White Paper, Oct 2002

OSS/BSS – The challenges ahead

Contents
1 About the author .................................................................2

2 Introduction .........................................................................3

3 Current State of the ICT Industry.......................................4

3.1 A Historic Retrospect.............................................................4
3.2 The Service Provider Marketplace ........................................4
3.3 OSS/BSS Sector Review ......................................................5
3.4 The Impact of New Business Models ....................................6
3.5 Emerging Services ................................................................7
3.5.1 Service Proliferation ..............................................................8
3.5.2 Demands on support systems...............................................9
3.5.3 Overall requirements ...........................................................10
3.6 Enabling Technologies ........................................................10

4 The Service Provider’s Challenge ...................................13

4.1 The Legacy Dilemma ..........................................................13
4.2 The Migration Dilemma .......................................................13

5 TeleManagement Forum’s NGOSS Framework ..............14

5.1 TMF .....................................................................................14
5.2 NGOSS ...............................................................................14
5.3 eTOM ..................................................................................15
5.4 SIM/SID ...............................................................................16
5.5 TNA .....................................................................................17
5.6 Other TMF Activities............................................................18

6 OSS/BSS Solutions Overview ..........................................19

6.1 Self Service .........................................................................20
6.2 Order Management .............................................................20
6.3 Usage Analysis....................................................................21
6.4 Service Assurance ..............................................................21
6.5 Integration Frameworks.......................................................22
6.6 Mediation.............................................................................22

7 Recommendations ............................................................22
7.1 Develop an OSS/BSS Strategy ...........................................23
7.2 Integrate with other Strategies ............................................23
7.3 Implement the Strategies ....................................................23
1 About the author
Mr. Thomas Tenevall, a senior OSS/BSS strategist,
has been active in the world of telecom since 1985.
He has participated in a multitude of projects, ranging
from legacy systems development to definition of
support system strategies and migration roadmaps
for new generation OSS/BSS. Mr. Tenevall is actively
involved in standards work for the TeleManagement
Forum.

Phone: +46 60–14 69 86

Mobile: +46 70–513 45 91
E-mail: [email protected]

Copyright Statement

The information contained in this document represents the current view of

TietoEnator on the issues discussed as of the date of publication.
Because TietoEnator must respond to changing market conditions, it
should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of TietoEnator,
and TietoEnator cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information
presented after the date of publication.

The information contained in this document can be transmitted if the

source TietoEnator is clearly stated.

White Paper - OSS/BSS – The challenges ahead 2

2 Introduction
The purpose of this white paper is to:

• Provide an overview of the current state of the multi-faceted

Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry by
highlighting the Service Provider marketplace and the
Operations/Business Support Systems (OSS/BSS) sector,
emerging services and the multi-technology networks
phenomenon.

• Discuss what we refer to as “The Service Provider’s Challenge”

and how the TeleManagement Forum’s framework with its
artifacts can be used.

• Present an overview of OSS/BSS solutions.

• Offer a recommendation that hopefully sheds some light on how to

face The Service Provider’s Challenge and overcome the hurdles
that lie ahead for an efficient utilization of OSS/BSS systems.

Throughout this paper, the generic description Service Provider (SP) is

used for denoting all various types of Information and/or Communications
Service Providers, such as e.g. Mobile or Fixed-line Network or
Wholesale Operators, Internet Service Providers, Application Service
Providers, Virtual Service Operators, etc. The reason for use of a
common idiom is to demonstrate that the issues discussed herein apply
not only for one particular niche but rather to the majority of players in the
SP community whether incumbents or start-ups, since most develop,
produce or sell information and/or communications services.

The terms OSS and BSS have respectively emerged from two distinct
facets of the IT industry. What were previously tagged Administrative
Systems in the early days changed to Business Support Systems, while
so-called Technical Systems later changed label to Operations Support
Systems. Later, those Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) that
specialized in software for customer-centric systems added functionality
to their solutions in the areas of product and service management.
Vendors on the operations side started out with producing Element
Management Systems. However, they soon ventured into the business
system realm by augmenting their solutions to cover products, services
and even customer-related functions. The convergence resulted in the
blurring of definitions, thus there is no clear characterization of or
differentiator between the OSS and BSS acronyms. In this paper
OSS/BSS is used for any type of support system since there is no actual
difference between the two.

White Paper - OSS/BSS – The challenges ahead 3

3 Current State of the ICT Industry
3.1 A Historic Retrospect
Traditionally, the center of attention in the ICT industry from a systems
perspective has been placed on the network and the equipment that
activated and produced services. This focus has now changed to a more
business and customer oriented view in attempts to reduce churn and
maintain market shares and revenues, along with the opportunities IP and
the Internet era has brought to the marketplace.

The number and complexity of services has exploded in just a few years
and competition from aggressive entrants has shaken the very
foundations of the incumbents, forcing them to act in order to survive.
These in turn have restructured their organizations into a customer-
centered business-driven enterprise, where focused business roles are
taken on by specified entities which increasingly are operating as
autonomous companies, but leverage the latent resources incumbents
have. The differentiator between competitors has also shifted away from
the customary network view; a view based on similar or even identical
transport technologies from a small number of large cap multinational
equipment vendors towards a way in which Service Providers are
managing their customers, services and resources. As a result, OSS/BSS
systems have gradually grown in importance. We can se a clear revision
of attitudes to OSS/BSS as being merely a support system towards
“OSS/BSS as the competitive advantage” for Service Providers. This is
due to the realization that, according to Salomon Smith Barney,
"OSS/BSS is part of the solution - not part of the problem", which is also
used by the TeleManagement Forum as a catchphrase. The conception
will in time help the OSS/ BSS sector to expand, even if current market
consolidation trends continue.

Despite growing awareness of the importance of the OSS/BSS

environment, coupled with the fact that OSS/BSS is not a technical issue
but a financial one, many Service Providers today are struggling with their
old legacy architecture. Although important, as day-to-day operations
totally depend on it, the legacy architecture should be considered a
bottleneck when it comes to the rapid deployment and introduction of new
services or the ability to respond to competitive offers in the marketplace.

3.2 The Service Provider Marketplace

Despite recent downturns in economy which hit the ICT industry in its
entirety the changes in the marketplace will continue. The biggest impact
has come from the dawning of the Internet era and e-business,
fundamentally changing the pattern in customer behavior. Both residential
and corporate customers have adopted and are now on a daily basis
using Internet technology as a means for external, customer-facing, and
internal (i.e. intranet-based) communication. The second contributor to
the paradigm shift can be derived from the Mobile market. Here, the
explosion in penetration and the increased usage of data services,

White Paper - OSS/BSS – The challenges ahead 4

 especially among the young, are obvious signs on how the future will turn
out.

The rapid growth of the Internet and the services supplied over it has,
together with deregulation and globalization, become the main driver for
the disentanglement of vertically integrated traditional Telco’s into more or
less independent business entities. This has created a wide range of new
Service Providers, each of which playing its part in the value chain that
delivers highly complex, yet flexible information and communication
services.

As a consequence, the business landscape has forever altered and new

types of markets have emerged, each with its own set of unique business
rules. Service Providers of today are doing business in very different
roles, ranging from communication wholesale services, a sector with few
players, large volumes and stable relations to a dynamic content and
applications market sector wherein niche Service Providers are offering
aggregate services to e.g. the customer-facing virtual Service Provider or
directly to the end customer.

The SP community will recover sooner if OSS/BSS systems are treated

as strategic assets. The economics of telecom stipulate that Service
Providers become significantly more efficient and those who want to
succeed must evolve into streamlined, agile enterprises irrespective of
business niche. This implies that a complete transformation of key
business processes is required as well as access to highly flexible, low-
cost systems to support new levels of automation and elimination of the
integration costs involved.

3.3 OSS/BSS Sector Review

The OSS/BSS sector has over the last few years shown a tremendous
shake-out. First through the rapid dotcom revolution with its exponential
growth of new niche players, then followed by an intense mergers and
acquisitions rally. During the latter multinational Network Equipment
Vendors (NEVs) literally vacuumed the market in the quest to acquire as
many target ISVs as possible. The reason was to broaden customer
offerings from proprietary equipment that only supported element
managers to massive end-to-end network/support system solutions that
also supported service, product and customer-facing business processes.
Although commendable, the strategy often failed since integrating the
newly acquired system solutions was a task easier said than done. The
large NEVs also claimed their solutions not only supported their own
equipment but also their competitors’. When the market fell consolidation
took place, and those OSS/BSS systems that were considered not to
support the core business were sold out.

From another perspective, producers of Enterprise Resource Planning

software have identified the ICT industry as an area with great potential.
This has meant that ERP vendors are working hard to improve their
goods-oriented software suites to handle the far more complicated
telecom services industry. Although some market leaders assert they
have produced a telecom compliant solution, whether or not they will
succeed is still too early to tell.

White Paper - OSS/BSS – The challenges ahead 5

 Somewhere in between, traditional OSS/BSS vendors fight for their
existence by enhancing their best-of-breed solutions, often through
careful mergers and acquisitions, in a marketplace with needs growing
but less money to spend.

3.4 The Impact of New Business Models

As a result of competition, deregulation, service and technology
development the change in business models with business entities acting
in supplier/partner relationships has had a major impact on Service
Providers and their OSS/BSS architectures. Dealing with these
challenges in a competitive manner has become a significant issue partly
because legislators in various countries tend to benchmark openly
Service Provider performance when involved in e.g. Number Portability.

Business processes, until recently solely of internal concern, still focus

heavily on labor-intensive activities and organizational shortcuts which is
unacceptable when new business models are to be implemented. To
solve the predicament business contracts should be established
containing Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and supported by
agreements on processes that handle the business transactions between
each involved Service Provider. However, the situation will impede
current OSS/BSS architectures since it does not fully meet new business
requirements. This impact not only concerns the technical solution but
also the need to standardize and reach agreements on business
transactions, e.g. among ebXML activities, must be addressed.

Due to the standardization and transaction influences on business

processes and integration, the performance issue has also come in focus
to create even higher degrees of OSS/BSS automation and security.
Moreover, as customer-facing Service Providers fulfill customer SLAs
they will distribute the risk backwards in the value chain, causing a time-
lapse effect due to the delayed execution of the bilateral SLAs thus in the
process generating additional emphasis on performance levels. This
creates an extreme challenge for every Service Provider in the value
chain regarding the OSS/BSS architecture and its capabilities for process
automation, data modeling and operations excellence.

Hence, the value chain contains a set of relationships between

participating entities, each assuming its specific responsibility by adding
value in the end product or service to the customer, being the final
consumer. An example of characteristic business roles is illustrated in the
following figure, where a set of business transactions supported by the
OSS/BSS are required to be fulfilled. The figure is taken from the
TeleManagement Forum Value Chain Market Centre, an interest group
working on value chain issues focusing on business models, roles, actors
and business transactions.

White Paper - OSS/BSS – The challenges ahead 6

 Complementary
Service
Provider 3 rd Party
Distributor
Wholesale
Service
Provider
Retail
End Customer
Service
Equipment/ Provider
Software
Provider
and/or
Integrator Interactions
in Scope

Trusted 3 rd
Party
Intermediary

When implementing the business model, a number of business

transactions will be executed between the various roles, i.e. the various
business entities. Business transactions are required for all business
processes and depend on the objective of each transaction, e.g. order
execution, trouble ticket, or notification of an error occurrence. In order to
be able to automate a transaction a set of OSS/BSS components has to
be developed and deployed. This is an issue that has been addressed in
the areas of Number Portability and Local Loop Unbundling, which would
not have been possible if new types of OSS/BSS software had not been
developed to support it.

Important to note is that the various roles executing business transactions

between them are often regulated by legislation from a supervisory
governmental body. This has had a dramatic impact on the incumbents
as they have been forced to implement these roles within the enterprise
to follow legislative requirements on competition and visibility. Until now,
most business relationships have been bilateral and in a relatively static
state, where in the future we will see more dynamic models emerging.
Each relationship will be set on a case-by-case basis, resembling an
auction where one actor first specifies requirements, and then selecting
the optimum option from a number of responses. To manage these
dynamic relations there is a need not only to describe the relationship but
also to model it and thus be able to automate the transactions in a
superior way. Work on “Dynamic Modeling” has begun for example in
Eurescom, and is also followed by the TeleManagement Forum Value
Chain Market Center.

3.5 Emerging Services

The transformation of the marketplace with the arrival of the Internet and
Mobile booms, together with new business models, has brought about a
number of challenges to Service Providers in terms of service
development, management and operations.

White Paper - OSS/BSS – The challenges ahead 7

3.5.1 Service Proliferation

Due to an increasingly rapid technological evolution, products and

services are multiplying. What was previously considered a
comprehensive portfolio of state-of-the-art services will soon be regarded
as outdated. Now and even more so in the future profits will be generated
by value-added or personalized bundles of services and pre-integrated
solutions. Communications services that are to be offered to
Small/Medium-sized Enterprises or Corporate Customers by Service
Providers will range from different types of bare-bones access to entire
information and communications solutions including point-to-point access,
transport technology, Internet access, security solutions, content, IP
telephony, as well as operations. For services targeted at the residential
market a new generation of services will evolve with attributes such as
bundled functions, converged fixed-line/wireless applications, mass user-
personalization, or customer self-empowerment to mention a few, see
figure below:

Source: TMF & Telcordia Technologies

Voice to text services

VoIP services
Universal messaging
Specialized information services
Enhanced voice
Content personalization services
Enhanced voicemail
Multimedia & interactive content
Audio teleconferencing
(Streamed Games, Gambling, etc.)
Video teleconferencing
IP video and MP3 streaming
SME hosted services
Basic voice Misc. entertainment services
Data backup/recovery services
Voicemail Interactive Advertising
Text to voice services
Datacom services Enhanced TV
Teleworking support
Location-based services
SMS text messaging
Family & Friends features
Web/Internet access
Discounted service bundles
Pre-paid services
Multimedia teleconferencing
Basic e-mail
B2B services
eCommerce Applications
Web-based service orders
Multimedia Bridging Services

Yesterday Today Tomorrow

From a service standpoint, the situation for Service Providers is thus

going to change from a state of few services, very large customer base
and long service lifecycles towards service abundance with many new
services introduced each year, shrinking customer base and significantly
reduced service lifecycles. This massive proliferation will continue in the
foreseeable future and forecasts for various services remain bright, as
indicated in the table:

White Paper - OSS/BSS – The challenges ahead 8

 DEMAND
SEGMENT SUB-SEGMENTS GROWTH

Fixed voice Local loop, LD, Int’l

Added value voice Teleconference, calling card, 0800

Cellular voice Prepay, account

Cellular data SMS, WAP, GPRS

Business data ATM, Frame, IP vs PN

Internet Web hosting, leased lines, dial-up

Broadband DSL, Cable data and iDTV

Source: Jacobs Rimell Analysis High Medium Low

3.5.2 Demands on support systems

Service proliferation necessitates that support system architectures, be

they legacy or new generation OSS/BSS, must be capable of fulfilling a
whole new set of unprecedented requirements that will arise due to the
rapid service development. Irrespective of applications, platforms or
technologies, support system architectures need to be able to:

• Define service components with various attributes

• Support centralized service development

• Support short service development cycles

• Develop services based on “core” and “meta” service components

• Manage rich service bundling

• Provide mass user-personalization

• Allow for a faster rollout of services

• Avoid service introduction delay, i.e. rapid launch of new services

• Deliver new services or service bundles in a scalable, repeatable

manner without massive duplication of effort

• Support customer empowerment through e.g. web-based self-

service

• Automate configuration management to facilitate faster installation

rates

• Support rapid re-engineering of services in order to extend service

lifecycles

• Trace service bundles back to their original service components

White Paper - OSS/BSS – The challenges ahead 9

 • Monitor performance parameters related to services or
components

• Manage a quick phase-out of retired services

The impact on Service Providers’ management and operations is that

from being an internal process, the requirements on the OSS/BSS have
equaled those on the network itself with up to 24X7 availability and five
nines reliability. The demands above underline that OSS/BSS is in effect
a strategic asset and therefore should be considered as business critical
as the underlying network infrastructure itself.

3.5.3 Overall requirements

From a market standpoint it is apparent that flexibility in components,

bundling, pre-integration and usage are the keys to the future of service
development, operations and management. Customers demand being
able to reach their services independent of location, transport
mechanism, technology or type of terminal. This means that a decoupling
of different service components is required so that as a minimum
connectivity, i.e. access/transport components are separated from
application/content. Moreover, it implies that components need to be
integrated or assembled in such way so as to be able to deliver the
described flexibility. The complexity of the service offerings, the flexibility
required to assemble components on a strict demand basis, the increase
of automated business transactions suggest that the need for agreeing
upon a common language or standards in the industry has grown, both in
terms of understanding the business processes and in terms of increased
plug and play capabilities amongst various OSS/BSS systems.

3.6 Enabling Technologies

The Internet boom with the rapid development of IP technologies has
brought about a paradigm shift in the Information and Communications
Technology industry. From operating isolated islands of backbone
networks, each based on diverse transport technologies serving different
or even competing sets of services utilizing separate stove pipe
architectures for systems support, there is now a shift towards an IP-
based multi-technology network:

White Paper - OSS/BSS – The challenges ahead 10

 This new type of network, distinctively separating connectivity and access
from applications and content is an absolute necessity in order to respond
to or create market demand and stay abreast of competitors. The
occurrence of multi-technology networks is moreover a prerequisite for
creating service components. By leveraging the network’s structural
design, components can quickly be bundled to produce unique,
seemingly tailor-made service offerings for targeted customer segments.
The enabling technology for this transformation is based on Internet
technologies on which applications and content are executed and the IP-
protocol, although different transport mechanisms are utilized, hence the
saying; “IP over everything – everything over IP”. Even if these next-
generation networks are here to stay, there are still many questions left to
answer. Only time will tell which technologies are to prevail and dominate
the market.

The overoptimistic predictions, first concerning penetration rates for IP

telephony and Voice over IP and thereafter the distorted views on the
deployment and use of 3G have created an enormous backlash. In the
wake of unrealistic 3G license bids and miscalculated business concepts,
the ICT industry will linger for years to come.

Regarding IP telephony, figures confirm that IP telephony is on the verge

of becoming a tour the force, a fact that has to be taken into calculation
by aspiring Service Providers. For 3G the picture is still gloomy. Few
signs today point to an increase in demand, which is confirmed by the
offhand response when the first 3G-compliant handsets were introduced
on the market. Despite the bleak outlook, the future still holds promise for
mobile datacom services, a noteworthy area due to its significant growth
rates and one well worth bearing in mind for Service Providers.

On the subject of recent developments within the realm of OSS/BSS, a

number of breakthrough technologies have emerged in the last few years.
These are expected to bring significant changes to the OSS/BSS sector,
such as advances in software flexibility and improved levels of
interoperability.

White Paper - OSS/BSS – The challenges ahead 11

 Technologies such as Java with Enterprise Java Beans and Jini, with its
abilities to identify and deploy new service components automatically,
have definite potential to dramatically change how OSS/BSS is
developed, deployed and managed. Work is well under way, for example
within the TeleManagement Forum Catalyst Program for Proof of
Concepts where the Fine Grain project showcases how these
technologies can be utilized.

On the Internet, an evolution has taken place. From an initial aim of

enabling connectivity, Internet proponents now seem intent on realizing
programmability:

XML
HTML
o gy
c h n ol TCP/
IP
Te
Connectivity Presentation Programmability
Inn FTP, E-m
ova ail, G
ophe
tion r
Web P
ages
Web
Serv
Browse ices
the Web
Program
the Web

In fact XML has already come into great use and the opportunity for
creating improved measures when handling business interfaces is
regarded as both probable and realistic. With the introduction of Web
Services, which implements an XML-based collection of standards and
aims to simplify and support internal and external business transactions
within an enterprise, the integration support for the OSS/BSS sector will
become sufficiently easier. The execution support for Web Services is
based on the Simple Object Access Protocol framework for transport,
registration etc. SOAP itself is a lightweight XML-based protocol for
exchange of information in a decentralized, distributed environment.

Other trends that have already made a significant impact on OSS/BSS

flexibility and business support are:

Workflow engines, which support process execution and improvement

Integration frameworks, which support information flows between various

OSS/BSS functions and increase opportunities to introduce loose
couplings between various systems

White Paper - OSS/BSS – The challenges ahead 12

4 The Service Provider’s Challenge
To fully understand the challenges OSS/BSS pose for Service Providers,
the issue is divided into the legacy and migration dilemmas.

4.1 The Legacy Dilemma

Most Service Providers today carry an operational burden in the form of
their Legacy architectures. This aspect not only applies for incumbents,
but even recently established Service Providers have managed to build a
tangled web of support systems in quite a short timeframe.

The root of the problem is the by now classic stove-pipe syndrome;

Service Providers have built separate sets of systems architectures
where each independently supports only one type of transport service,
e.g. POTS, ATM, F/R, SDH, Mobile etc. Predominantly, they consist of a
patchwork of niche systems developed in-house in the late 70s or early
80s. These systems are often huge applications serving several
processes in several layers with a large number of peer-to-peer system
interfaces creating a rigidity that cannot possibly match existing require-
ments on flexibility and time to market (or money). Although the inherent
problem, the legacy architecture is crucial for day-to-day operations and
since the data that operations rely on are all stored in outdated
databases, a catch-22 situation is created; the consequence is that
Service Providers still have to create reliable transformation processes to
enable a migration to new OSS/BSS environments, which is a
prerequisite for survival in the ICT industry.

4.2 The Migration Dilemma

Spilling over from the legacy dilemma, an even greater difficulty for
Service Providers is being able to execute a manageable migration to a
new OSS/BSS architecture that supports novel ways of conducting
business and dealing with customers, products and resources.

Migrating to a new OSS/BSS environment requires a substantial time

period, often over several years, since a Big-Bang approach is too
dangerous with the risk of fatally disrupting critical business operations.
The long migration period in turn creates a number of costly problems
since the legacy still needs to coexist along with the new OSS/BSS in
order to facilitate the exchange of information between the two
architectures. These high costs however will create confidence problems
in the organization, since the key motivator for deploying a new
architecture is specifically cost savings. Very often the double cost, i.e.
operating the legacy and the new OSS/BSS in parallel during migration, is
not fully visible in the decision making process. Senior management in
most Service Providers have yet to come to terms with the real costs
involved in implementing a new OSS/BSS architecture. Another important
issue to keep in mind is the close kinship between OSS/BSS strategies,
business plans and service portfolio strategies. Moreover, introduction of
new services, possible retirement of existing ones, as well as the
deployment of new technologies, must go hand in hand with OSS/BSS

White Paper - OSS/BSS – The challenges ahead 13

 strategies when planning ahead for the scope of migration so as to avoid
exposure to unforeseen costs.

5 TeleManagement Forum’s NGOSS Framework

Given the challenges stated above, Service Providers must deploy new
support system architectures in order to survive. The most apparent
alternative in the face of globalization, increased competition, universal
deregulation and service proliferation is leveraging a generic set of
principles and procedures within OSS/BSS. Although the use of
standardized products, increased interoperability and open interfaces will
no doubt help Service Providers, the realistic option to remain competitive
is to use standards. The most significant initiative in this direction has
been taken by the TeleManagement Forum through the NGOSS
framework which is commonly viewed as the OSS/BSS framework for the
future.

5.1 TMF
TeleManagement Forum is a worldwide non-profit consortium consisting
of around 400 Service Providers, NEVs, ISVs, other miscellaneous
vendors and suppliers and systems integrators. Its focus lies in
automating operational management and business processes by helping
to advance available technologies and solutions within the global
Information and Communications Technology industry. TMF provides to
its member organizations a collection of industry knowledge, facilitates
agreements between companies, and offers opportunities for
experimentation and cooperative development. TMF has adopted an
aggregate role to promote a faster convergence of standards and liaisons
with other, more focused forums such as the OMG, DMTF, Eurescom,
OASIS and others. The long-term objective of the TMF is to create a
common language to reach a true plug and play capability between OSS/
BSS systems as well as stakeholders operating in the Information and
Communications Technology industry.

5.2 NGOSS
NGOSS, or New Generation Operations Systems and Software is an
industry-agreed business solution framework for new generation
OSS/BSSs. NGOSS is driven and managed by the TMF and includes
tools and guidance for Service Providers, vendors, suppliers and systems
integrators. Its goal is to achieve a rapid development and integration of
flexible, low cost of ownership solutions based on “Commercial off the
Shelf” components to meet the business needs of the ICT industry.
NGOSS is a globally standardized toolset for analyzing, designing and
constructing new generation OSS/BSS systems, and is said to be
necessary to enable identification, assembly and delivery of new
generation ICT products and services. Utilizing a business perspective
coupled with a top-down approach, i.e. customer focus, NGOSS contains:

• Descriptions of business processes, eTOM

White Paper - OSS/BSS – The challenges ahead 14

 • Systems and software integration maps, SIM

• Development architecture, TNA

• A repository of documents, models and reference codes

5.3 eTOM
The Enhanced Telecom Operations Map is TMF’s Business Process
Framework and its main deliverable. eTOM has become an industry de
facto standard and is used by many stakeholders to create a common
ground of understanding.

The scope of the eTOM is to support and guide different types of Service
Providers and other stakeholders in process development,
implementation and operation. The eTOM provides a common language
and is supported by exhaustive documentation. The eTOM is often
referenced in both “Request For” documents to Independent Software
Vendors as well as oppositely since most ISVs today map their OSS/BSS
products against the eTOM in order to display solutions capabilities.

Customer

Strategy, Infrastructure & Product Operations

Strategy & Infrastructure Product Operations Fulfillment Assurance Billing

Commit Lifecycle Lifecycle Support and
Management Management Readiness

Marketing & Offer Management Customer Relationship Management

Service Development & Management Service Management & Operations

Resource Development & Management Resource Management & Operations

(Application, Computing and Network) (Application, Computing and Network)

Supply Chain Development & Management Supplier/Partner Relationship Management

Enterprise Strategic & Brand Management, Stakeholder & External Disaster Recovery,
Management Enterprise Market Research & Relations Management Security & Fraud
Planning Advertising Management

Research &
Financial & Asset Human Resources Development, Enterprise Quality
Management Management Technology Management, Process & IT
Acquisition Planning & Architecture

©TeleManagement Forum October, 2001

As shown in the figure above, eTOM consists of three main process

areas, namely the Strategy, Infrastructure & Product (SIP), the
Operations, and the Enterprise Management areas:

• The SIP process area consists of the Strategy & Commit,

Infrastructure Lifecycle Management and Product Lifecycle
Management processes. It adopts a lifecycle perspective in terms
of generation of strategies and establishing business commitment

White Paper - OSS/BSS – The challenges ahead 15

 as well as an enterprise-wide product and infrastructure definition,
planning and implementation.

• The Operations process area with its Fulfillment, Assurance and

Billing (FAB) processes and its Operations Support & Readiness
process has been the main focus since the outset of the eTOM.
The FAB processes are the most developed processes in the map
and the TOM (the predecessor of the eTOM), for example,
described only these processes.

• The Enterprise Management process area includes the basic

processes required to run any business. It supports the internal
functions of the enterprise, such as Strategic & Enterprise
planning, Financial & Asset Management, Human Resources
Management, Research & Development, Mergers & Acquisitions,
Investor Relations, Brand Management, etc.

5.4 SIM/SID
Since business processes require information to execute, whether an
automated or a human process, the Systems & Information Map, SIM,
was developed to act as a complementary view to the eTOM. SIM is
illustrated as an overall system component structure grouped in domains
that closely resemble the horizontal process blocks in the eTOM. There
are eight domains, see figure below, whereas each domain is in turn
composed of a limited number of Logical Business Components (LBCs).
These in turn are built on business entities, which perform the actual
operational activities.

Market/Sales Product LBC’s:

• Strategic Product
Portfolio Plans
Customer Service • Product
• Product Specification
• Product Offering
Resource Supplier/Partner • Product Usage Statistics
• Product Performance

Enterprise Common Business Entities

The source of SIM is based on a proposal and contribution from BT, Telia
and Ericsson in 1999. It has since evolved and the focus now is data
modeling. These activities are based on contributions mainly from British
Telecom and MetaSolve, but also from close cooperation with liaison
organizations.

The scope of the SIM is to provide a system view for NGOSS and
promote a common standpoint on the way in which OSS/BSS systems
can be realized. Thus, it depicts the view of functionality supported by
computing systems. Driving forces behind the development of the SIM
are to establish a common language and more cost-effective systems
solutions. Another area where SIM is of good help to Service Providers is
in migration planning. By mapping both the existing legacy architecture
and the new NGOSS environment onto the SIM, the identification of

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 migration candidates, along with the planning and prioritization of the
migration activities, is greatly improved.

SID, the Shared Information/Data model is NGOSS's common data

model. It consists of aggregate business entities, business entities and
data models in the form of UML Class Models. In order to align the SID to
SIM (and eTOM), it uses the same domain grouping as the SIM.
However, the LBCs are in the SID called aggregate business entities and
are used as a high-level grouping of business entities and class models.
In addition to a very strong coordination of progress with previously
mentioned forums TMF liaises with, SID also uses more general design
patterns from the industry.

One of the goals of SID is that the proposed data structures should be
implemented in future commercial and in-house OSS/BSS systems.
Examples of ISVs that have built new OSS/BSS systems based on the
SID are Intellident and MetaSolve.

5.5 TNA
Another product of the TMF is the Technology Neutral Architecture. This
systems architecture is the portion of the NGOSS framework that exists to
enable the plug and play interoperability aspects of an NGOSS-based
system.

TNA is heavily influenced by the evolution of component-based

technology, component development methods and distributed systems
architectures. It originates from the software industry and key principles,
evolved from TMF-related work, are the abstraction of business
processes, use of shared information services. and the use of formal
tradable contracts for defining interfaces.

Domain 3
Legacy 1

Domain 1 Domain 2
Legacy 2

Legacy 3 Communication services

Mediation Information System Workflow

services services services management

The above figure depicts an architectural overview, which illustrates the

main artifacts that a NGOSS system most likely will support:

• Based on the domain grouping, discrete OSS/BSS components

• Workflow management systems to support business process flow

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 • Communication services acting as an integration mechanism, the
key component in the TNA framework

• Mediation services, for mediation between components utilizing

different data models, e.g. connecting legacy systems with
NGOSS-based applications

• Information services for accessing common data repositories

• Systems services, such as security, time, registry etc.

The NGOSS Technology Neutral Architecture can be deployed using

different technologies capable of communicating with the external world
through the contracts mechanism, thus allowing an overall plug and play
capability involving different components based on different technologies.

5.6 Other TMF Activities

In addition to the NGOSS framework development member-initiated work
is performed by focused teams on specific topics within the realm of
OSS/BSS. Two teams, the Mobile Market Centre and the Value Chain
Market Centre, act as steering groups within their respective areas of
interest, produce white papers and provide guidance to the TMF on which
topics are most interesting for future work. When a topic is identified as
being of specific interest by the TMF member companies, a working team
is created to produce results, specifications, models etc. Running teams
are:

• IP Network Management

• Multi Technology Network management

• Mobile Terminal equipment management

• Wireless Services Measurement

• IPDR Management

• SLA Management

The most notable contribution is the SLA Management Handbook which

has become one of the most popular deliverables of the TMF and is now
extensively used throughout the ICT industry. Its impact on requirements
specifications processes set by Service Providers has not yet been
analyzed, but the handbook will most likely create a more competitive
OSS/BSS sector as a result, through increased vendor support and cost
pressure.

In addition to the above-mentioned activities, there are also Proof of

Concept projects titled Catalyst Showcases where a group of companies
cooperate to build a working plug and play solution for a specific topic.
The catalysts are then displayed at the TeleManagement World, a bi-
annual conference held by the TMF.

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6 OSS/BSS Solutions Overview
With the current market situation explained, Service Provider challenges
discussed, and the TeleManagement Forum NGOSS Framework shown
as a way of addressing the challenges, the main options for Service
Providers for approaching the inherent problems in deploying new
generation OSS/BSSs are:

Pre-integrated “Plug-and-Play”
Favorable
Suites Architecture

Cost &
Implementation
risk

Point-to-point
Unfavourable Best-of-breed
connections

Low High
Desired solution
Flexibility
Source: Joint Goldman Sachs/McKinsey & Company study

Corresponding to the matrix above, the options are:

1. The stove-pipe track, which is still a common phenomenon.

Despite its obvious shortcomings, point-to-point based solutions
are favored by start-ups since this is considered the only
realistic option in order to quickly set up a running operations
environment. However, start-ups will soon find themselves
locked in the legacy trap, in much the same way incumbents are
today.

2. The best-of-breed solution should be regarded as an improved

version of the commonplace stove-pipe track. Although this
approach is more flexible it still remains an unfavorable choice
due to cost and implementations risks. Established Service
Providers today often choose best-of-breed solutions,
disregarding overall business needs since alternative routes
take longer time to realize and are considered too demanding.

3. The total vendor solution, which according to Independent

Software Vendors is supposed to take care of all problems. This
track does not exist in reality whatever ISVs claim. Although
some vendors do offer wide-ranging products, they often
contain limitations in functionality as well as a lack of flexibility.
Consequently, these systems suites will often require costly
changes in business layout and in the way operations are
executed.

4. The flexible plug and play environment, a true solution to the

Service Provider’s challenge. This type of architecture supports
the overall business, its major business processes and

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 operations – not the other way around. However, realizing the
solution is not an easy task. It requires a skilled Service
Provider that not only has the ability to think and plan ahead but
also the endurance for accomplishing the desired outcome, i.e.
to create a future-proof OSS/BSS environment.

With the current financial climate, there is no easy choice for the aspiring
Service Provider, especially since the yardstick for success is the
quarterly report and neither funds nor resources are allocated for
developing sustainable long-term solutions. The plug and play alternative
is the most attractive one, but is in many ways still not a realistic option.
However, positive signs in the broad acceptance of e.g. the TMF
framework are beginning to show, but real-world evidence of deploying
plug and play OSS/BSS architectures has yet to be presented.

Within the huge area of OSS/BSS there are some areas that should be
highlighted due to their importance for efficient overall operations.

6.1 Self Service

The arrival of the Internet era, with its technologies and applications, has
dramatically increased opportunities to create cost-efficient solutions,
where various business entities can interact across various digital
interfaces for various business reasons. Although the market decline has
resulted in more realistic expectations, it is absolutely clear that the
phenomenon is here to stay. In B2B relations between suppliers and
partners in particular, self-service capabilities have become a success.
There are a number of vendors addressing this area with different kinds
of platforms and exchange services for managing e.g. security,
information transformation, process adjustments, etc. One key technology
that has emerged and is evolving at a rapid pace is XML, with its capacity
to specify information structures and content. Since this area is only in the
infancy of its evolution and most business models are still binary, the
possibilities to manage dynamic multi-role business relationships are few.

6.2 Order Management

Order management has enjoyed tremendous attention for the last couple
of years, and a number of feasible solutions have emerged in the
marketplace. The obstacles, however, have remained. System solutions,
stove-pipe style, with focus on a specific service or service line such as
POTS, Datacom or Mobile, have been developed according to their
respective practices without paying heed to what was happening outside
their respective domains. Now there is a need to be able to manage
complex service offerings where components from different technologies
have to co-exist and be ordered simultaneously all the way down the
value chain in an automatic flow-through process, across various
OSS/BSS architectures.

We see the key areas to focus on within order management as defining

generic product models and support for process development. It is also
evident that Service Providers with long experience of developing

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 proprietary solutions which are often too complicated will have to adjust to
a common standpoint in terms of OSS/BSS products and standards.

6.3 Usage Analysis

Usage analysis is an area which has only just recently emerged to
become of an utmost importance. The ability to analyze usage data and
turn it into customer knowledge is crucial for selling new services,
updating service portfolios and creating a more efficient usage of the
underlying infrastructure. Examples of solutions where usage analysis is
crucial are:

• Usage-based billing, an absolute must when it comes to content-

based services. It has also been shown that a transformation from
flat rate to usage-based billing has created higher consumer
satisfaction, as well as making it easier to relate quality to
charges.

• Usage metering, to enable a better prediction of technology

utilization, thus promoting improved planning and modification of
the backbone networks.

• Service assurance, for service monitoring and diagnostic

capabilities.

• Fraud management, where usage analysis is one key area for

rapidly detecting fraud.

6.4 Service Assurance

Service assurance has in many ways been a disregarded and poorly
supported area during the rise and expansion of the Information and
Communications Technology industry. The only motto that existed among
Service Providers during this period was “sell more”, a notion
Independent Software Vendors were not late to encourage so as to push
expensive order management software. Now, in the decline phase, a
change towards customer satisfaction has taken place since Service
Providers have come to the understanding that it is five times as
expensive to acquire a new customer as it is to keep one. Service level
and SLA management, with the focus primarily on data communication
services is an area within service assurance where most of the OSS/BSS
products have been developed. However, with today’s complicated
service offerings, both for the mass and corporate markets, this area has
become far more complex. Nowadays, a Service Provider is highly
dependent on its suppliers, since their services are the core of the end
service offering. Thus to guarantee assurance levels to the customer,
suppliers and their services have to be managed consistently in order to
create customer satisfaction.

Service assurance is probably the most significant area where inter-

process communication is needed since there is an absolute requirement
for a fail-safe end-to-end process functionality. If one sub-area is poorly
supported, the end result will be directly visible in the service assurance

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 levels, with the consequence of eroding margins and decreased customer
satisfaction.

6.5 Integration Frameworks

Perhaps the most important area in OSS/BSS is integration and
integration frameworks, thought of as one of the keys to a successful
NGOSS implementation.

The concept of Integration has more to it than Enterprise Application

Integration, although EAI is the field where most of it all started. From an
enterprise standpoint, improving systems integration to dispose of the
extremely expensive peer-to-peer system connections, which have
become archaic over the decades, is a very important task. From a
business point of view, the capacity to create seamless integration
between processes internal and external to the enterprise has brought
integration to yet another level of importance. Integration frameworks on
their part have typically evolved in phases. Initially from a message (or
event) exchange mechanism, phase two was referred to as the ability to
develop or generate adapters for information transformation, whereas the
third phase has been the ability to manage business processes in so
called Workflow Engines. The last phase has often occurred due to
mergers and acquisition activities, where the target enterprise was in the
business of workflow engines.

6.6 Mediation
Years ago, a futile battle raged among different protocol supporters as to
whether or not a specific protocol, e.g. CMISE, SNMP or Corba/IDL,
could become a standard for all network equipment. However, it has for
some years been evident that no such thing will happen in the
foreseeable future and consequently, this implies that the industry needs
to cope with protocol dissimilarities. It has on the other hand, together
with the rapid growth of new kinds of resources, become a source for the
development of new and enhanced mediator systems.

Mediator systems serve as translators between various protocol syntaxes

and semantics. They are highly configurable to avoid hard coding and
increase flexibility. Their prime function is to facilitate the understanding
and usage of information emerging from network resources, such as
usage analysis, fault and performance management, service assurance,
etc. Mediator systems are also important for the coordination of the
massive flows of information from network resources, since the load of
accumulating the information seriously impacts the performance of the
network.

7 Recommendations
Although impossible to provide a singular recommendation, we see that
most Service Providers still to some extent face the same obstacles when
it comes to competition, deregulation and coping with changes in the
marketplace. Depending on factors such as enterprise size, maturity,

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 market share and position, prerequisites vary; nevertheless we have still
attempted to offer some suggestions in the following sections that Service
Providers could consider.

7.1 Develop an OSS/BSS Strategy

Most Service Providers are quite large enterprises with long histories,
differing cultures and opposing views regarding their stove-pipe OSS/BSS
architectures. With this in mind, developing an overall OSS/BSS strategy
is however easier said than done. An OSS/BSS strategy has to provide a
high level view that can be adopted throughout the enterprise, as well as
detailed views which are more specific depending on processes, services
and technologies used to execute each specific business role. Valid
proposals when drafting a strategy are:

• Start out from the business perspective.

• To make the strategy more robust and long-lasting, proceed from

roles – not from the current organizational structure.

• Base the strategy on industry-accepted de facto standards

whenever possible. Even if a situation mandates a quick and dirty
stove-pipe solution, do plan ahead for its inclusion in the final
OSS/BSS architecture from the beginning.

• Commit to an active contribution in standards work – use e.g. TMF

artifacts as a means of increasing knowledge and impact in the
enterprise to save time and money.

7.2 Integrate with other Strategies

Service Providers often approach the planning of various strategies as
separate concerns. To avoid sequential thinking and raise full awareness
of existing interdependencies, it is imperative to include facts and plans
from the business and resource (networks, IT platforms etc.) perspectives
when planning for the OSS/BSS strategy. Through this integration, all
strategic issues will become synchronized as well as accepted across the
entire organization, thus facilitating an easier deployment of the OSS/BSS
strategy.

7.3 Implement the Strategies

When the strategies are set and plans for deployment drawn up,
implement as quickly as possible. Strategies are perishables and
competition will not be resting on its laurels. With the business plan,
portfolio strategy, resource strategy and the OSS/BSS strategy in place,
an in-depth analysis of the OSS/BSS portfolio should commence:

1. Start measuring operations costs – these can be reduced

through automation. Remember that 20-30 per cent of
equipment investments are in fact trapped (i.e. not able to carry
a billable service) – use OSS/BSS to recover a third of those,

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 and think of OSS/BSS as a way of achieving economies of
scale so that costs do not increase linearly with increased
business. In order to meet customer demands on flexibility,
levels of service, time to money, cost etc., create a development
plan to explain what can be improved in the current systems
architecture and how it should be done.

2. So as to keep abreast of the competition, which systems are to

be retired and when, at what pace, and in which way? Answers
to the questions should be entered in a master migration plan.

3. Next, draft the procurement plan, describing what has to be

purchased when replacing the retired systems and what new
requirements have to be met. In this plan the Service Provider
also decides on which tactic is best suited, since several exist,
e.g.:
- The turn-key solution from a single vendor
- The pre-integrated solution, using best-in-class products
- In-house development and/or in-house integration
- Preferred integration mechanism, etc.

4. Remember to evaluate all coming OSS/BSS expenditures

based on improved business efficiency. The procurement plan
should also be coordinated with the resource strategy to create
the most efficient infrastructure possible, since in this way the
infrastructure design is factored in.

5. When finalizing the procurement plan, initiate the actual

procurement process. When in the “Request For” phase,
valuable points regarding vendors are:
- Demand solutions for solving specific problems
- Demand immediate and long-term benefit of using a vendor’s
products and expertise
- Consider them becoming a stakeholder in your business
- As business processes change, require vendors to
continuously evolve their products and services to adapt to
changes
- Demand that OSS/BSS solutions are a simple enough
decision so that even a CFO can understand it

Although the proposed approach above is complex, it will yield

tremendous results if executed correctly. However, some risks must be
addressed:

• Senior management are often pressured by shareholders and

other stakeholders to quickly produce results, thereby easily
reverting to the short-term solution rather than planning for the
long run.

• There is a risk that the organization solely focuses on the end

result and relies on simple one-size-fits-all business efficiency
formulas without factoring in implicit, but factual costs. These will
no doubt raise the threshold for cost savings and prolong time to
pay-back.

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 Unless vindicated, no Service Provider will be able to undertake an
OSS/BSS change of this magnitude.

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