Management World — NetCracker added to its business with Telecom New Zealand by deploying its workforce management solution and leveraged its ownership by NEC to crack the market in Japan with WDM management.
With the latest release (8.0) of its OSS suite, announced this week, NetCracker expanded its services and network-IT resource management and optimization capabilities into the adjacent workforce management domain. As a result, in part, it sold its workforce management solution to Telecom New Zealand’s Chorus to manage disparate parts of its operations.
“Fifteen years ago nobody thought telecom needed its own specific inventory solution, but they did. It’s the same with workforce management. It exists for other industries, but it’s different for telecom because of the scalability and complexity,” said Sanjay Mewada, vice president of strategy at NetCracker. “If you have one bad truck roll, the profitability of an installation is gone for 20 months.”
Chorus builds and maintains the copper and fiber access network of TNZ and makes that network available to other telecommunications providers. Chorus is also responsible for installing and repairing phone and broadband connections.
The companies have worked together on other parts of the business since June 2008. Chorus will now utilize NetCracker’s workforce management solution to provide a centralized view of TNZ’s manpower operations, including Human Resources, Transportation Crews and related equipment.
Ewen Powell, technology director at Chorus, said that in addition to managing workforce operations, the solution also will help Chorus plan and manage short- and long-term work activities with the capability for workload forecasting and proactive capacity planning; enable comprehensive management of the work order lifecycle, with extensive reporting and escalation management capabilities; facilitate cross-domain data exchange for fulfillment, field service, and service assurance operations; and enable business process monitoring and workforce performance management.
Release 8.0 also introduces new features for the NetCracker OSS suite such as Service Template Visualization and a range of pre-built adapters for rapid integration and deployment that add to the existing service fulfillment, infrastructure management, and service assurance functionality. In addition to the workforce module, the enhancements include Order Processing Framework and Service Provisioning Framework extensions, new support for application interfaces supporting OSS/J FM and MTOSI 2.0 and integration adapters with Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Huawei and NSN.
“The real driver behind 8.0 is for anyone rolling out new networks. They have a lot of pressure to monetize that network right away,” Mewada said.
NetCracker has reaped some benefits of being part of NEC since it was acquired last year, but perhaps its biggest so far is the selection by NTT DOCOMO to provide OSS support. In preparation for the launch of its commercial Long Term Evolution (LTE) services in 2010, NTT will use NetCracker to manage the WDM network that links core networks and base stations, as well as control communications equipment.
“The challenge here we’re able to meet is that we will have to model the technology because it’s all new. They’re as cutting edge as you get,” Mewada said.
