The billing bone's connected to the care bone: CrossWorlds links OSS elements

The pieces are in place for an end-to-end operations support system. Each piece performs its own function well, and some even work well with others. Billing systems that can create new services on the fly talk to customer care systems that allow customers to order those services themselves. Ordering systems interwork with workflow solutions. The front office shares information with the back office.

But not every system works seamlessly with all its OSS counterparts. Not every system can be accessed from a common interface. And not all systems are connected easily.

CrossWorlds Software is working to provide the connective tissue that will bind the many elements of an OSS. It has launched a product line that includes pre-built integration modules, known as collaborations, for customer account synchronization, product catalog synchronization, customer inquiry and service activation.

These modules represent the business logic side of CrossWorlds' telecom solution. They maintain a single, consistent view of customer and product information across all systems in the OSS using CrossWorlds Designer, a graphical user interface for building new collaborations. Most important, the modules are linked to other OSS elements by customized interfaces known as connectors.

"We have taken our customer management module that we built for manufacturing and extended the generic business object definition to support all the nuances of the telecom-specific packages we are supporting," said Barton Foster, senior vice president of worldwide marketing and business development for CrossWorlds.

The system supports financial applications from Oracle, PeopleSoft and SAP and front office solutions from Clarify, Siebel and Vantive.

For most solutions providers in this space, success depends on partnerships and alliances. CrossWorlds is forming relationships with key OSS application developers and system integrators as part of its telecommunications market initiative launched last month.

"We are trying, from a go-to-market proposition, to leverage our strengths as well as play around some of the vendors that are being most widely adopted," Foster said.

For example, CrossWorlds and Portal Software have teamed to solve a business problem for U S West that stemmed from its inability to complete new customer contracts fast enough. With help from Cap Gemini, CrossWorlds developed a connector for the Portal Infranet billing and customer management solution used by U S West. The connector allowed Infranet to interface with the customer care package supplied by Clarify. The solution helped U S West increase processing efficiency from about 200 contracts per month to more than 1000.

"CrossWorlds' connector allows you to integrate your customer care package more quickly with Infranet as opposed to a point-to-point integration where you have to share a tremendous amount of data," said John Janetos, senior manager of strategic alliances for Portal.

Another widely adopted OSS player is MetaSolv Software. CrossWorlds has developed a MetaSolv connector on its own using the applications programming interfaces supplied by MetaSolv. Other companies also are developing connectors for MetaSolv.

"The CrossWorlds solution is unique in that it builds a common business object layer for billing and customer care that fits between our system, any other order management systems and service provisioning systems and a billing system," said Beth Krevis, a product manager for MetaSolv. "It's still ramping up, but I think it's definitely going to be a key component in being able to have an integrated OSS."