From a strategic view to an engineering view in a digital enterprise

Transcription

1 Digital Enterprise Design & Management 2013 February 11-12, 2013 Paris From a strategi view to an engineering view in a digital enterprise The ase of a multi-ountry Telo Hervé Paault Orange Abstrat In this paper, we will present two examples of how Enterprise Arhiteture ould help make better investment deisions within a multi-ountry Teleommuniations Company (Telo). These two examples relate to two of the signifiant hallenges that a Telo is urrently faing : The invasion of Telo s traditional playground by new ators, the web players and the onsumer eletronis manufaturers : Telos must reat and position themselves fae to the new entrants The sharing of IT omponents between the loal ompanies of the same Telo Group, in order to ut ost through eonomies of sale For eah of the examples, we will present a strategi view and an engineering view, showing that it is possible to show, on a single A4 sheet, a summary of the tehnial poliy for the delivery of end-user servies regarding the two abovementioned hallenges. Key Words Enterprise_Arhiteture, Engineering_View, Telo

2 2 Table of Contents 1 Introdution Two hallenges for Telos Modeling onventions First example : The invasion of Telo s traditional playground by new ators, the web players and the onsumer eletronis manufaturers Telo versus Web player : Strategi view Telo versus Web player : Engineering view Seond Example : Sharing IT omponents between different ountries Multi-ountry Telo : Strategi view Multi-ountry Telo : Engineering view Referenes

3 Data 1 Introdution Two hallenges for Telos In this paper, we will present two examples of how Enterprise Arhiteture ould help make better investment deisions within a multi-ountry Teleommuniations Company. These two examples relate to two of the signifiant hallenges that a Telo is urrently faing : The invasion of Telo s traditional playground by new ators, the web players and the onsumer eletronis manufaturers The sharing of IT omponents between the loal ompanies of the same Telo Group, in order to ut ost through eonomies of sale For eah of the examples, we will present a strategi view and an engineering view, that ould be seen as a simplified version of the appliation view in the first example, and a simplified infrastruture view in the seond example. Strategi view Missions & objetives view and business view Use ases, proesses and organization Funtional view System and information Appliation view Software implementation Infrastruture view Hardware implementation T R A N S F O R M A T I O N Fig. 1. Enterprise Arhiteture framework (soure Club Urba-EA) In both ases, the objetives of the Enterprise Arhiteture modeling is to failitate the dialog between various stakeholders within the ompany : Strategy, Marketing, and IT, in order to get a onsensus on how fast, how far should transformation take plae within the ompany when Shifting from a losed model to an open model, in the first example

4 4 Setting data enters at the Region level, and populating them with IT omponents shared by the Telo operating ompanies in the different ountries, in the seond example 1.2 Modeling onventions When modeling, we will try, as muh as possible, to refer to the TM Forum (TeleManagement Forum). TM Forum is a global, non-profit industry assoiation foused on enabling servie provider agility and innovation. As an established thought-leader in servie reation, management and delivery, the Forum serves as a unifying fore aross industries, enabling more than 900 member ompanies to solve ritial business issues through aess to a wealth of knowledge, intelletual apital and standards. Fig. 2. TM Forum board members TM Forum provides several frameworks suh as Business Proess Framework (etom) Information Framework (SID) Appliation Framework (TAM) Integration Framework What is speifi about a Teleommuniation Company, or Telo, is that the business ativity of the ompany onsists almost only in transporting, transforming

5 and storing data. With the digitalization of voie, and the preeminene of IP, what is now being delivered to the ustomer onsists mostly in data. The share of other produts and servies sold to the ustomer (handset and equipment, training, finanial or insurane servies et) in the sales of a Telo is marginal. Therefore, the starting point for modeling will be the proesses between the ustomer and the Telo, beause these proesses embody almost the entirety of the billable ativity of a Telo. In this doument, we will split these proesses in two sets, that we will refer to under simplified wordings : Subsription, billing and eare workflows between the Telo and the, as shown on the etom map below 1. Servie Usage workflows between the Telo and the : The orresponding proesses are not yet expliitly desribed in etom 5 Fig. 3. etom For the appliation view, we will use the aronyms OSS & BSS, beause these two aronyms are well understood in the IT world 2, in lieu of the domain detailed lassifiation from TM Forum. 1 The Business Proess Framework (etom) is a widely deployed and aepted model and framework for business proesses in the Information, Communiations, and Entertainment industries. The Business Proess Framework represents the whole of a Servie Provider's enterprise environment. 2 Operations support systems (OSS) are omputer systems used by teleommuniations servie providers. The term OSS most frequently desribes "network systems" dealing with the teleom

6 6 Appliations that diretly deliver servies onsumed by the user will be represented in this paper under the name Servie. They are not yet expliitly lassified in TMF Appliation Framework lassifiation, that urrently fouses on the appliations that are the day-to-day tools of the employees of the ompany. 2 First example : The invasion of Telo s traditional playground by new ators, the web players and the onsumer eletronis manufaturers 2.1 Telo versus Web player : Strategi view Many of the servies that are onsumed by Telo ustomers on their smartphone, TV set, tablet or laptop are already produed by third parties. Thanks to tehnology progress, suh as ip and http, more and more of the servies that a Telo is delivering, a web player also ould offer, or would be able to offer, even if it is with a somehow different Quality of Servie. A Telo must then deide to whih extend it should ompete against these web players, and to whih extend it ould benefit from partnering with them. For Telos, the objetive would be to develop the business with these web players under partnership mode, by exposing assets suh as network integration, Identity or Billing, and not to limit the Telo s offering to pure IP Suh ompetition / partnership deision belongs to Strategy, but has also deep impliations in IT arhiteture network itself, supporting proesses suh as maintaining network inventory, provisioning servies, onfiguring network omponents, and managing faults. The omplementary term Business Support Systems (BSS) refers to business systems dealing with ustomers, supporting proesses suh as taking orders, proessing bills, and olleting payments. The two systems together are often abbreviated OSS/BSS, BSS/OSS or simply B/OSS. (quoted from Wikipedia).

7 7 Subsription Billing, eare OTT Partner Servie Usage Servie Usage / IP / Subsription, Billing, eare Subsription Billing, eare / Telo Telo Telo Servie Usage Connetivity Connetivity 1. Traditional Telo model 2. OTT model 3. Partner model Fig. 5. Web player Strategi view Over-The-Top players (OTTs) only onsume pure IP from Telos. They build their own Subsription, Billing and Identity links with the ustomer. In some ases, they ould diretly trigger Telo s servies on behalf of the ustomer. Telo s objetive is to provide high value added servies to the Servie Providers, exposing their assets through s, along Servie Level Agreements and, as muh as possible, keep ontrol of the Subsription, Billing and Identity of the ustomer. 2.2 Telo versus Web player : Engineering view / Telo Colors logi Set Top Subsription Billing, eare Conneted TV Tablet / Smartphone PC Game Console Servie Usage Servie OSS & BSS Fig. 6. Telo Traditional model

8 8 / Subsription Billing, eare Servie Usage Web player OTT servie Set Top Conneted TV Telo Colors logi Tablet / Smartphone PC Game Console IP Connetivity Neutral Telo Network OSS & BSS Fig. 7. Over-The-Top model In the OTT model, usage an be viewed as the ombination of two flows : IP onnetivity Servie usage (voie all, messaging, TV and VOD, payment et), that relies upon IP onnetivity In the Partner model, in order to ensure seamless navigation between the Telo servies and the servies offered by the different Web players, the Telo will try to keep the management of the authentiation / identifiation of the ustomer. will then benefit from Single-Sign-On. This funtion (user authentiation, session ontrol, aess rights management, sometimes summarized under the name of Identity) ould also, in our representation, be set apart from Servie Usage.

9 9 / Web player Colors logi Set Top Servie Usage Partner user servie Neutral Conneted TV Tablet / Smartphone PC Game Console Subsription Billing, eare IP Connetivity Telo Mediation Session Enabler Telo Network OSS & BSS Fig. 8. Partner model The exposition of the Telo s assets (network, billing, identity, enablers) to the Web player is being made possible by tehnologies suh as Servie-oriented arhiteture (SOA), based on well defined protools, suh as SOAP or REST, that transform apabilities into servie interfaes and publishes them define, expose and ontrol high level interfaes (the s), making abstration of underlying physial resoures All omponents (user logi omponents, enablers, OSS/BSS) are onneted to a mediation layer through s 3 We an now represent the three models on the same figure : 3 Mediation : An mediation system is an essential infrastruture for the deployment of Servie Orient Arhiteture. It may embed funtions suh as : Exposition of basi servies, Orhestration of basi servies in order to deliver enhaned servies, Brokering between providers and onsumers of s, Management of requests made by onsumers of s, both for internal and external s onsumers.

10 10 / Subsription Billing, eare Servie Usage Third party OTT user servie Set Top Servie Usage IP Partner servie Conneted TV Tablet / Smartphone PC Game Console Servie Usage Subsription Billing, eare Telo Telo servie Mediation Session Enabler OSS & BSS IP Connetivity Telo Network Fig. 9. Juxtaposition of the three models on the same figure Servie-oriented arhiteture (SOA), based on well defined protools, suh as SOAP or REST shall not be only used for opening the Telo s assets to a third parties, but will also be used by the Telo for the integration of the servies that it provides to its ustomers sine it Improves flexibility, the re-use of omponents and Quality-of-Servie And therefore redues overall build and run ost. 3 Seond Example : Sharing IT omponents between different ountries 3.1 Multi-ountry Telo : Strategi view An international Telo usually has operations and ustomers in a large number of ountries, often over 20. Eah of these operating ompanies is faing different loal market onditions, and is onstrained by a different IT legay. Therefore, a

11 large autonomy in IT investment deisions is usually given to the loal operating ompany. However a large share of the IT proessing ould be shared between several ountries. This would bring signifiant benefits : ut down ost, failitate the deployment of new servies, failitate onsistent ustomer experiene between ountries et. We all know that Web players arhiteture is totally entralized, with very limited loal implementation. So, why not do the same for Telo s arhiteture? Data Center Region 1 Data Center Region 2 11 Countries Region Servie 1 Servie 2 Servie 3 Servie 1 Servie 2 Mediation Mediation Senegal Ivory Coast Kenya Jordan Poland Romania Belgium Fig. 10. Multi-ountry strategi view Tehnial limits to this IT sharing ould stem from Bandwidth onstraints (lak of international IP bakbone for instane in some Afrian ountries, or large data volumes for instane for TV servies) Response time onstraints (suh as with voie telephony servies or voie and data harging) 3.2 Multi-ountry Telo : Engineering view On the below figure, we an see that the appliations delivering the Servies ould be instantiated in four different loations : Spread in the ountry : This was the ase of Central Swithes delivering traditional voie telephony servies, before the all IP era. Telo entralized in the ountry : This is the most frequent. In this ategory one ould find Voie over IP servies, SMS, TV and servies that have high bandwidth or speifi response time requirements

12 12 Telo shared in Group or Region : This is the trend that Telos have been following with http servies suh as Messaging, Payment and Business servies, and other value-added-servies Web player : As mentioned in the first example, ustomers onsume more and more value-added-servies provided by web players / Set Top Servie Usage Web player Servie Servie Telo Shared in Group or Region Support Servie front-end Mediation Authentiation / Session Tehnial Support Center Enabler BSS bak-end OSS bak-end Conneted TV Tablet / Smartphone PC Servie Usage Telo Centralized in the Country Network gateways Servie Mediation Authentiation / Session Network Enabler front-end BSS bak-end Support front-end OSS bak-end Tehnial Support Call Center Center Colors Game Console Telo Spread in the ountry logi Connetivity Network (Aess, Transmission, Storage) infrastruture and omponents Neutral Fig. 11. Multi-ountry Telo : Engineering view With these graphi onventions, it is possible to show, on a single A4 sheet, a summary of the tehnial poliy of the Telo regarding partnership and instantiation hoies for the delivery of end-user servies. 4 Conlusion These graphi representations are none of the traditional views used by arhitets in a projet (whih are : use view, funtional view, appliation view, infrastruture view), but rather a ombination of appliation and infrastruture views. We believe that the above-demonstrated views will be easier to grasp by non-arhitets, and will therefore ould enrih the dialog between all stakeholders within the ompany, making it easier to align IT on business.