which was quoted by Michael Matthews, Chief Marketing Officer, Amdocs, "Mind The Gap: Between BSS/OSS."

Operational Support Systems include Fault Management, Performance Management, Trouble Ticketing, Activation, Inventory, Discovery, Billing Mediation, etc.

Business Support Systems include Customer/Service Billing, Customer/Service Resource Management, Business Intelligence, Business Process Management, Customer Care systems, Customer Trouble Ticketing, Service Order Entry systems, etc.

There has always been the desire to integrate or centralize information at the OSS level however due to closed Point-Solutions, lack of funding, complex legacy in-house development, and various other challenges integration was not always possible. For example, in the 1990's the management of Plain-Old-Telephone-Services (POTS) did not always warrant total integration between systems - integration was a nice to have. Today with next generation wireless/wireline services converging over IP, fierce competition, and cost cutting... not only is OSS integration a must have... but also integration between the BSS and OSS layers.

NOCs continue to strive for more automation between management systems and managed resources (network elements and element management systems). However now operations are challanged with determining customer impact. What services and customers are impacted when this resource goes down? Or what resources are required to support this new service for this premium customer? Bottom-up and top-down strategies are being investigated throughout CSP OSS/BSS shops.

The general trend is integration and automation, bottom-up and top-down, to provide higher quality services to consumers while continuing to reduce operational costs to stay competitive.

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