The 'e-telecom' experience: A streamlined view of the network promises a new day for carriers and customers by replacing multiple-and often disparate-databases

A single view of the network-a consolidated perspective of enterprise network performance across local area networks, wide area networks and leased bandwidth-promises to revolutionize the relationship between service providers and their customers.

This perspective-made possible by new client/server software applications, object-oriented technology, integration with legacy systems and the World Wide Web-will replace multiple databases of disparate information. It will give carriers and customers a clear, interactive and easily accessed catalog of circuits and services.

Service providers can use this capability to exploit the Internet to cut costs and get closer to customers. Customers can use it to monitor network performance, order bandwidth and other products, manage telecommunications services and help in decision support.

Ultimately, this capability will enable a new way of doing business in telecommunications services: electronic telephony, or e-telecom (Figure 1).

Pieces of enabling software have started to appear in the marketplace from a number of vendors. But for this Holy Grail to become reality-and for its manifold benefits to accrue to customers-barriers in both technology and process must be demolished.

Today, few service providers can get a single glimpse of network performance, let alone share such information with customers. Systems at the Bell regional holding companies and the major long-distance carriers were designed for reliability-for the dial tone, not decision support.

TIRKS and other critical telecom databases are hierarchical, not relational. Data from intelligent network elements, multiplexers, digital cross-connect systems and CSUs are underused. There is no way to turn it into information that can benefit the carrier.

In the halcyon days of monopoly, that didn't matter much. But now reliability is a given, customers view networks as a strategic competitive advantage, and potential or real rivals for service provisioning are just around the corner.

Without the ability to look at the network as a unit, carriers have no means to differentiate service based on quality and can't give customers a clear understanding of network performance or access to advanced, Internet-deployed services. That has created an opening for competitive local exchange carriers and alternative providers to go after carriers' customers, competing on customer service.

It's analogous to the mail delivery business in the 1980s. The U.S. Postal Service had a virtual monopoly. Delivery performance was erratic.

Then Federal Express started with a clean slate. For a premium, it could assure reliability.

FedEx invested in tracking technology and made it customer-friendly and accessible, first through toll-free numbers, then by giving away software. It competed on customer service-on a view into its delivery system-and redefined the competitive landscape.

The three imperatives As in mail delivery, telecom companies will use technology to gain competitive advantage and market share.

Specifically, they will provide automation for greater efficiency of back-office operations, integration of new software applications into legacy data repositories and single-view access to information and services through new customer interface methods such as the Web (Figure 2).

This is easier said than done. But the good news is that numerous client/server software manufacturers are making strides to provide enabling technologies that address these key areas, through best-in-class point products that are open and standards-compliant, object-oriented integration tool sets and end-to-end solutions.

Many of these technology solutions are already on the market. Here's a brief overview of new and emerging classes of software technologies, grouped by critical function:

* Automation. Back-office foundation applications dramatically improve operational efficiencies, drive out labor costs and provide an infrastructure for one-view service management. The point solutions in this category offer proactive and reactive service management functionality, such as service correlation, service visualization, data access, problem isolation, root-cause analysis and reporting.

* Integration. To link the Internet with the rest of the enterprise seamlessly, new client/server-based software technologies need to access enterprise systems, which is where the bulk of critical data and applications resides. Robust data gateways can extract data, translate and route it among multiple legacy and enterprise applications, including a telecommunications database capable of managing information from network elements, Sonet rings, circuits, associated customers and other service elements.

* Access. Telephony-optimized Internet servers extend service providers' business across the Web. A variety of clients can be supported, using standard browser languages such as HTML and dynamic HTML. The servers can support both push (broadcast information from the carrier) and pull (information that the customer requests) scenarios.

The efficiencies made possible by back-office automation-and the ability to generate revenues through service activation going forward-make rapid return on investment achievable.

The process question Yet technological change is only part of the prescription for a consolidated view.

Again, an analogy is present here, this time to the massive Enterprise Resource Planning initiatives that Fortune 500 companies are undertaking. A re-examination of business processes and a reorientation toward the customer must accompany adoption of new technologies. And this reengineering requires the support of CEO-level management.

As entrenched, large organizations with roots in a vanished monopoly, carriers face a significant challenge. Process reengineering is necessary in three crucial areas: data management, order management and security.

The old data management process, in which a service order results simply in adding another circuit to be provisioned to an ever-growing database, has compromised the accuracy of the TIRKS facilities database.

A reengineered process, centered on data integrity and regular updates and fixes, would restore accuracy to the circuit inventory.

Order management can be streamlined and facilitated for customers, giving them more control. The adoption of appropriate security processes-coupled with firewall and data partitioning technology-can ensure carriers that they are providing protected network performance information to their customers.

Wholesale and end customers, from their advantageous position in the food chain, can be expected to exert pressure on carriers to change. But they also need to adjust their processes.

In their efforts to win outsourcing contracts, wholesale customers already are faced with process change: the need to track and manage service levels from providers through to retail customer.

And end users, who already control LAN and WAN resources but have no visibility into their own leased bandwidth, must couple their demands for carrier change with a willingness to give up the us vs. them mindset. Having a view into network performance and easy delivery systems for new services is bound to create more harmony in the carrier-customer relationship.

How will the barriers to one view of the network fall? There are two scenarios, and both are driven from the carrier side and from the top down.

In one, a start-up service provider-such as a FedEx-with boundless energy, iron will and bottomless resources changes the competitive landscape by building a business on customer service, decision-support and cost containment. This is a herculean, but not impossible, task.

The other and perhaps more likely scenario is driven by a visionary CEO at one of the established providers with the budget and clout to remake his business-as Louis Gerstner has done at IBM.

The change may be wrenching, but the potential upside is phenomenal.

Based on what we know about other newly deregulated businesses-banking, the airlines, and mail delivery-customer-focused telephony seems inevitable. A view of the network from end to end will help enable it. The barriers are significant, but not insurmountable. Technology building blocks are in place, and hearts and minds will follow. Ultimately, customers and carriers that reach this Grail will be rewarded.