Inventory management recently has become a key focus at many large service providers as they move to offer new packet-based services, deliver bundles of services, and generally try to become more efficient and effective. And, importantly, rather than dedicating these inventory management systems to one application, like service fulfillment, service providers are increasingly using these systems as core platforms that other applications can tap into.
“Nextel is using MetaSolv [Software Inc.]. Telecom Italia is using Granite [Systems Inc., which Telcordia Technologies Inc. now owns] in that way.
Cramer has Bell Canada, BT, KPN,” says Larry Goldman, partner at OSS Observer, an OSS research and consulting firm. “All are high-visibility service providers that have made major commitments to use inventory systems that are integrated. Instead of dedicated inventory for one application like service fulfillment, they use it as a core platform that other applications can use.”
That requires inventory management systems — which sometimes also are referred to as network resource management systems — to include application programming interfaces that allow other systems that handle such functions as fulfillment, activation, network planning and even financial planning and CRM to draw from them. In many cases, the same companies that offer inventory management also sell these other systems.
Julie Wingerter, vice president of strategy at NetCracker Technology Corp, says while inventory was once seen as an operations or IT decision, it is now the business side of carriers that is making inventory management decisions. That means carriers are looking for more holistic solutions that tie into a wide variety of systems — for operational support as well as for financial and customer care purposes.
David Sharpley, senior vice president of marketing and product management at MetaSolv, adds that his company’s M6 inventory management system enables different users within a carrier to tap into it for different purposes. For example, while a network engineer can access the system for information about the availability of logical or physical assets, a marketing manager or CEO can use M6 to find the number of requests for a particular service on a given day, he says.
This central role for inventory management means these systems need to be more than simple databases. Inventory management systems have become knowledge sources that “understand” what inventory means. For example, these systems know the number of ports on a network element and when those ports are exhausted, Goldman says. “Cramer, Granite, MetaSolv, NetCracker all have that intelligence built in,” he says. “These capabilities that are there now are really being used.”
In addition to working across different OSSs and being accessible to various parts of a service provider organization, newer inventory management systems also can handle multiple service types, whereas service providers traditionally have kept track of inventory for each type of network or service in separate databases.
Although many service providers are embracing new converged inventory management systems, they’re implementing them on a measured basis, says Brian Buggy, Cramer’s chief architect for telecom solutions. “Within Tier 1 service providers, the big thing going on, especially in North America, is the challenge of the legacy,” Buggy says.
For example, Telcordia Technologies Inc.’s Loop Facility Assignment and Control System (LFACS), which manages central office-to-customer connections, was designed based on the assumption that each house has one copper pair delivering just one service, Buggy says. That doesn’t translate to new business models under which service providers want to offer a bundle of services, he says. “The challenge is you have to be able to virtualize the media connection between the home and CO so you can flexibly format it for the services you want to offer,” he says. “And you have to do it in a way that allows you to add additional services down the line and perhaps with QoS.”
At the same time, Buggy notes, “you can’t walk in the door and turn off a system like LFACS serving 20 million to 60 million customers.” So new inventory management and related systems need to target new processes and new services initially, and move forward from there, he says. “If it’s DSL2, you have to isolate DSL2 from existing legacy and you have to provision on the small vertical — and keep voice initially on LFACS. The same is true with FTTH. Then you need to slowly ease up.
“The Telcordia legacy environment is so large and so complex that you have to respect the very significant engineering challenges that were overcome 25 to 30 years ago in putting it in place,” Buggy adds.
Although the new Granite Systems/Telcordia combination would appear to have an advantage over other inventory management companies in appealing to the RBOCs given Telcordia’s long history with the Bells, Buggy says Cramer is also vying for their business.
Cramer has already had significant success with many large incumbent carriers. For example, the company last year signed deals with Bell Canada and BT, which are looking for new OSS solutions as they move to new network technologies. “There’s a genuine shift now by many carriers to a packet-oriented service,” says Buggy. “That is genuinely challenging all of their systems.”
Edward Mitchell, CTO with Granite Systems, a Telcordia business, says VoIP and 3G cellular are different from other services because they require the management of phone numbers, IP addresses and end-to-end services. The challenge, he says, is to bring all the data together in a comprehensive store, and that’s on the roadmap for the company.
But Granite already offers a flexible inventory management solution, which is key, says Mitchell, since service providers seldom know what their service requirements will be. The Granite system, he explains, initially offered service providers the ability to add their own attributes to any of Granite’s base objects. Recently, Granite added to its platform the ability for customers to build their own objects right in the application. Those objects can be physical network assets, services, business relationships with third parties, or whatever, says Mitchell.
MetaSolv’s Sharpley notes that VoIP is a good driver for change in the area of inventory management. MetaSolv also recently won business from BT related to the carrier’s move to a packetbased voice infrastructure.
At SUPERCOMM this summer, MetaSolv announced a complete domain manager service fulfillment solution for VoIP services. It includes MetaSolv’s inventory management, order management and service activation software, combined with MetaSolv’s professional services for fast deployment and rapid time-to-market of VoIP offers. And it moves service management from network engineering to non-technical staff, enabling customer self-care.
MetaSolv now is collaborating with major global carriers to develop standardized service packages that can be provisioned quickly in large volumes. For example, using MetaSolv, the BT Group can deliver hosted IP telephony services to more than 10,000 end users in more than 750 offices.
