Improved Service Assurance with Agile OSS for Next Generation Services

Transcription

1 White paper Improved Service Assurance with Agile OSS for Next Generation Services For Communication Service Providers (CSPs) rolling out and moving towards implementation of various Next Generation services, the key factors for market sustainability and business growth would be time to market of the service, followed by customer retention and loyalty, which in turn would be decided by the Quality Of Experience (QoE) for the service, perceived by the customer. Agile OSS (Operation Systems Subsystem) and Service Assurance systems which enable this, as well as business processes which reduce the cost and timelines for services definition and introduction will prove to be key differentiators in deciding and establishing Market Leaders in the Next Generation Services Space.

2 About the Author Sunanda Jain Sunanda Jain is a Business IT Enterprise Architect with about 15 years of IT experience in the course of which she has successfully delivered solutions for a globally distributed clientele spanning various technologies and market-segments. She is a globally certified Telecom consultant and is working with Tata Consultancy Services since Oct She has varied interests in performing portfolio assessments, developing Business IT Strategy for customers and in emerging telecom technologies. Sunanda holds a Bachelor of Technology degree (Silver Medalist), in Electronics and Communications Engineering, from University Of Kerala and is a TM Forum certified consultant. 2

3 Table of Contents 1. Introduction 4 2. Existing Marketplace 5 3. Challenges of Existing Marketplace 6 4. Proposed Approach For OSS Transformation 7 5. Conclusion 9 6. References 9 3

4 Introduction Introduction of next generation voice, video, data, VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), IPTV (Internet Protocol Television), Triple Play, Quadruple Play services have resulted in upgradation and introduction of new access, aggregation and core networks to support the same. One of the key challenges is managing next generation services which run on top of complex, multi-domain and changing networks and underlying technologies. The challenge for established CSPs is staying in the market and increasing the market share. The challenge for new entrants is building up and growing a customer base. For both these scenarios, the need of the day is a service and customer oriented strategy, enabled by holistic, synchronized and scalable OSS architectures, which ideally should be network agnostic and easily extensible to support new services in a cost effective and efficient fashion. This paper highlights the current challenges for established as well as entrant CSP s, and recommends methodologies for ensuring a business driven, agile OSS in place, with a focus on Service Assurance for customer retention and loyalty. It also recommends having the OSS layer above the service layer, as opposed to the network layer to provide quick adaptability and extensibility to new services. 4

5 Existing Marketplace A. Legacy OSS Applications: Established Telco s have legacy OSS applications that have evolved over time and are segmented according to underlying technology and markets, leading to silos of OSS systems which might be performing the same function. These represent significant capital investment. Legacy will require consolidatation and transformation. These have the customer and inventory database of the enterprise. However, not all legacies are necessarily redundant. B. Enormous Amounts of Network Specific data There is an enormous amount of raw data from EMS (Element Management Systems) and underlying Network Elements. The components of the underlying network provide a significant amount of raw performance data which by itself may be used only to identify and report a problem with an individual Network Element. This data however has to be mapped to the underlying service and the end customers, who would be affected, and integrated with OSS layers to enable streamlined, end to end fault management and diagnostics, with a service and customer focus. C. OSS implementations Not Based On Underlying Services OSS implementations which are based on Networks rather than underling services are common. Many CSP s have OSS in place which map the service assurance data to the underlying equipment (Network Elements such as Session Border Controllers, Call Servers, Media Gateways, virtual LAN s, ports and cards on equipment) rather that the supported service. This is more on a network and infrastructure level, rather than on a service level. Inventory provisioning and configuration systems which map the services to the underlying network equipment are required to facilitate quick OSS Service Assurance, and test and diagnostics in place for new services as they are introduced. This will minimize cost of OSS migration along with service introduction and allow the OSS to be in place before the service goes live. 5

6 Challenges Of Existing Market Place A. Multilple Silos Traditional OSS systems which are deployed in multiple silos are complex to maintain, and market or technology specific which makes it difficult to scale with introduction of new services. With organizations moving towards multi-vendor COTS (Commercial off the Shelf) systems, lack of support for standardized interfaces and tight-coupling makes integration, transformation or migration expensive and slow, and triggers custom integration every time a new entrant is added into the value chain. Significant investment has to be made in standardizing data in different formats from various vendor specific element management systems by introduction of convergent middle layers to produce easily usable data in standard formats. B. Changes In Network Infrastructure n OSS implementations which are based on Networks rather than underlying services require complete backhaul when the underlying network changes. n The ability to move quickly to fulfill new business needs and services is required to offer insight into real time Customer QoE and increase business presence, along with delivering high service quality and analytics at competitive costs. C. Lack of End To End Service Assurance Solutions With the emergence of multi-domain services and requirements of complex correlation across various domains, real time end to end performance monitoring and service assurance solution which correlate network events with the service and end user are required. These should enable preemptive service assurance with proactive management of affected end users, along with minimal operational, people and process costs, and reduced time to resolve. D. Proprietary Lock -In Legacy systems might have issues of Vendor lock-in or proprietary lock-in, which have created a dependency on a vendor for products and services, and difficulty to use another vendor without substantial switching costs. E. Business, Information and Technology Alignment Mergers and acquisitions, entrepreneurial initiatives, regulatory changes and strategic alliances, along with developments in new technologies create a dynamic business environment. A key success factor for a successful company in such a dynamic environment is an effective and efficient information technology (IT) supporting business strategies and processes. An IT initiative can be completed perfectly on-time, and on budget, and still fail to succeed and realize the intended business benefits that justified the initial investment. True IT benefits realization and investment return only occurs when Business Units and IT work as partners with shared knowledge, joint commitment, and shared accountability for the success or failure for the project. Benefits also occur when they are measured, calling for jointly agreed on measures of success that are actually demonstrated at the end of an IT project or transformation. 6

7 Proposed Approach For OSS Transformation The transformation should be driven from the business perspectives. Utilize a top-down view to verify that the business processes fit the organizational and market needs and that the technology precisely aligns with business process needs. Correct identification and establishment of Next Generation OSS programs that will achieve the business objectives, enterprise wide governance across value chains in in the organization, and an effective transitioning strategy are critical to effective transformation. The following tools and standards are recommended for achieving this transformation: n SOA: Service Oriented Architecture. Allows carriers to retain legacy applications and integrate with newer Applications. n Tele-Management Forum (TM Forum) frameworks like Frameworx, Business Process Framework i.e. etom (Enhanced Telecom Operations Map), Shared Information/Data (SID) Model. n TMF OSS/Java standards n ITIL standards. Evolving Business Models Technology Advancements CSP Process Flow IT Best Practices Customer delight Fig 1: Business IT Alignment for OSS 7

8 Agile End-to- End Service Assurance Service assurance aims at measuring, reporting, analyzing and optimizing network and service performance, which has an impact on the end-user perceived quality of experience for a CSP. It can span across different Lines of Business in an enterprise, and is owned usually by the IT or dedicated OSS/BSS divisions. Parts of the functionality can be owned by the networking division. Service assurance consists of the following areas: n n n n Performance monitoring and management. Service management. Fault and event management. Test and Diagnostics This section proposes architecture for end to end service assurance which enables QoE, QoS and Service Level Agreement Compliance. An end to end, automated service assurance solutions architecture which gives a customer s view of the service, as opposed to a network view, is illustrated. It is envisioned to be Network Agnostic and easily scalable to support new services. A service layer which sits between the OSS and the network is proposed in the architecture below to enable this. Customer Retention and Loyalty Customer Operate and Helpdesk Vendors Web Interface/Enablement Proactive Test & Diagnostics Portal QoS/QoE Dashboards Customer Billing Queries Customer Fault Handling Analytics Service Assurance & Management Inventory Management Activation/Provisioning Fault/Event/SLA Management Network Utilization Capacity Planning Testing Performance Management Revenue Assurance Service Products - Telephony, Internet, IPTV, VoIP, Triple Play, Quad Play Network Fig 2: Network Agnostic, Customer Centric, Scalable Service Assurance and Management Model 8

9 Conclusion In response to the remarkable growth and development of the next generation services, a highly competitive marketplace, disruptive technologies, and price pressures, CSP s will have to adopt a top-down business driven, customer centric and service oriented approach, and adapt to Agile OSS systems, which confirm to standard industry specified interfaces. They will have to have efficient, holistic business processes in place which can be derived from TM Forum standards and Industry standards such as ITIL, and enable in providing visibility and governance across the enterprise value chain. OSS vendors must evolve to provide solutions to support these new processes and move towards solutions which support industry specific standards which enable in easy integration and addition of new partners to the value chain, which are network agnostic, and support end to end views across multiple domains, with full automation, towards improved Customer Experience. An understanding and conformance to industry standards and cooperation between CSP s, standards organizations, OSS vendors, equipment manufacturers, and CRM solution providers would be required to achieve the necessary agility, and cost effectiveness. To emerge and remain word leaders in the competitive market place, where new technologies and services have shorter lifecycles, holistic and agile business processes, across people, process and technology, along with a continual Business, Information and Technology Assessment is required, with a key focus on improving the management of services and customer experience, enabled by use of industry wide standards, rather than silos of traditional network management systems. References [1] TM Forum [2] Arthur, W. B. (1989). "Competing technologies, increasing returns, and lock-in by historical events". Economic Journal 97: [3] Enterprise SOA. Prentice Hall, 2005 [4] Morreale, Patricia A.; Terplan, Kornel (2009), " Matching ITIL to etom", CRC Handbook of Modern Telecommunications, Second Edition (2 ed.), CRC Press, ISBN [5] Light Reading s Service Software Insider, Vol.2, NO.4, August 2006 [6] Frank Zeichner, Leveraging your Legacy Network for a profitable Next Generation Network Transition, 2006 [7] Young-Wook Woo, Daniel W. Hong, Seong-II Kim, Byung Soo Chang, SOA Based Next Generation OSS Architecture, Management of Convergence networks and Services, pp , 9th Asia Pacific Network Operations and Management Symposium, APNOMS

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