Network management and customer management systems have never been smarter, yet until now, they have lived apart and known little about each other, leaving them unable to hold a dialogue together on a single stage. That's a show-killing drawback for service providers who want to sell and manage custom bundles of services over converged networks.
Among the burning challenges today is the need for service providers to package combinations of services like virtual private networks with messaging or calendar services. --Amy Millard, director of directory and security product marketing, Sun-Netscape Alliance |
Enter directories, stage left, to provide a common platform for information sharing and bring an end to disconnects that isolate information on networks, services and customers from one another. Further, the emerging development of back-office applications in the form of combinable and re-combinable software "objects" promises to enable not only open access to data, but also to enable sharing of business applications that are applied to that data--whether those applications are designed to add a new user, provision network resources, verify service performance or bill for a specific application delivered.
Over the next few years, advocates say, the invasion of directories and software object "brokering" into the service provider back office will result in a single view of the customer across all operational systems, enabling networks to be managed on a "service-aware" and "customer-aware" basis. Rather than managing only devices, network management systems also will be able to leverage a customer profile to activate custom features, such as special access to an application service-provider-hosted human resources or payroll server. Or customer service systems will be able to leverage detailed network usage data and analysis programs to make marketing, churn control or other strategic efforts more targeted and intelligent.
"Among the burning challenges today is the need for service providers to package combinations of services like virtual private networks with messaging or calendar services," says Amy Millard, director of directory and security product marketing for the Sun-Netscape Alliance (www.iplanet.com) of Sun Microsystems Inc. (www.sun.com) and America Online Inc. (www.aol.com). "To do that, you need a unified view of the customer across messaging servers, network provisioning systems, billing and all systems involved in delivering the services."
"It's not just managing the network anymore," says Glenn Thurston, director of Preside Policy Services marketing for Nortel Networks Inc. (www.nortelnetworks.com), which partnered with the Sun-Netscape Alliance to codevelop directory-enabled back-office systems. "It's about managing services to add value on top of that through a service delivery system flexible enough to provide a 'click, it's on' service model."
Indeed, directory advocates say that back-office systems enabled to read from the same customer profile script will pave the way for service providers to operate as electronic businesses, offering web-accessible, front-end service portals to their customers. Based on policies that are defined by the service provider and stored with customer profiles, this will empower the customer with controlled access to his own profile where he can register for, and even customize, services with a single password or network handshake.
With the potential to both streamline service provider business processes and make them more real time and dynamic, the single-view-of-the-customer movement suddenly has gained traction among vendors in all back-office categories: network management and provisioning, subscriber management, usage mediation, billing, security and directory systems, the last of which has had two years to mature inside large, corporate networks in financial services and other vertical markets. Since late last year, network hardware and back-office software have unveiled new directory-enabled, service-aware products and formed partnerships to further the cause.
At the same time, many advocates readily caution that, while key standards are maturing rapidly, the implementation tasks will be monumental in size and scope.
Act One: Unification
Demand for directory-enabled networks is being driven primarily by the construction of multi- service networks that are designed to eventually replace multiple single-service voice and data networks, each of which is burdened with its own, separate operational support system and business support system (BSS) suites. Multiservice network construction itself represents a massive under taking that also has just begun. Consequently, the maturation of directory-enabled back-office systems has a chance of keeping pace with the construction of the new networks they would manage. Typically, service providers are building multiservice packet networks while their revenue-generating circuit telephony, private data and Internet networks continue to operate separately. To cut costs, service providers will migrate all services to the new packet networks over time. In the meantime, service-aware, directory-enabled management systems will be applied to newer packet networks "where the need is greatest to launch new services," says Alan Raderman, director of infrastructure product marketing for LM Ericsson's U.S. subsidiary Ericsson Datacom Inc. (www.ericsson.com). Ericsson Datacom's new Multiservice Management System employs a "common information model" that applies lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP), common information model (CIM) and common object request brokering architecture (CORBA) standards, to make all management data accessible to all management applications.
Diagram: Communication Architecture
Other large networking vendors, including Nortel, Cisco Systems Inc. (www.cisco.com), Lucent Technologies Inc. (www.lucent.com) and Siemens AG (www.siemens.de) spin-off Unisphere Solutions Inc. (www.unispheresolutions.com) are employing the same technologies to launch their own data- unifying and application-unifying systems. Smaller startup networking vendors, such as IP services switch makers CoSine Communications Inc. (www.cosinecom.com) and Spring Tide Networks Inc. (www.springtidenet.com) say their first-generation products are designed to plug in to the directory-enabled OSS/BSS world from the start.
Directory traction also is reflected in a number of industry groups and standards bodies involved in developing interfaces and practices necessary to systems unification. The ad hoc Directory Interoperability Forum (www.directoryforum.org) is defining how to uniformly represent and access information in directory profiles. The Object Management Group (www.omg.org) and the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) of the Internet Engineering Task Force (www.ietf.org) are concurrently developing the common information model for sharing application software objects dynamically among LDAP directories. The IETF also is developing a common object policy system (COPS) for the uniform provisioning of router ports, queuing mechanisms and other network resources on a service-aware basis.
Fundamentally, the systems now emerging provide a way for all back-office systems to access a profile of an individual user and the services to which he or she is authorized. Rather than entering each customer profile in multiple OSS and BSS databases, the service provider can enter the information once. Then, throughout the life cycle of a service, the customer information becomes available to a range of OSS and BSS systems:
- Customer care
- Network design and planning
- Network operations
- Service definition
- Service provisioning
- Service assurance
- Access policy definition
- Usage mediation
- Billing and billing self-care
Act Two: Synchronization
To make operations both real time and dynamic, data must be synchronized as well as accessible.
Within the common information model, each OSS and BSS system would employ an LDAP directory. Also, a directory of directories, known as a metadirectory or central policy repository, would serve as the nexus for the exchange of data. Tasked with synchronizing distributed directories, the metadirectory holds a high level abstraction of a customer's service profile--the elements that change least--while more dynamic information is distributed to individual directories.
Early this year, Nortel and Sun plan to propose to the Directory Interoperability Forum a "schema" for how directory information should be structured. For its own Universal Management Center metadirectory, Unisphere Solutions is employing Siemens' DirX metadirectory, which claims 25 percent market share outside the United States.
In contrast to slow, infrequent batch downloads of moves and changes, directries promise to synchronize constant changes in near real time. "In tomorrow's world, subscribers will need to change their profiles almost daily--for things like the temporary setup of a networked project that you then tear down--and that requires a very dynamic data environment," says Brian Mahony, director of strategic partnerships, service and network management, for Unisphere.
The directory model also could enable dynamic definition and tweaking of services, which then can be made accessible to a web commerce portal for ordering and fulfillment. This ability is already a component of Unisphere's system in the form of a Service Selection Center. "Service profiles may have flavors, such as DSL for financial service customers, DSL for students or DSL for grandmothers," Mahony says. "The real benefit is in ongoing dialogue with customers, rather than turning on a one-size-fits-all, flat-rate service and never talking to the customer again."
According to Mahony, such fluid customer relations require filling the "huge" gap between network and customer management systems "which has meant that, as a service provider, I have no way to provision network services in a service-specific way. That gap is now being bridged."
The new Ericsson, Nortel and Unisphere directory-enabled offerings intend to make customer info accessible to all manner of network management systems across a service provider's packet and circuit, wireless and wireline infrastructure. The Unisphere Universal Management Center, for example, embraces Class 5 circuit switches, IP-to-circuit mediation switches, core and edge IP routers, and softswitch call controllers in Unisphere's equipment portfolio. Similarly, Ericsson's Multiservice Packet Network unifies management across edge and core routers and switches.
"We looked at how we represent information in all the new IP boxes we're making, and customers say they want to plug and play user services into a common platform," says Nortel's Thurston. "All our activities in service information management going forward will fall under this SunNortel infrastructure."
At the telecom e-commerce level, companies such as Vitria Technology Inc. (www.vitria.com) and Active Software Inc. (www.activesoftware.com) are now delivering e-business platforms that leverage such metadata to operate electronic telecom trading hubs. Vitria, for example, is providing a BusinessWare solution designed to provide trading partner profiles, services directories, and directories of management interfaces for trading hubs among ISPs, DSL carriers and vertical industries such as health care.
Act Three: Distributed Applications
While directory technologies promise to streamline customer treatment by making common data accessible to multiple back-office systems, service providers stand to gain even more from the ability to distribute the management applications used to crunch that raw data.
This will be accomplished through breaking down applications into distributed, combinable software objects.
"CORBA acts as a programming interface to give access not only to raw profile information, but also to business logic--the processes to act on profiles," says Dean Hamilton, president and CEO for CoSine, which in February won a purchase order for its IP service switches from carrier Qwest Communications International Inc. (www.qwest.com).
"As new devices and new services are added to networks, the service provider can keep building more sophisticated and customized functionality by distributing business processes drawn from one system to another, so the idea of sharing business processes is much bigger than sharing static data," Hamilton says. "You might have a fault management application that can be distributed to a billing system and made useful there, rather than having to write new business processes into each new billing system."
For this reason, a flurry of partnerships is occurring among networking and e-businesses applications developers.
Network systems integrator American Management Systems Inc. (www.amsinc.com), for example, has partnered with e-commerce software integrator Active Software. "With Active's middleware, we can generate standard business process templates and a metadirectory of business processes," says Dave Nestler, vice president of telecom group partner alliances for AMS. "We've had the same agreement with Active in the utilities and financial services industries, which may be two to five years ahead of telecom in exploring how to refine customer relations through applications that analyze transactions."
To similarly share applications, Micromuse Inc. (www.micromuse.com), a Unisphere Universal Management Center partner, also has partnered with Architel Systems Corp. (www.architel.com). The companies will automate inter-action between Micromuse's Netcool fault and service level management system and Architel's Objectel network inventory and Automated Service Activation Program (ASAP) systems. As a result, if a Netcool application found that a VPN service had surpassed its QoS threshold, it could notify the ASAP system to provision more bandwidth. In executing that shared application, adds Tim Tokarsky, senior vice president of business development for Micromuse, the two systems could consult Unisphere Solutions' metadirectory for the contracted QoS policy on that VPN customer to discern whether to allocate more bandwidth, credit an account or do nothing.
"The management system is where [you] find all the stability and visibility power to see into and control the network," says Francis Odo, product manager, IP management solutions, Ericsson Datacom. "This is a service-aware system, and that's what we need as we move into these converged networks, where the services are more numerous, complex and differentiated than they ever were in unconverged networks."
