Operators should not underestimate how difficult network transformation, and the move to next generation OSS is going to be, said Michael Anderson, Senior VP Global Solutions at Telcordia.
“We’ve seen the disasters, and we’ve had to come in to clear up the mess. This transformation path we’re on is not an overnight process. It’s probably a 72 month process to take down a legacy system and migrate that to a next generation environment.”
Anderson was responding to the accusation often thrown Telcordia’s way, that it is a legacy company with TDM knowledge and assets, a telephony dinosaur in an IP world.Referring to an implementation of a next gen fulfilment system with Sky EasyNet, where the operator has seen a 30% improvement in fulfilment in just six months, Anderson said true migration was about being able to work back to legacy systems from next gen systems.
“The big operators can’t afford to just switch off their legacy systems. Yet look at the way we can federate the capabilities of our next generation fulfilment systems. Now we’re federating that data, checking the data, and processing it and marrying the two systems. It is a marriage between the two.”
Anderson was speaking as Telcordia launched its new Service Management Suite, into which it has integrated its Service Director and Device Director products. The suite is about taking network and device CDR probe data, referring that to established KPIs and KQIs and distributing reports to relevant business sectors so that operators can offer differentiated, class of service and “more sticky” SLAs.
Operators can’t afford to let consumers have a bad experience. We’ll try something twice, and then give up if it doesn’t work, Anderson said. So the service management suite is about giving operators the tools to get a customer centric view of their service performance and, through trending analysis and the ability to provision adaptive network thresholds, take action before problems even occur.
With IBM’s acquisition of Vallent and Micromuse last year, this is now a fiercely competitive and consolidating area. Yet Anderson thinks it is now an idea whose time has come.
“I used to work for ADC. And when I was there Service Assurance was a solution in search of a problem. But now with IP networks operators are moving from a linear process to a real time, personalised environment.”