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that blend owned and external aspects. In this new generation, a service is essentially an application.
And how many services are we talking about? A few dozen? No. Yankee Group estimates that the typical CSP maintains over 1,000 unique services, and adds 5-25 services per year.
Just as Ford saw a problem, and solved that problem by rethinking the notion of the factory, so too should communications providers turn to the notion of a cutting edge factory to assist in meeting the needs of consumers. A service factory.
The concept of the service factory has floated around for several years, and has been used by analyst firms (Gartner, for example),
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The concept of the service catalog is something we've been talking about in Pipeline for years. |
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Such a catalog is central to the concept of the service factory. It's necessary to establish what services and products are available in one central compendium in order for new services to be easily created.
Time, as the old adage says, is money. From this central catalog, service models can be constructed that can speed up the entire process of product launches. Therefore, service catalog and service modeling can drastically reduce time-to-market and, perhaps more importantly, time-to-monetization. Furthermore, a proactive approach to service inventory can help a provider understand what services are in play and where network resources can be leveraged most effectively.
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CSPs (Deutsche Telekom and BT Group have employed the term), vendors (Amdocs chief among them), and publications like this one.
A service factory is, in essence, a production line approach to service management. Getting there involves a number of steps.
Taking Stock
The concept of the service catalog is something we've been talking about in Pipeline for years. The extent to which many CSPs have no centrally maintained collection of products and solutions offered is a gigantic problem in the communications space. Analysts like Dan Baker of Dittberner and Associates have championed the service catalog for years, and it has become widely recognized as an important element in exposing assets so they can be better utilized.
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Deliver.
As a product catalog, service modeling, and service inventory can greatly speed the assembly of a new service, it's only fitting that this speedy assembly should be followed by speedy fulfillment. This is where automation really earns its keep.
First, the CSP must take the step of defining the specific parts of a customer order based on the components available in the catalog. Then, the CSP has to determine what services the end-user already has and what the network can feasibly deliver. Without these steps, a CSP runs the risk of over-promising service levels (which can turn into a huge customer retention headache) or duplicating services (which is a waste of assets).
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