Building for the future now

True plug and play will never happen. Neither will world peace, but that doesn’t mean we should stop trying to achieve it. Software integration is the same way. One of the leading industry bodies dealing with the software integration issue is the TeleManagement Forum.

The TM Forum’s New Generation Operations Systems and Software (NGOSS) initiative is developing a framework for developing next-generation OSSs. The goals of NGOSS are to reduce the implementation costs and integration time needed to deploy OSSs, and to create a system that can more easily accommodate new software and services.

“Technically you need to understand how modules can work together by arriving at a common language or framework that meets the requirements for 80% of vendors out there,” said Jeff Breglio, strategic alliances manager for Cisco Systems. “That’s what NGOSS is about—what that 80% level is. Technically it can be done. There’s no reason it can’t. It’s more of getting people to gather around a collaborative vision.”

Mick Reeve, chief technology officer of BTexact Technologies, a subsidiary of BT, agreed. “Most carriers are in the middle of the IP revolution, moving rapidly to the data world,” he said. “We have huge legacy systems that are hard to change, but there are areas where we can put in system builds.”

Through NGOSS, the TM Forum is bringing together vendors and service providers to help develop next-generation OSSs that will conform to the demands of an increasingly uncertain future—one that will reduce the need for extensive system integration (Telephony, Dec. 11, 2000, page 136).

Based on commercial, off-the-shelf technologies such as CORBA, Java and XML, NGOSS was created in part to provide guidelines for developing plug-and-play OSS solutions across technologies (Figure 1).

“I look at NGOSS as a necessary evil,” said Kimber Lewis, president of North American operations for Cramer Systems, a provider of network management provisioning software. “Conceptually, we need to pictorialize [the network] or have some type of high-level architecture to support next-generation service offerings.”

Through NGOSS, the TM Forum aims to lower the traditional barriers between companies, while addressing the problem of supporting legacy OSSs, said Martin Creaner, vice president of technical programs with the TM Forum.

“You need an operational support system that is capable of taking into account that flux in the marketplace so that you don’t have to go through a huge integration problem when you change a company’s boundaries,” Creaner said.

The NGOSS program is broken up into phases. Phase I, which involved getting the key architecture documents in place and obtaining a basic proof of concept for NGOSS principles, was completed in May. The TM Forum currently is in Phase II, which involves mapping architecture documents to real technologies and getting real implementations of NGOSS. Phase II is scheduled to be completed in February 2002, Creaner said.

The TM Forum is using the ideas being developed through NGOSS and putting them to work through the organization’s Catalyst Projects. These cooperative projects were initially established to bring service providers, vendors and systems integrators together to develop OSS solutions. Some of the Catalyst Projects are now being developed to fit NGOSS principles (Figure 2).

“What [was] attractive about NGOSS was multivendor cooperation,” Breglio said. “The TM Forum’s goals were similar to ours in building an OSS solution so that in the end a customer can pick and chose what works for them and get them integrated more easily. That led us towards the Catalyst Projects.”

Though BTexact Technologies has its own system architecture, the company uses the TM Forum to make sure it’s compatible with the industry. “The TM Forum works at the technology-neutral level and then fosters cooperation to try and bring it all together,” Reeve said.

Since NGOSS launched about a year ago, system level requirements have been established. The technology-neutral architecture has been developed. eTom, the business process model to deliver core functionality within an OSS, also was established (Figure 3).

During the next year, NGOSS is driving toward practical implementation and a compliance program, Creaner said. The TM Forum recently introduced the “NGOSS Powered” brand, which designates NGOSS-compliant solutions .

“The real measure of success for NGOSS will be the first real implementation and the real network operator or service provider that’s carrying real live customer traffic,” Creaner said. “A lot of work going forward is focusing on the real live technology-specific applications and working together with groups trying to develop solutions using their own specific technology.”

Telcordia Technologies’ recent announcement of its Integrated Operations Infrastructure was based on the NGOSS principles it helped to develop, said Mark Effinger, vice president of customer solutions for Telcordia.

But NGOSS isn’t a perfect solution. It mandates increased upfront costs for a new OSS and it requires a large initial change technology. Technical issues such as the sharing of common data and information also must be addressed.

There also is a debate over whether true plug-and-play solutions will ever be developed.

“[NGOSS] is wonderful, if the fruit of that were available today,” said John Jaser, vice president of technology and chief information officer for DSL.net. “NGOSS seems like a great idea to bring vendors together to get plug and play to work, but the reality of when members will be compliant [is a question] when it’s just at the discussion level right now.”

Others agree. “Plug and play is a moving target,” said Dave Jenkins, director of advanced applications for DSL.net. “The more interesting question is will [a] plug-and-play [solution] happen that meets all of our needs.”

And even whether vendors and service providers will be willing to use a standards-based architecture is an issue. “Vendors like to do things the way they do things, not locked into a specific way,” said Edward J. Finegold, technology analyst at BusinessEdge Solutions. “There will be problems with standards because you can’t predict how technology will change.”

The point of NGOSS is to develop a plug-and-play system that can adapt to whatever the next generation brings.

“Standardizing all those interfaces is a very good thing because it forces the vendor and carrier communities to embrace a common way of exchanging data or other type of info through the different levels of the architecture,” Cramer Systems’ Lewis said.

“The intent of NGOSS is obviously flow-through provisioning for not just your legacy networks, but for your new generation of services. Again, being somewhat platform- and technology-agnostic, you can future-proof your investment decisions,” she added.

Alternatives to the NGOSS initiative are available. The OSS Through Java, or OSS/J initiative, is one example. OSS/J runs in tandem with NGOSS through the TM Forum; however, it is based solely on the Java platform. Coordinated by Sun Microsystems, OSS/J aims to create and implement a standard set of application programming interfaces to deploy 3G wireless and IP network solutions.

“NGOSS and OSS/J share the same ultimate goals—to reduce the overall amount of integration,” said Philippe Lalande, program manager for Sun. “By making choices, we are able to implement, define and deliver APIs in a Java environment.”

During the TeleManagement World show in Nice, France, in May, the OSS/J initiative showcased three application demonstrations for trouble ticketing, quality of service and service activation. BTexact Technologies is helping start a Catalyst Project for the OSS/J initiative, Reeve said.

Another initiative spearheaded by DSL.net is called OSS Grand Unified Theory of Software (OSS-GUTS). It aims to streamline operations more efficiently. DSL.net is a member of the TM Forum and still supports NGOSS but currently does not actively participate in NGOSS, Jaser said.

Time is a factor for DSL.net—no one knows when a standards-based system will be fully developed.

“We’re taking responsibility of making things talk to one another rather than waiting for a standards-based way to go,” Jaser said.

DSL.net is rolling its legacy OSS into its next-generation OSS platform to handle issues such as customer self-status, self-provisioning, service metering, service level monitoring and billing.

“We’re not abandoning [the legacy systems] we have; we’re fusing the two so we have the best of both worlds because we do have two personalities—one being a CLEC-regulated body [and] the other being a completely unregulated ISP—and reconciling those two worlds together into one company is a challenge,” Jaser said.

OSS-GUTS is based in part on four DSL.net products—FasTrack-3, IPalloc, iCanSP Suite and its customer-facing Web site—in addition to MetaSolv’s TBS, Hewlett-Packard’s OpenView and Nortel Networks’ Shasta Service Provisioning Manager.

A third initiative comes from systems integrator BusinessEdge Solutions. The systems integrator, no longer involved in the TM Forum, is developing an open-based platform for OSSs. Through what it calls the velOSSity initiative, BusinessEdge is trying to refine the OSS integration and implementation processes.

“[velOSSity is] sort of similar to NGOSS and to the Catalyst Projects that TM Forum does but we’re not really trying to drive standards as much as we’re trying to drive collaboration,” Finegold said.

Components of the velOSSity initiative include the velOSSity solution centers and reference platforms for applying and proving technologies and an R&D facility for vendors and carriers to research OSS solutions.

Though multiple entities are aiming to create a framework for the next-generation OSS, the fragmented approaches are beneficial, said Cisco’s Breglio.

“It’s good that there are other parallel initiatives driving toward the same type of goal,” he said. “What works best is if you have people working on both sides to accelerate these architectures and feed that back into NGOSS and feed that into frameworks.”