MWA: Oracle unifies inventory management

DALLAS--A new inventory management system conceived and put into development two years ago within MetaSolv came to market this week as Oracle’s Communications Unified Inventory Management.

The new standards-based inventory management application is the first inventory product to be solely based on the TM Forum’s shared information and data model (SID), said David Sharpley, vice president of marketing and alliances at Oracle.

Oracle’s Communications Unified Inventory Management system will be part of Oracle’s best-in-class, integrated, open and standards-based Communications applications and infrastructure software, including Oracle’s Siebel CRM, Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management, Oracle Communications Service Fulfillment Suite, Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Service Delivery Platform and Oracle Database.

Oracle is trying to solve the long-standing problem of inventory system silos, which is only getting worse as service providers try to bundle services across their network domains. The new system is designed to give service providers a unified view of customer, service and network asset data through the integration of these silos.

“We are the only vendor in the world that can really start to talk about the entire network lifecycle management process,” Sharpley said. “From the design of the network through the procurement of assets and the financial management of those assets and the use of them in the network, our [enterprise resource planning] linkage to inventory is a clear competitive differentiation for Oracle.”

The new system also has linkages into other Oracle applications such as the Siebel Customer Relationship Management solution, service activation and the network planning, engineering and optimization solutions Oracle acquired with the purchase of Netsure Telecom.

These linkages help take the inventory system beyond the physical network to logical attributes such as telephone numbers, IP addresses, service definitions and customer definitions, Sharpley said. “Not that it tries to replicate customer data in our CRM, but it is an association between customers and their services. It’s not about replicating data from other systems; it’s about leveraging it.”