sutinen


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3SS

• OSS Operating support system

• BSS Business support system

• MSS Marketing support system


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Contents

• Classification of Service Providers

• Industry issues of Support systems

• Market Drivers for Support Systems

• The Service Delivery Cycle


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Classification of Service Providers

• Due to the opportunities given by deregulation in many countries. there are a number of new entrants in the telecommunications services industry.

• Product and service portfolios need some fine tuning in most cases because customers are faced with overlapping offers from various service providers.

• Service creation and provisioning are becoming more dynamic and provider-customer-interconnections are getting simpler by using Internet technology.


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Classification of Service Providers ASP (applications service provider)

• Emerging service provider who must combine:

• Application• Systems• Network management

• Service level expectations are extremely high; the whole business of a customer may rely on this provider.


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Classification of Service ProvidersCAP (competitive access provider)

• Facilities-based or non-facilities-based;

• Similar to the ILEC, but bas carefully selected local loops for high-profit commercial customers


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CLEC (competitive local-exchange carrier) • Smaller, flexible provider who owns little or no telecommunications facilities (facilityless).

• By offering excellent customer care and new services, they try to build the support structure step-by-step.

• Their support systems are state-of-the-art, lightweight, and less expensive to operate.

• In certain cases, they use service bureaus for billing and provisioning.


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Classification of Service ProvidersCSP (cable service provider)

• Emerging service providers with offers for access networks.

• They still face technological challenges, which can be overcome.

• Support systems are practically nonexistent.

• In terms of support systems, they buy instead of build; occasionally, they use service bureaus for billing and provisioning.


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CSP (content service provider) • Emerging service providers who concentrate on the value, Quality, and timeliness of content in eCommerce environments.

• They strongly co-operate with ISPs and ASPs.


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Classification of Service Provider

ESP (enterprise service provider)

• Emerging service provider from the enterprise environment.

• They offer services for a limited user community with similar attributes to the provider.

• They use and customize their existing support systems that may not scale well.


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ICP (integrated communications provider) • Emerging provider with integrated services offer, concentrating on next generation, high-speed data and wireless services, in particular for profitable business users.

• Their acceptance in the market space is expected to be high.

• In terms of support systems, they buy instead of build; occasionally, they use service bureaus for billing and provisioning. >>>


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ICP (integrated communications provider) • >>> They take advantage of the fact that intranet, extranet, virtual private networks, eCommerce, and multimedia applications require more bandwidth than is available over traditional circuit-switched voice networks


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Classification of Service ProvidersIEX (interexchange carrier)

• Primarily responsible for long-distance services with stepwise penetration of the local-exchange area.

• They can be both incumbent and competitive providers with the result of the need for very heterogeneous support systems.


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Classification of Service ProvidersILEC (incumbent local-exchange carrier)

• Strong provider who owns a considerable amount of telecommunications facilities and doesn't want to give away this position easily.

• Most likely, has a number of legacy support systems with little interoperability and integration in use.

• The result is high operating costs.


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Classification of Service ProvidersISP (Internet service provider)

• Wide variety of sizes of these providers.

• Their main goal is to provide Internet access to business and private customers.

• Major challenges include peering to each other and to other carriers, managing quality, and offering acceptable performance.


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Classification of Service ProvidersNSP (network service provider)

• They are responsible for providing a highly reliable networking infrastructure, consisting of equipment and facilities.

• Their responsibilities are usually limited to the physical network, but element management systems are usually included in their offers.


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Classification of Service ProvidersPTT (Post, Telegraph, and Telephone)

• strong provider who owns a considerable amount of telecommunications facilities and doesn't want to give away this position easily.

• Most likely, has a number of legacy support systems with little interoperability and integration in use.

• The result is high operating costs. >>>


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Classification of Service ProvidersPTT (Post, Telegraph, and Telephone)

• >>> It represents service providers prior to liberalization of telecommunications services.


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Classification of Service ProvidersWSP (wireless service provider)

• Carrier who provides:• cellular, • personal, and• mobile communications services.


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Industry issues of Support systemsConvergence and telecom consolidation

• It accelerates the use of advanced support systems.

• Creates advantage for support systems targeting multiple end markets.

• It increases the complexity of telecom networks and the demand for the integration of support systems.


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Industry issues of Support systemsDeveloping support systems markets

• Growth is dominated by new carrier adoptions and incumbent upgrades.

• Developing markets, such as data solutions, and carrier interconnections, are likely to justify the next wave of support systems spendings.


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Industry issues of Support systemsEmergence of complex, multiplatform

environments• Reliability and scalability of large centralized systems remain excellent.

• Service providers incorporate a multiplatform strategy augmenting existing investments in legacy solutions with newer technologies targeted at profitable customer market sectors.


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Industry issues of Support systems

Emphasis on telecom systems integration • Complex multiplatform, multivendor telecom networks require substantial systems integration for interoperability.

• With multiple client server and legacy support systems in place, integration capabilities of vendors are in high demand.


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Industry issues of Support systemsGrowth of support systems is tied to share-

shift among telecom end markets andcarriers

• The strongest near-term growth bas been achieved by vendors targeting the – fast-growing telecom end markets,– emerging local-exchange carriers (LECs),

– wireless carriers.


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Industry issues of Support systemsOutsourcing.

• Ongoing structural changes in the telecom industry will place new requirements on support systems.

• In order to concentrate on customer management, some back-office functions may be outsourced to service bureaus.

• These service bureaus might use support systems from the same vendors, but they use them in a shared fashion among multiple service providers.


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Industry issues of Support systemsProduct-based vendor-driven solutions

• Carriers increasingly demand solutions rather than raw technology and development kits for custom-developed support systems solutions.

• The advent of technology standards encourages the use of best-of-breed vendor solutions.


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Industry issues of Support systemsUpgrade cycles in support systems

• As a result of global deregulation, carrier competition is driving the demand for new, more efficient back-office solutions.

• In addition to reducing operating expenses, advanced support systems improve time-to-market and often facilitate the introduction of new, revenue-producing solutions.


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Market Drivers for Support Systems

• The market is changing very rapidly. • Support systems should be positioned well and should meet providers' expectations in a timely fashion.

• Principal market drivers are addressed in this segment.


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Market Drivers for Support SystemsGrowth of the Global

Telecommunications Market• Explosive telecom expansion driven by internal growth and acquisition is forcing telecommunications providers to assess the productivity of their current support systems

• Number of subscribers grows for existing services; new services are provisioned on existing infrastructures; and completely new services on new infrastructures are deployed or acquired. >>>


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Telecommunications Market• Several support system vendors have striven to capitalize on this opportunity with solutions that reduce

complexity • These vendors do not usually replace existing systems, but add functionality to accommodate new services, such as...


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Telecommunications Market• >>> new services, such as• - Internet, intranets, and extranet• - Special data services on top of voice networks• - Wireless services• - Cable and video services• - Voice and fax services on top of IP• - Storage area networks• - Web hosting• - Content management• - Support of ASPs• - eCommerce services


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Market Drivers for Support SystemsIncreasing Network Complexity

• As a result of customer expectations, the time-to-market of new services is extremely short.

• New telecommunicatious services providers do not have the time to build anew, but instead combine existing and new infrastructures, such as copper, fiber, and wireless.

• They are deploying new services on the basis of a mixture of infrastructures.


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• - Emerged technologies – Voice networks, Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN), circuit switching, packet switching, message switching, frame relay, Fast Ethernet, Fast Token Ring, and Fiber Distributed Data Interface/Copper Distributed Data Interface (FDDI/ CDDI)]

• - Emerging technologies– (Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), mobile and wireless, SMDS, SONET /SDH, cable, xDSL, and Broadband ISDN (B-ISDN)].


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• Each of these technologies bas its own support system solutions. In a PSTN, the element that should be managed are the switches themselves.

• Multiple elements per subscriber in digital loop carrier systems, digital cellular networks, or hybrid fiber-coax systems may cause an explosion in terms of managed elements. As a result, the size of configuration databases have grown exponentially over last 20 years.


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• Growth in the number of network elements bas been accompanied by an increase in the complexity of items to be managed. SONET /SDH, ATM, and digital wireless are highly complex, with a high degree of interdependence among network elements.

• This makes service activation and fault isolation a challenge.

• Support systems must adapt to this new situation.


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Market Drivers for Support SystemsEmerging standards

for Telecommunications Providers• When services are offered in combination, support systems should be modified and connected to each other.

• This opens new business opportunities for support systems vendors

• The introduction of standards for support systems is accelerating the demand for third-party support systems.


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Market Drivers for Support SystemsEmerging standards… TMN

• The introduction of technology standards, – Telecommunication Management Network (TMN)– Distributed Common Object Model (DCOM– Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA)– Telecommunication Information Network

Architecture (TINA)– Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM)

• have begun to gain critical support by new support systems vendors.


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• Telecommunication Management Network (TMN) is a special network that is implemented to help manage the telecommunication network of the service provider.

• It interfaces to one or more individual networks at several points in order to exchange information. It is logically separate from the networks it manages, and may be physically separate as well.


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• Telecommunication Management Network is an extension of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) standardization process.

• It attempts to standardize some of the functionality and many of the interfaces of the managed networks.

• When fully implemented, the result will be a higher level of integration.

• TMN is usually described by three architectures:


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• 1 The functional architecture– describes the appropriate distribution of functionality within TMN.

• 2 The information architecture– gives the rationale for the application of OSI systems management principles to the TMN principles.

• 3 The physical architecture– describes interfaces that can actually be implemented together with examples of physical components that make up the TMN.


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• Telecommunication Management Network distributes management responsibilities into several layers, such as – business management layer (BML), – service management layer (SML), – network management layer (NML), – element management layer (EML),– and into the actual network element layer (NEL).


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Market Drivers for Support SystemsEmerging standards… DCOM

• Distributed Common Object Model (OCOM) is the heart of Microsoft's ActiveOSS suite.

• DCOM is an integration framework infrastructure designed to facilitate communication between software components operating on the same host or with DCOM on multiple-networked hosts.

• It was originally developed to create interoperability between components.


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Market Drivers for Support SystemsEmerging standards… DCOM

• ActiveOSS acts as a centralized management and translation point for an OSS network.

• Conceptually, applications ride on top of the framework, but communicate through it.

• The common model allows the various applications to communicate in a uniform manner within the framework or across multiple-networked frameworks


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Market Drivers for Support SystemsEmerging standards…

• The framework is intended to create uniformity among application services without any modifications to source code.

• Application services are built into and managed by the framework. The overall architecture also incorporates the Smart TMN business process model and related work by TINA.


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Market Drivers for Support SystemsEmerging standards… CORBA

• Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) is a generic communication framework to connect various network management applications.

• The object request broker (ORB) is the coordinator between distributed objects. The broker receives messages, inquiries, and results from objects, and routes them to the right destination.


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• If the objects are in a heterogeneous environment, multiple brokers are required.

• They will talk to each other in the future by a new protocol based on Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP).


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• There is no information model available; no operations are predefined for objects.

• But an object does exist containing all the necessary interfaces to the object request broker. For the description, the Interface Definition Language (IDL) is being used.

• There are no detailed management information bases (MIBs) for objects.


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• The functional model consists of the Object Services Architecture.

• It delivers the framework for defining objects, services, and functions.

• Examples of services are instantiation, naming, storing objects' attributes, and the distribution/receipt of events and notification.


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Market Drivers for Support SystemsEmerging standards… TINA

• Telecommunications Information Networking Architecture (TINA) is is actually a concept integrator from intelligent network (IN), TMN, open distributed processing (ODP) from ISO and CORBA from object management group (OMG).


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Market Drivers for Support SystemsEmerging standards… TINA

• The core is OSI-based network management, expanded by the layered structure of TMN.

• The emphasis with TINA is not on the management of network elements, but on the network and services layers.

• TINA is going to be standardized by a consortium consisting of telecommunications suppliers and computer and software vendors.


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Market Drivers for Support SystemsEmerging standards… WBEM

• Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) is a joint initiative of many manufacturers led by Compaq, Microsoft, and Cisco.

• The initial announcement called for defining the following specifications:


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• HyperMedia Management Schema (HMMS). It was to be further defined by the Desktop Management Task Force (DMTF).

• HyperMedia Object Manager (HMOM). C++ reference implementation and specification, defined by Microsoft and Compaq, to be placed in the public domain.


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• HyperMedia Management Protocol (HMMP) A communication protocol embodying HMMS. running over HTTP, and with interfaces to SNMP and DMI.

• Common Information Model (CIM). It is the basis of the information exchange between various management applications.


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• Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) is helpful to unify and simplify network management.

• The combination of CIM and eXtensible Markup Language (XML) is going to set the basics of a new standard that significantly facilitates the interoperability between various support, documentation, and management systems.


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Market Drivers for Support SystemsDeregulation and Privatization

• Telecommunications service competition began in the 1980s in the USA led by MCI with 3SSs playing a key role.

• Under the pressure of the European Commission (EC), Europe is in the process of deregulation and privatization.


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• Key issues are:– Local Number Portability (LNP) It allows customers to retain their telephone numbers even if they change service providers.

– Customers also typically want to retain access to advanced features they have come to expect from an intelligent network.


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• Key issues are:– Extranets connecting support systems of ILECs and CLECs. ILECs are required to provide access to information on five classes of support systems. They are preordering, ordering, provisioning, repair, and maintenance. This is now the principal focus of local and access service providers.


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• Key issues are:– Directory services. Real-time service processing requires additional customer-related data. The expanded directory role includes end-user authorization and authentication.

– Directory enabled networks (DENs) are tackling the standardization of directory information.


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• Innovation and reengineering on behalf of the incumbent carriers show a trend toward:

• Better customer care. Based on call detail record (CDR) and other resource utilization-related data, unsophisticated customer analysis can be accomplished. It includes discovering trends in customer behavior and traffic patterns, etc.


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• Convergent billing. – The customer may expect to receive one bill for all services, such as voice, data, video, and Internet. The minimal requirement is to receive multiple bills with electronic staples.


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• Rapid provisioning of new services. Based on additional support systems, provisioning can be expedited by better interfaces and more accurate data.


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• Service differentiation. Still using the same infrastructures, new services can be created and deployed. By carefully defining the value-added nature, they may be considered by customers as differentiators


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• Offering new services, such as Internet access, xDSL, VPN, and VoIP. Also, incumbent service providers are expected to react rapidly to new communication needs, including offering Internet access for reasonable money, the deployment of xDSL, digital subscriber line, virtual private networks (VPNs), and voice over IPs (VoIP).


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Market Drivers for Support SystemsCommunication Convergence

• Advanced technology, coupled with deregulation, is driving communications convergence.

• Customers prefer to get all types of services, such as long-distance and local voice, data/Internet cable/video, and wireless access from the same service provider.

• Deregulation meant to encourage competition through the proliferation of

new entrants.


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Market Drivers for Support SystemsCustomer Orientation

• Competition is driving telecommunications service providers to emphasize customer management.

• Driven by global competition. carriers are likely to focus on improving the total value of their services-quality, support, and price-as a means to retain customers.


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Market Drivers for Support SystemsCustomer Orientation

• Many of these improvements will come from advanced support systems

• Besides improving the customer interface (e.g.. offering Web access). granular data available with new support systems can be utilized to retain key customers and reduce the amount of customer churn.

• Further differentiation is expected High-margin customers may receive special treatment.


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Market Drivers for Support SystemsASP Model

• There is an industry trend that shows a number of of companies teaming up in an attempt to meet the market demand for streamline OSS applications.

• OSS APSs pull together applications rather than create their own, and more companies are entering this space.

• Their success depends on their value to the network service providers and on how their solutions integrate across each OSS application.


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Market Drivers for Support SystemsASP Model

• BusinessNow from NetworkOSS is a good example of an ASP model.

• An unbiased collection of OSS applications from a number of suppliers enables NetworkOSS to form partnerships with its customers.

• The buy or build dilemma for service providers.


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The Service Delivery Cycle

• The telecommunications industry today is experiencing a number of changes and challenges. Deregulation, new services, new technologies. reengineering business processes and acquisitions are just a few that demand attention.

• Also, multiple concepts such as service differentiation, quality of service, time-to-market, customer care. return on investment, and total cost of ownership request attention.


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The Service Delivery Cycle

• Quality of processes, automation of processes, and integration of support and management tools may mean the difference between business success and failure.

• Business processes may be organized in several ways,such as– Customer care, service development, order processing, provisioning, network and systems management,and billing

– Fulfillment, service assurance, and billing.


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Customer Care and Billing Process

The customer interface management process • These are the processes of directly interacting with customers and translating customer requests and inquiries into appropriate events.

• Process logs customer contacts, and tracks the status to completion.


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The sales process • This process encompasses learning about the needs of each customer.

• It includes working to create a match between the customer's expectations and the service provider's ability to deliver.

• Depending on the service provider process, it can be purely selling or can include various levels of support.


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The sales process • The sales process may include preorder work and interfaces.

• The aim is to sell the correct service to suit the customer's need and to set appropriate expectations with the customer.

• Service level agreement (SLA) negotiation, request for proposal

• (RFP) management, and negotiation are led from this process.


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Customer Care and Billing ProcessThe problem handling process

• Responsible to receive service complaints from customers, resolve them to the customer's satisfaction, and provide meaningful status on repair or restoration activity.

• Responsible to be aware of any service-affecting problems, including notifying customers in the event of a disruption.

• The aim is to have problems proactively identified and communicated to the customer, and to resolve.


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Customer Care and Billing ProcessThe customef QoS management process

• This process encompasses monitoring, managing,reporting quality of service (QoS) as defined in service descriptions, SLAs, and other service-related document.

• It includes network performance, but also performance across all service parameters (e.g., orders completion on time).

• Outputs of this process are standard (predefined) and exception reports.


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Customer Care and Billing ProcessThe call rating and discounting process

• The process encompasses the following functional areas– Applying the correct rating rules to usage data a customer-by-customer basis

– Applying any discount agreed – Applying promotional discount and charges– Applying outage credits– Applying rebates ( SLAs were not met)– Resolving unidentified usage(predefined) and exception reports.


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Customer Care and Billing ProcessThe invoicing and collection process

• This process encompasses sending invoices to customers and performing collections.

• The aim is to provide a correct bill and, if there is a billing problem, resolve it quickly.


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Customer Care and Billing ProcessThe consulting and supporting process

• The collaboration between providers and customers includes establishing a special team of consultants for the customer, arranging periodic status and planning meetings, and defining the interfaces between provider and customer.


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Order Processing and provisioning ProcessThe inventory management process

• This process encompasses physical equipment and the administration of this equipment:– installation and acceptance of equipment, with the physical configuration of the network, and handling of spare parts and the repair process.

– Software upgrades, implementing IP-based services, the number of managed objects is going to grow.

– Physical assets also include servers, access servers, gateways, gatekeepers, routers, and new connections.


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Order Processing and provisioning ProcessThe service creation, planning and development process• This process encompasses the following functional areas– Designing technical capability to meet specified market need at desired cost

– Ensuring that the service (product) can be properly installed, monitored, controlled, and billed

– Initiating appropriate process and methods modifications, as well as initiating changes to levels of operations personnel and training required


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Order Processing and provisioning ProcessThe service creation, planning and development process

– Initiating any modifications to the underlying network or information systems to support the requirements

– Performing preservice testing – Ensuring that sufficient capacity is available to meet forecasted sales

– Developing IP-based services.


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Order Processing and provisioning ProcessThe network planning and development process• This process encompasses development and acceptance of strategy, description of standard network configurations for operational use, and definition of rules for network planning, installation, and maintenance.

• It is about the planning of boundary nodes, routes, and capacity.


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Order Processing and provisioning ProcessThe network planning and development process• Considering IP-based services, multiple• alternatives for the implementation are available.

• Popular solutions are– IP over ATM– IP over frame relay– IP over SONET/SDH


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Order Processing and provisioning ProcessThe network planning and development process• Special modelling tools are very useful to predict future performance under various load conditions.

• These tools utilize what-if scenarios to emulate performance under various load conditions.

• These tools depend today on the protocols used. Many providers work with multiple tools; there are practically different tools for each service.


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Order Processing and provisioning ProcessThe network planning and development process• This process also deals with designing the network capability to meet a specified service need at the desired cost and for ensuring that the network can be properly installed, monitored, controlled, and billed.

• The process is also responsible for ensuring that enough network capacity will be available to meet the forecasted demand.


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Order Processing and provisioning ProcessThe network provisioning process

• This process encompasses the configuration of the network to ensure that network capacity is ready for provisioning of services.

• Provisioning IP-based services involves a large number of nodes and servers that are completely unknown in a voice environment.

• Provisioning requires experienced subject matter experts.


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Order Processing and provisioning ProcessThe service ordering process

• Includes all the functions accepting a customer's order for service, tracking the progress of the order, and notifyig the customer when the order is complete.

• Orders can include new,change, and disconnect orders for all or part of a customer's service.

• The aim is to order the service the customer requested, and keep the customer informed.


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Order Processing and provisioning ProcessThe service configuration process

• This process encompasses the installation and/or configuration of services for specific customers, including the installation/ configuration of customer premises equipment.

• Offering IP-based services, additional functions must be considered. In particular, firewalls, application services such as e-mail, Web hosting,

and their configurations are important.


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Order Processing and provisioning ProcessThe service configuration process

• Also the setting of parameters to support QoS and SLA requirements is important.

• The more that can be automated, the better service providers do in the competitive market.


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Order Processing and provisioning ProcessThe security management process

• Due to factors such as opening networks, connecting partners, and using a public domain such as the Internet security risks increase considerably.

• Virtual private networks (VPNs) are one of the possible answers to combining existing infrastructure with acceptable protection.

• Security management procedures are identical or at least very similar.


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Order Processing and provisioning ProcessThe security manamagement process

• Security management is in charge of protecting all systems solutions.

• Process includes a planning and controlling function - In particular, three basic threats are considered:

• (1) loss of availability of services,• (2) loss of integrity, and • (3) loss of privacy.


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Network Operational Management Processes

The service problem resolution process • Process encompasses isolating the root cause of service-affecting and non-service-affecting failures and acting to resolve them. Typically, failures affect multiple customers. Actions may include immediate reconfiguration or other corrective actions.

• Aim is to understand the causes impacting service performance and to implement immediate fixes or initiate quality improvement efforts.


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The service quality management process • This process supports monitoring service or product quality on a service class basis in order to determine whether

• Service levels are being met consistently

• There are any general problems with the service or product

• The sale and use of the service is tracking to forecasts


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The service quality management process • This process also encompasses taking appropriate action to keep service levels within agreed targets for each service class and to either keep ahead of demand or alert the sales process to slow sales.

• The aim is effective service-specific monitoring and to manage service levels to meet SLA commitments and standard commitments for the specific service.


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The service quality management process • There have been quality metrics for voice services for a long time.

• For IP-based services, the term quality is relatively new.

• Philosophy behind IP-based services is to offer best-effort quality depending on the capacity constraints of networking infrastructures-but there are no guarantees even for that.


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The service quality management process • There are two alternatives with IP-based services:

• - Integrated Services (IntServ): this alternative supports RSVP and, as a result, bandwidth is guaranteed for application network ingress and egress points.

• - Differentiated Services (DiffServ): This alternative analyzes the type of service (ToS) header of IPv4 and assigns priorities.


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Network Operational Management ProcessesThe network maintenance and restoration

process • This process encompasses maintaining the operational quality of the network in accordance with required network performance goals.

• Network maintenance activities can be– preventative-such as scheduled routine maintenance or

– or corrective. Corrective maintenance can be in response to faults or to indications that problems may be developing (proactive).


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process • Supervisory functions should be extended for IP-based services- In most cases, distributed monitoring capabilities must be implemented.

• Voice networks use Transaction Language 1 (TL 1), Common Management Information Protocol (CMIP), and TMN as the basis of supervising status and resource utilization.


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process • The IP world brings Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) and Remote Monitoring (RMON) into the supervisory scenario.

• Powerful filters and correlation engines are required for the reduction of the total amount of data generated by the supervisory function.


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Order Processing and provisioning ProcessThe inventory management process

• This process encompasses physical equipment and the administration of this equipment:– installation and acceptance of equipment, with the physical configuration of the network, and handling of spare parts and the repair process.

– Software upgrades, implementing IP-based services, the number of managed objects is going to grow.

– Physical assets also include servers, access servers, gateways, gatekeepers, routers, and new connections.


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Order Processing and provisioning ProcessClosing (finally!)

• Below these business processes, there are many support, documentation, and management systems; most of them are legacy applications.

• Some of them are best-of-breed. and just a few of them are integrated with each other.