|
|
article page | 1 | 2 |
Design, create and deliver
CSPs in the IMS market will deliver complex services and will certainly need convergent provisioning and activation that can access multiple service control points across all access networks, application and content servers and external entities in precise sequence. This much is self-evident.
Importantly, however, they will also need to provision IP-based networks and for many CSPs this will be virgin territory. IP is fundamental to IMS and prospective OSS and BSS vendors will need to demonstrate a wide and deep understanding of the dynamics of IP provisioning and performance if they are to deliver viable solutions to this market.
Fast rollout of new services will be essential to the maintenance of customer interest and market share. As in any other development environment, fast rollout means using and reusing service components. The alternative, redesigning each service from scratch, would not only be slow, but would create inconsistency, poor interaction between services and a massive maintenance and management overhead.
|
|
"Although services will be complex to enable, they must appear simple to the customer. Customer self-provisioning or simple ‘one touch’ provisioning through the CRM must be the objective, to minimize cost and maximize customer satisfaction." |
|
Benefits of deploying IMS
IMS is a standard protocol which carries both opportunity and threat to communications service providers. The opportunity is to take a giant step into the next generation of telecoms with a protocol which will underpin both new, revenue generating services and convergence of still largely-divergent fixed and mobile communications. The threat is that other IP-capable organizations can easily offer competing service to the customer, dis-intermediating the carrier and assuming the dominant customer relationship.
An efficient service design, creation and delivery environment can help CSPs to maximize the opportunity and mitigate the attendant risk.
|
|
|
|
|
Component reuse allows something close to a factory environment, where widely varying products can be quickly assembled from a set of common parts with the minimum of new or bespoke work. IMS services will be enabled by a wide variety of service and network components, both inside and outside the operator domain and OSS products will need to be capable of managing services at a ‘fine granular’ level of assembly.
Although services will be complex to enable, they must appear simple to the customer. Customer self-provisioning or simple ‘one touch’ provisioning through the CRM must be the objective, to minimize cost and maximize customer satisfaction. A service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a key step in this direction, allowing enabling systems to interface efficiently through a common enterprise bus both upwards to the customer and downward to the network with minimal management overhead and human interaction.
|
|
Additionally, IMS can allow CSPs to:
-
Roll out new services fast, minimizing time to market, accelerating revenue and delivering competitive edge.
-
Optimize service design and build, allowing the reuse of service components for greater service consistency and easier management and maintenance.
-
Consolidate provisioning of multiple service control points onto a single platform, greatly reducing costs of operation, providing better management and allowing faster problem and query resolution
-
Build service fulfilment into an open service architecture (OSA) through open standards, communication protocols and APIs.
|
|
|
|
