An inside-out network view: CrossKeys' software provides reports from customer's viewpoint

A new version of CrossKeys Systems' integrated service management software suite will allow carriers to provide end users with an end-to-end view of service performance and usage. At the same time, the Telecommunications Management Network-based software suite will give carriers a customer-oriented view of their networks.

Resolve version 2.0, which will be available by the end of 1997, will incorporate a number of features designed to more easily provide customers with a network view framed in terms of their service level agreements (SLAs).

"This will fill a gap in carriers' operations systems," said Steve Adams, director of service management at Kanata, Ontario-based CrossKeys. "In the past, it didn't matter what the customer saw. Now, with service level agreements becoming the way services are sold, it's important to change that."

The customer's perspective is integrated into the service management process from the beginning, Adams said. The system uses a common object request broker architecture-2 interface to handle carriers' trouble-ticket fault management systems, and it uses network element managers to generate network performance data. This data is then compared with the parameters of each customer's SLA to determine how well-or how poorly-that agreement is being met.

"Customers are starting to demand proof that their carriers are meeting the terms of those agreements," said Adams. "This isn't just a monitoring tool for them-it's a tool to help them understand how telecommunications impacts their businesses."

Carriers can also set various thresholds against a service profile and the terms of the SLA. By doing this, carriers can set high and low watermarks from which they can generate reports to indicate when service performance levels are nearing these levels, allowing carriers to proactively address these situations.

To get this data to the customer, the system uses an HTML publishing system to load the network data onto Web pages.

Addressing service management from the customer's point of view also provides the carrier with insight into how to better serve the customer, Adams said.

"This is service management with a different twist," said Adams. "The data isn't useful only to the network managers, but to the people in marketing and the executives who approve the plans for the networks."

The next version of the Resolve suite, slated for next spring, will include expanded accounting, billing and tariffing features, proactive service assurance through active monitoring and alarm triggers, and reporting through customer intranets, said Adams. A release tentatively slated for next summer will introduce an application to support network performance for asynchronous transfer mode networks.

The Resolve system mirrors the change in focus away from the traditional technical parameters toward customers' business-based parameters, said one industry analyst.

"Instead of framing a product in terms of money saved, or staff cut or any other traditional selling points [operations support system] vendors have emphasized in the past, CrossKeys [believes] that a service management system could actually be a way to generate revenue," said Jeff Coutroup, research manager at The Gartner Group. "Most OSS efforts are just a matter of a carrier refurbishing its systems."

PARTNERSHIP TOUTS VENDOR TESTING

Teradyne and Wandel & Goltermann A.T.E. Systems are jointly developing test solutions based on the integration of Wandel & Golterman's Impact Test Solutions with Teradyne's Spectrum 8800-Series VXI manufacturing test platform. The two companies hope to give equipment vendors the ability to bring new products to market more quickly.

VISUAL VALIDATION

Visual Networks has announced a solution for end-to-end validation of frame relay service level agreements. The Visual UpTime WAN Service Level Management System automates the creation of reports outlining the service providers' performance, using SLA metrics for complete network performance and individual private virtual circuits.