In order to keep pace with the constantly evolving telecom business scenario, owing to increasing 3G adoption and 4G deployment, network operators need to be flexible in adapting to changes. Operations support systems (OSS) and business support systems (BSS) are a class of such solutions that help operators adapt to changing business models rapidly and dynamically.
While OSS performs inventory management, engineering, planning and repair functions for communication service providers and their networks, BSS helps in optimally running business operations. The right set of OSS/BSS improves the overall efficiency and profitability of an operator as well as the user experience that it offers. OSS/BSS solutions provide a consolidated view of the entire cycle of customer data and network assets. They facilitate the critical processes of order completion, service provisioning, assurance and billing. The increased uptake of smartphones, broadband services and related applications has shifted operators? focus towards providing better quality of service (QoS) and an enhanced end-user experience. OSS/BSS solutions help operators strategise better in a competitive landscape.
One noticeable trend among network operators in the sector is the growing popularity of network function virtualisation (NFV) and software designed network (SDN). Service providers are attempting to speed up the deployment of new network services in order to advance their revenue and growth plans. However, hardware-based appliances limit their ability to achieve these goals. NFV and SDN help network operators accelerate service innovation and provisioning in such a scenario. The increasing uptake of these solutions is driving innovation in the OSS/BSS space as well.
A number of players are engaged in providing OSS and BSS platforms for network operators across the globe. The solutions offered by them meet the day-to-day operational requirements of the operators, including catalogue and order management, logical inventory, provisioning and activation, and automated delivery across multiple networks and service platforms. These solutions can also work in tandem with cloud-based customer relationship management systems.
However, solution providers are increasingly innovating their offerings to combine them with advanced analytics in order to support operators? SDN and NFV strategies. tele.net takes a look at some of the latest offerings in the OSS/BSS space in 2014:
- Comptel Corporation partnered with Nakina Systems to launch the Comptel Fulfillment solution, which will assist operators in handling the new challenges that SDN and NFV are creating. The solution offers a flexible approach to service creation with automated delivery across multiple networks and service platforms, and can be combined with advanced analytics to support a network operator?s NFV and SDN strategies. The solution mediates, orchestrates and abstracts the complexity of network devices, both traditional and virtual, providing a seamless and end-to-end service view. The solution has been developed to improve the responsiveness and agility of operators.
- Ericsson has launched Service Agility, a solution designed to accelerate innovative service design, assembly, delivery and management. It incorporates the company?s existing broad OSS/BSS and service enablement portfolio into a framework that provides rapid innovation for agile service creation needs as well as for revenue generating collaboration. Service Agility uses a single, open and flexible framework that allows the user to browse and select offerings from an enterprise catalogue, which stores all the product information as components and provides a uniform way to create and expose service management, such as charging and policy parameters, and service delivery elements. Ericsson has also launched its Cloud Manager 2.0, which supports the orchestration, management and monitoring of services running on geographically distributed, virtualised and physical resources, providing operators the necessary support.
- Amdocs launched a catalogue-driven NFV orchestrator called the Network Cloud Service Orchestrator. The company claims to have created a unique network modelling scheme that enables carriers to model choice into the network diagram from the network service catalogue. In addition, it provides a semantic engine and inventory visibility function that monitors the network?s systems, policies, its existing state against the desired state, calculates the difference, and refulfils the network to provide the right service level agreement.
- Aricent, an engineering services and software company, launched its advanced SDN and NFV software based on Intel reference design hardware. Aricent?s SDN and NFV software is ported to Intel?s open network platform switch reference design, which is developed for emerging SDN and NFV switching and routing requirements. The solution will help original equipment manufacturers and original design manufacturers in quickly building high performance data centre switches and other hardware accelerated data centre fabric switches.
- Jumping onto the bandwagon of fast growing IP-based content and services, CSG Systems launched its wholesale billing management solution (WBMS) as a cloud-based offering. This trend has created opportunities for new revenue streams through extended relationships with other operators and content partners. The company is of the view that BSS, including billing fundamentals, is growing in importance as it supports the wholesale management process efficiently. The company?s WBMS offering is a key component of its BSS suite, supporting wholesale partner trading, routing, billing, settlement, roaming, and other contract and quality management capabilities. This new cloud offering can manage complex wholesale partner relationships and revenue streams across national, international, roaming and content partnerships at a much lower operating cost. The time-to-market for new services has reduced as operators can quickly deliver new configurations to support new offerings, as well as keep hardware and software updated to keep pace with changing market conditions.
- Alcatel-Lucent has unveiled its new OSS service as part of its Motive product range. It has three unique parts. It offers a new framework that can dynamically identify and track all network resources; a fully automated, programmable OSS that can fulfil orders and assure services; and a self-healing environment driven by big data network analytics that evolves from automated recovery to predictive management. According to studies by the company, by unifying and automating the OSS, operators can halve the time to market and potentially cut costs by 50 per cent.
- Subex Limited has launched a new release of its Revenue Operation Centre (ROC) Data Integrity Management (DIM) ? Version 7.0. Subex?s ROC DIM solution provides product components and repeatable processes to ensure the quality and consistency of the data between the network and its OSS/BSS that drives key asset-tracking, capacity planning and provisioning processes. The ROC DIM has been designed to improve the quality of data driving key processes, resulting in lower costs and higher service profitability. The new features in version 7.0 include event-based discovery, which enables operators to reduce order fallout, increase process efficiency and reduce operational costs. It also includes an update of automatic reconciliation actions, which increases process efficiency through improved automation, proactive detection and correction of discrepancies. Another feature of the ROC DIM Version 7.0 is increased scalability, ease of use and compatibility, allowing operators to deploy the solution on a wide variety of platforms using the latest technology and achieving optimum speeds of processing.
- Comverse has launched its new Evolved Communication Suite (ECS), which has been designed to serve multi-device, multi-platform clients for delivering better QoS. The new suite enables operators to evolve their current communication package and include IP-based services while building a strong user base for these new services. In addition, it leverages information in social networks for the effective marketing of new digital services. Comverse ECS delivers on-premises, virtualised and cloud-based software-as-a-service models, facilitating the move towards IP evolution.
Conclusion
The introduction of NFV and SDN is being viewed by some network operators as a real opportunity to transform their OSS capabilities and thereby, their business models. These solutions can help simplify operations and reduce operational expenses, thereby providing greater scope to operators to refocus on the QoS offered to subscribers.
