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Business Impact of an OSS Solution
Next-generation OSS solutions are designed to help service providers achieve success in the marketplace by delivering superior customer service and rapid time to market for new products and services. A powerful OSS solution can also help service providers meet these goals while controlling and reducing operating costs.

QoS
QoS is a measure of the service quality provided to a customer. This measurement can be very subjective, and the ability to define it depends upon the technology being used. For example, circuit networks utilize dedicated, 64-kb connections to support service delivery. This provides high-quality service because only the traffic for a specific session can utilize the dedicated network path, but it also is bandwidth inefficient. For example, if two people on a voice call are not speaking, bandwidth goes unused. In a world where time is measured in milliseconds, even a half-second of unused airtime is an enormous waste of resources, and may be considered poor QoS by a customer. In contrast, consider IP, one of the leading technologies for enabling next-generation communications services. An IP session can utilize multiple paths to complete its delivery and only uses as much bandwidth as it needs, allowing traffic to mix on network paths in order to maximize bandwidth usage. The downside of IP telephony, however, is that its best-effort delivery model does not guarantee delivery of packets in order, in a timely manner, or at all. In this case, the inability to guarantee packet delivery may be considered poor QoS by a customer, who may sacrifice inefficient bandwidth usage to guarantee delivery. Acceptable QoS levels are established and must be maintained in order to retain customers. As a result, service providers must be able to deploy and successfully manage a solution or combination of solutions that meet customer the customer’s QoS requirements. For example, to provide real-time applications over IP networks that meet high customer QoS standards, such as for a financial institution, a solution might include using VPNs and IP over ATM.

Data Warehousing
Measuring QoS compliance requires having access to accurate and timely data. While traditional OSSs may be adequate for the service provider’s day-to-day operations, they lack the ability to provide these vital performance metrics. Next-generation OSSs can quickly and efficiently access historical data by taking advantage of data warehousing technology. Data warehousing consists of storing information from disparate systems in a central repository or a single database and carefully managing the data to ensure its integrity. Management can draw upon this valuable asset when access to the latest business intelligence is necessary, not only for QoS analysis but also to analyze market trends and adjust product strategies accordingly.

Operational Efficiencies
To provide ROI, an OSS solution must help the service provider execute and hopefully realize productivity gains in their business processes. Most OSS solutions today are considered commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) applications. While some packages do offer out-of-the-box functionality, most are designed to be customized to meet the unique needs and requirements of the service provider. For example, a sophisticated OSS solution will offer workflow management capabilities out of the box and also enable users to create customized and automated processes that take further advantage of next-generation OSS functionality. In this fashion, a next-generation OSS can afford the service provider a realistic means of enhancing and/or re-engineering business processes to reduce costs, increase productivity, and accelerate time to market for products and services.

The Importance of Flexibility
Given today’s dynamically changing marketplace, flexibility also is a key requirement in a next-generation OSS solution. A technology-neutral OSS is built upon an architecture that supports current, new, and emerging technologies, enabling service providers to respond immediately to changes in their business climate whether the changes stem from marketing decisions, new technologies, or regulatory requirements.