Go with the flow

While certainly a harbinger of future profitability, the soaring demand for next generation services has created a deployment gap for service providers that is currently affecting their ability to deliver on the promise of these new technologies. The reason: as network infrastructure expands in both complexity and size to support next generation services, so do service deployment and activation costs. 

As a result, service providers currently find themselves in an uncomfortable position. They are struggling to meet customer demand in a timely and cost-effective manner with a heterogeneous network that requires significant, and expensive, manual overhead to manage.

With demand for next generation services growing at a compounded annual rate of over 52% (according to The Yankee Group), this challenge will only increase—unless service providers implement flow through provisioning solutions. Such solutions can seamlessly integrate diverse network elements, including back office operation support systems (OSSs) and order entry front-ends, so that once an order is received, it is automatically, and instantly, provisioned, activated and delivered.

Service providers must recognize, however, that while many vendors claim to offer such solutions, these are often cobbled together through partnerships and alliances between many companies—and not all of these entities will be able to survive the financial pressures of the economic storms that periodically plague our industry. Should one partner fail, service providers will quickly realize the truth of the aphorism that the chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

The key to a successful flow through provisioning system is its ability to automatically deliver a next generation service by seamlessly integrating all network elements required for that service....

Incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs), competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) and cable companies who have grown their networks through acquisition must also be sure that a flow-through provisioning solution can seamlessly handle the multiple networks they may support for each service. If a carrier has two frame relay networks and two ATM networks, for example, the provisioning management solution must be able to tie these all together so that they appear as a single entity, eliminating the need for any manual provisioning of multiple heterogeneous networks.

Besides being expensive in an era where paring costs is critical, manual intervention creates two difficulties: first it takes time, and second, it cracks open the door for human error. Neither of these is acceptable in this highly competitive marketplace, because if customers have to wait too long for the next generation service they want, or encounter errors in the service they receive, they will simply go elsewhere for that service. And, with falling profit margins, service providers simply cannot afford customer defection.

A flow-through provisioning solution ensures service providers the timely and accurate service delivery required to succeed in the next generation service marketplace.  Service providers can also cement strong customer relationships by enabling customers to self-provision their services through a Web-based interface—and to pay for these services on a usage basis. This approach lets customers buy the services they want, when they want them, and turn them off when they are no longer needed—all without waiting on hold to speak with a call center agent.

The key to a successful flow-through provisioning system is its ability to automatically deliver a next generation service by seamlessly integrating all network elements required for that service—regardless of the number of network elements, vendors or the standards involved. For example, when provisioning a voice over DSL service, the solution must provision the CPE modem, the DSL access multiplexer (DSLAM), an aggregator for multiple DSLAMs, the backbone network, the voice gateway that converts packetized transmissions to TDM and a voice switch. 

All of these systems may be from different vendors, and all may conform to different standards. Nevertheless, the flow-through provisioning solution must make order of this chaos, eliminate the need to provision each separate element manually and present the service provider with a simple point-and-click interface that seamlessly completes whatever needs to be done to ensure satisfactory service delivery—including circuit design and creation.

In a traditional, pre-next generation service era workflow, when a customer order is received, it is sent to a group where the circuit is designed based on information in a virtual database—which may or may not completely reflect available resources. This design is then forwarded to a field group where the circuit is actually built and tested, assuming the design was accurate. If not, the design has to be redone. 

Finally, the service is activated and billing initiated, a step that marks the completion of the provisioning process. But, since each of these processes, as well as all communications between individuals involved in each process, is labor-intensive, the process could take weeks or even months. Provisioning a DS-3, for example, has a typical lead time of up to 45 days.

By comparison, with a flow-through provisioning solution, those weeks can be reduced to seconds because all human intervention is eliminated because the workflow is streamlined and automated. With this approach, after an order is received (either through the order entry group, or by a self-provisioning request form the customer), the solution automatically designs the circuit based on actual available resources in the network topology database and based on business rules and policies built into the solution. 

In this scenario, there is no need for manual circuit design or for rolling trucks to build the circuits—or for repeating these processes when a first try fails. The bottom line: Accuracy is ensured, overhead is slashed and the customer is satisfied because the process is completed in less than 30 seconds.

In addition to integrating the various network elements required to create the circuits—and to actually creating those circuits—the provisioning manager should also support customer account management activities, including building accounts and generating billing fees. Even greater benefit will be derived from solutions that also monitor provisioning resources in the network--including virtual network resources such as virtual path identifiers (VPIs) and virtual channel identifiers (VCIs)--and alarm conditions to deliver a high degree of fault management. Some solutions even automate capacity planning activities by enabling bandwidth usage thresholds to be established, and provide an alarm when the threshold is met. In so doing, service providers can ensure their networks always have the capacity to meet demands even while they eliminate the need for emergency over-builds.

Solutions that offer this high degree of functionality function as middleware between existing legacy OSS systems and the network elements and are generally built on a three-tiered model. The top layer contains interfaces to network elements such as CORBA OSS interfaces, JAVA user interfaces and HTML web interfaces. 

SNMP Simple Network Management Protocol TL1 Transaction Language 1  XML Extensible Markup Language

The second layer contains a network modeler software module that manages network inventory, designs circuits and manages circuit topologies. Finally, the third layer contains the element manager layer that supports the wide variety of protocols (including SNMP, TL1, XML and ASCII command line) required to communicate with all network elements.

As demand for next generation services continues to increase, service providers' need for a cost-effective way to manage their heterogeneous networks also increases. With a flow-through provisioning solution that supports and leverages the existing network infrastructure, providers can meet this requirement while also lowering the cost of service delivery, paring the cost of service creation and differentiating service offerings in a crowded marketplace. As a result, they will be well positioned to generate new revenue streams, improve operating margins and create strong, long-lasting customer relationships.
John DiGann, Director of Quality Assurance, Service Management Business Unit, Efficient Networks, Dallas, Texas. He can be reaches at jdigann@efficient.com.

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