Next Generation Business and Operational Support Systems: Practical Realities and Emerging Strategies

Alan Quayle Business and Service Development: Workshop Outline

Next Generation BOSS (Business and Operational Support
Systems): Practical Realities and Emerging Strategies

Background

Telecommunications is a subset of Information Technology (IT). The telecoms industry
likes to think that there's IT and CT (Communication Technology) and a category called
ICT (Information and Communications Technology), that is the merger of IT and CT.
However, the rest of the world has another opinion. Using ITIL's (Information
Infrastructure Technology Library) definition of IT: “The use of technology for the
storage, communication or processing of information. The technology typically includes
computers, telecommunications, applications and other software. The information may
include: business data, voice, images, and video. IT is often used to support business
processes through IT services.” From this definition its clear telecoms is considered a
subset of IT, and today the heart of most telecom networks is software running on
servers - that's IT.

From a technology perspective we're witnessing the ‘ITization’ of Telecoms, not a
merger: IP was an enterprise technology (when it achieved scale) that is now the core of
telecoms, not ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode); SOA (Service Oriented Architecture)
is an IT workflow bus that is now the core of an operators' service delivery and business
operations. Similarly, the TMF (Tele Management Forum) will be replaced with ITIL
because enterprises (the operator’s customers) use ITIL not TMF. Operators must talk
the language of their customers.

ITization is occurring because of scale and TTM (Time To Market.) All other industries
combined (referred to as enterprises by telecoms) has scale and rapid evolution (starts
small and feature rich and rapidly evolves into 99.999% availability). Telecom does not;
it continues to try to create a custom world in 7 days and fails. As an example, the
Apple iPhone app store implements an on-device portal (ODP) that telecom operators
had offered to them since 2002 yet they did not adopt. The ODP is simply a rich internet
application. As an industry we're missing opportunities because of an insular attitude
that ignores the methods of IT’s success.

The communications industry continues to struggle with its IT spend. For example,
traditional operators’ IT spend is 10 times that of new entrants on a per subscriber
basis, and most of that spend is on legacy systems. Compared to industry averages,
operators spend 9% of revenue on IT compared to an industry average of 4%. 70% of
that spend is on legacy systems, and 75% is on custom systems rather than COTS
(Commercial Off The Shelf). Are operators' business processes so different they require
custom systems? Are customers even aware of such differentiation? The answer to
both these questions is a resounding No.

 2011 Alan Quayle Business and Service Development


The Tele Management Forum was founded in 1988 by BT and AT&T, its architecture was
based on the BT Tile architecture created in the early 1980s. The Forum brings together
members to solve systems and operational management issues, yet in its 22 years of
existence the TMF has failed to deliver compliable standards that enabled BOSS
(Business and Operational Support Systems) vendors to interoperate, while in other
industries, for example financial services, far greater progress has been achieved.

Also a fundamental shift is happening due to the commoditization of
telecommunications, telecoms is not longer an independent ecosystem that can define
its own standards and rules, it is now a component of many other ecosystems, and must
conform to customers’ needs, which are largely defined through ITIL.

The objectives of this course are to provide a distinctly different and independent view
on the status of next generation business and operational support systems (NGBOSS),
with extensive case studies and frank reviews of the realities behind vendor and
industry forum hype. Helping guide operators on immediate simple practical steps as
well as setting out a strategy based on helping operators correct the underperformance
of Telco IT.

Target audience for this two day strategic course are CTO, strategy and CIO groups who
are responsible for strategy, architecture, vendor selection and BOSS design wishing to
gain fresh and informed insight on where to focus in the emerging and increasingly
complex telecoms environment.

Workshop Delivery Options

• Full 3 day course (800+ slides)
• Fast-track 2 day course through most of the program – group discussion is
limited
• Partial program for anything less than 2 days



Program

Business Transformation / NGOSS Questionnaire Results
 We'll start with an independent survey that was undertaken in 2010.
o The survey includes operators form mobile, cable, incumbent converged,
and carrier’s carrier; from Americas, APAC, and EMEA. Generally
interviewing the CIO and CTO groups.
 Topics covered include:
o Business transformation vision: what specific business / technical /
operational problems were being addressed across concept to cash, and
trouble to resolution?
o Business transformation, is it still relevant given the challenges and
failures of many such projects which in the limit generate few significant
customer perceived improvements
o Gathering views on TMF, eTOM, SID, TAM, ITIL, and SOA – understanding
the reality of what operators are thinking (not vendor marketing)
o Real-world experiences – transformation challenges and how they were
over-come or not (we’ll discuss failures, successes, and the many projects
that finish somewhere in between)
 Trying to avoid paying for 1000+ SI consultants on your premises
o Reviewing experiences on commercial of the shelf (COTS), highly
modified COTS and custom NGBOSS implementations - understanding
the decision criteria / project outcomes – and balancing this against the
drive to outsource or adopt cloud-based solutions for at least non-core
functions
o Understanding the financial implications of transformation – what is the
return on investment?
o Core components of business transformation – what really matters?
o Best of breed versus best of suite
o Vendor review – based on operator experiences not generic product
comparisons
o Does BOSS, bringing BSS and OSS under one framework make sense?
o Key learning from the survey with specific recommendations

What Does the ITization of Telecoms Mean for Operators?
 NGBOSS is part of a larger IT business transformation trend, this section
considers the whole transformation in IT
 Defining IT
o Definition of IT
o Mapping Telco’s Position
o Market Sizes (IT and Telecom)
o ITization of Telecoms
o Battlefronts in Telecom Software



 IT Industry Status and Trends
o Main IT Trends
 Scale and Consolidation
 Internet of Things
 Internet of Services
 Software, Service & Process Development
o Main IT Research Trends
 Storage, Hardware, Software Development, Open Source, Open
Innovation, Cloud
 Recommendations

NGBOSS Review
• Legacy Situation
o Reminder on the problems we’re facing
• Operator Processes
o Review the 3 process that drive our business
• Concept to Cash
• Trouble to Resolution
• Plan to Provision
• TeleManagement Forum
o eTOM: Enhanced Telecom Operation Map
o TAM: Telecom Application Map
o SID: Shared Information Data model
o MTOSI: Multi-Technology Operations System Interface
o TM Forum’s Blueprint
o OSS/J
o Frameworx: rebanding all of the above
o NGOSS: Next Generation Operational Support System
• ITIL Review: Information Technology Infrastructure Library
• TOGAF: The Open Group
• So What does this all mean?

Case Studies
• SOA in Context
o Understand the current status
• A Brief History of SOA in Telecom
o Quick review of its long history in Telecom
• SOA Implementations
o Quick review on some of the typical implementation issues
• 23 Case Studies
o Order to Cash Case Study
o Cox Activation Silos Case Study
o BT Global Services Case Study



o Telfort Case Study
o Cell C Case Study
o MTN Case Study
o Sunrise Case Study
o Telecom Italia Case Study
o Turkcell Case Study
o Cell C Case Study
o Starthub Case Study
o O2/iPhone Activation Case Study
o O2 SOA Software Factory for Service Development Case Study
o China Mobile (CMCC) BOSS Case Study
o France Telecom Group Case Study
o Deutsche Telekom Case Study
o Rogers Case Study
o Verizon Business: IT Workbench Case Study
o AT&T SOA Case Study
o BT NGBOSS Case Study
o Other Non Telco Case Studies
• Amazon
• EDF
• Banking
o Key Points

Supplier trends and Overall recommendations:
 Reviewing and understanding the status and strategies of suppliers such as
Oracle, IBM, HP, Amdocs, Accenture, SAP, etc.
 Reviewing the understanding the status and strategies of NEP (Network
Equipment Provider) activities in NGBOSS and SOA.
o Understanding why the NEPs are bringing BSS and OSS together on a
common bus
 Understanding the changes in the vendor landscape and what that means to
operators NGBOSS plans
 The ‘best of breed’ approach hasn’t worked, but is ‘best of suite’ any more
practical? COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) has low risk / cost but may not meet
all requirements, a fully custom solution will meet all requirements but is
expensive. The favoured approach of heavily modifying a COTS solution is
resulting in high risk and cost. What drives operators to make these decisions,
what are the outcomes, is there a better way?
 Bringing the analysis together: recap on the key points from the market survey,
identifying the impact of the ITization of Telecoms, highlighting the lessons
learnt from the case studies, and a final discussion around the practical issues of
adopting the guidance given the simple fact that legacy systems, processes and
organizational structures dominate the transformation decision making process.



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