It's time to compare/contrast in-house developed OSS solutions, OSS frameworks, and/or COTS point solutions.

From the perspective of an Independent Software Vendor (ISV), your business is based upon that annual maintenance and your position is now at risk. You may find yourself well positioned to expand or threatened to be phased out.

For the CSP, consolidation provides an opportunity to improve operational efficiencies. Your primary goal is to reduce costs where possible without impacting the quality of service to the end customer. CSP OSS groups are faced with consolidating redundant trouble ticketing, inventory, fault, performance, service activation, discovery, resource management, etc� here are some thoughts.

Start from the network element, Element Management System (EMS), and move further up the OSS management layers.

Then start from the customer and service and move down the OSS management layers to see what is most mission-critical.

Here are some questions that may be asked:

• Look for redundancy?
• Should the EMS be managed?
• Should we manage the network element directly?
• Is there a single point of failure?
• What are the features and functions of each OSS?
• Can the OSS be integrated via a north-bound interface?
• How flexible is the system?
• Is there automation logic in the OSS that is critical to our business?
• How imbedded/integrated is the existing system?
• Is there custom coding around the existing system?
• What is the annual maintenance of the system?
• What is the cost to replace the system?
• Do we have the people to rewrite the adapters, plugs, probes, rules, integrations, GUIs, etc�?
• Does the system have a long-term roadmap?
• Will it help us reach the Next Generation OSS?

This is just the tip of the iceberg� then after the analysis the work begins.

Examples of recent CSP consolidation:

The New AT&T

The New Level 3

The New Time Warner

Add Comments