Break the OSS logjam

By using an enterprise application integration model, service providers can give customers the online care and support they expect

The Internet, e-commerce and demands for Web-based access to information have changed the way the world conducts business. Electronic interaction methods, such as online chat, instant messaging and interactive voice response, have become as commonplace as the answering machine. And competition between telecom service providers has reached highs never before imagined in this industry, prompting most to change to an increasingly customer-focused method of delivering services.

In the midst of these changes are operations support systems (OSSs). While these applications have solved specific point problems within today's organizations, rising consumer demand for full electronic business interaction requires integration between the various "islands of automation" created by OSS technologies. Needed to support the dynamic e-care capabilities sought by service providers, OSS integration enables consumers and business partners to achieve their goal of electronic self-service for tasks ranging from simple access to personal information to performing complex e-commerce transactions.

A lack of OSS integration will cause e-commerce applications to remain mired in the realm of passive information display that provides little value to customers and partners demanding full-access business interaction.

Enterprise application integration (EAI) helps break the OSS logjam. EAI technologies are an emerging class of IT systems focused on methods for integrating and managing the interoperability of multiple concurrent applications and advanced business process modeling techniques. Specifically, EAI technologies couple heterogeneous applications that were not designed to work together. Most important, EAI technologies can deliver the next level of integration needed to support customer self-service and emerging e-commerce applications.

E-commerce demands

Web users today increasingly demand an electronic version of all the tasks they traditionally have performed in a brick-and-mortar storefront. Consumers' desire for one-stop shopping continues to grow as they seek solutions - from simple tasks, such as viewing accounts, to transaction processing, such as bill presentation and payment and ordering of new, customized services. From the service provider's perspective, rapidly evolving technologies represent the impetus for increasingly competitive services that, in turn, serve to further expand the demands of consumers.

Supporting the one-stop shopping concept and the vision of integrated OSS applications supporting end-to-end flow-through provisioning is nothing new. In fact, the Telecommunications Management Network model serves as a blueprint for many initiatives, and organizations such as the TeleManagement Forum remain focused on the task of enabling real-world solutions like those made possible with EAI.

The next level of technology, object broker architectures, includes the tightly coupled components needed to implement the TMN model. Using these technologies with next generation, open OSS application products, service providers can integrate disparate systems and meet the demands for flow-through, integrated transaction processing.

Part of a larger IT trend

Today's service provider requires a customer-centric model for the enterprise customer that includes a unified view of consumers and services. That model links the Internet, Web and e-commerce applications with back-office systems and presents information in many ways, including Microsoft's Active Server Pages and Java applets. In addition, the rapid rate of change combined with competitive pressures means businesses must repeatedly create added value for customers. The challenge for IT organizations is to continue to assimilate commercial packages and legacy systems while managing the escalating costs of implementing and maintaining integration among them.

An EAI solution is the enabler and prerequisite to supporting e-business and customer self-service applications. Yet the emerging market for EAI solutions has grown clouded with no clear leader, and many companies with niche, point products have jumped on the industry analysts' bandwagon to chase the projected market size of up to $5 billion by 2002.

What is a comprehensive EAI solution? As illustrated in Figure 1, a complete EAI solution addresses eight component categories, including connectors; middleware; business process; analysis; access; operations, administration, maintenance and provisioning (OAM&P); modeling; and security.

EAI components breakdown

Connector components. Connector components provide the mediation management functions to logically interface internal and external systems. A robust connector component will support bidirectional communications including the following:

- Native relational database management system

- Object database management system

- Message-oriented middleware such as BEA System's Tuxedo and IBM's MQSeries

- Multi-access support, including NDM, FTP, SNMP, CMIP, OFX and XML

- Embedded data transformation and data mapping (syntactical and semantic data transformation)

- Commercial applications support provided by companies such as Granite Systems, PeopleSoft, SAP and Teleknowledge

- Advanced object management paradigms such as CORBA, COM/DCOM and RMI

Middleware components. Middleware performs message management and guarantees delivery of data or messages to distributed applications. It supports communication and publish/subscribe - or send message/receive message - requirements, including:

- Message management services that include guaranteed delivery, persistence, load balancing and error handling

- Middleware services that support point-to-point, request/reply, publish/subscribe

- Intelligent routing based on message header or content-based routing

Business process components. True business process modeling enables business professionals to define, manage, govern and automate business processes through a graphical modeling environment. Business process modeling provides the most significant value because it maintains a common, unified and integrated view of the data. Through a rules engine, it controls the business processes that span multiple applications.

When included within an EAI solution, business process modeling:

- Manages the execution of individual steps to accomplish a business process and supports the notion of business transactions and events

- Applies business rules to interpret messages and determines what responses and messages need to be created next

- Creates and commits messages and data updates

- Manages an integrated view of the data

- Enforces data consistency

- Rationalizes multiple data views into a common view

- Synchronizes multiple data sources

- Provides an in-memory virtual database environment that supports real-time data requirements for e-commerce and other real-time customer service applications.

Analysis components. An analysis component gathers key business, process and event information in real time. It analyzes the data and selectively uses the results to automatically change business processes. In conjunction with a business process component, the analysis component can perform load balancing or network management capacity provisioning automatically.

OAM&P components. OAM&P components provide operational support for the environment such as backup fail-over, load balancing, logging, audit and configuration management.

Modeling components. Modeling tools and languages such as unified modeling language help define business processes and data models at the business level of an application. Using graphic and visualization technologies to represent business processes and objects, these tools maintain a repository of rules to govern the behavior of a given business process.

Security components. Security components manage the security functions of authentication, encryption and authorization of access to enterprise systems.

Although a comprehensive EAI model represents a total solution, it also is important to understand that complexities exist and that several technologies are required to interoperate seamlessly. Today, the highest-level descriptions of most EAI products fall into the technological categories of message brokers, application servers, virtual databases, workflow tools, object request brokers, data transformation tools and modeling tools.

All EAI architectures are multitiered and have a strong e-commerce orientation. Figure 2 illustrates an OSS integration solution using the EAI architecture.

EAI and OSS

Historically, integration between OSS products has proved difficult. Riding on accolades of plug and play, the delivery of a point solution lacking open application programming interfaces may have solved a past problem but has created new challenges for today's business requirements of flow-through processing.

But the OSS commercial package market is evolving and responding to the demand for e-commerce with new, open plug-and-play capabilities and an emerging class of EAI products. Next generation e-commerce products and applications, such as customer self-care, are based on the EAI model. OSS products that can plug and play into the EAI model have a great advantage over those that cannot.

The depth, scope and unique complexities of the OSS market make it exceedingly difficult for a single vendor to provide an end-to-end integrated OSS solution. Although major equipment vendors and OSS software suppliers have attempted to deliver a one-size-fits-all response, it's more likely that point solutions will continue to meet specific problems. The reason? Although these solutions will solve a larger problem, they cannot solve all problems. And while the integration points may change, the integration with many other systems still will be required. The solution cannot completely eliminate the problem.

The EAI model holds the promise of providing an efficient and cost-effective means of creating an end-to-end OSS integrated solution - a solution needed to support e-commerce initiatives. The OSS integration solution must be customized to the requirements of the service provider and be built from the point solutions and legacy systems that best serve the customer's needs.

Self-service revisited

Self-service is a strategic tool designed to acquire new customers, retain existing customers and create new revenue opportunities. In the drive for e-care, three distinct self-service components must be supported: the customer community, the telecom service provider and the trading partner community (Figure 3). Each component is needed to provide a complete solution that enables the customer to conduct self-care functions they require, demand and - equally important - expect.

The potential for e-business and customer self-care solutions is tremendous (Table 1). The forces of e-business drive the need to integrate OSS applications. The EAI model provides a means to accomplish this integration. The next generation of OSS products will be designed to support the EAI model as a fundamental requirement. Products that do not do this likely will miss out on the Internet opportunity.