Pipeline Publishing, Volume 4, Issue 3

	This Month's Issue:
	Automation

Automating Operations - Merely Reduce OPEX or Beyond?

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customer impact analysis part of T-2-R processes.

How Industry Standards help OSS automation

Industry initiatives such as OSS/J, MTOSI have been helping the industry to achieve OSS automation by following TMF NGOSS standards. OSS/J APIs being strictly compliant with TMF NGOSS (eTOM and SID) and as they are mapped to eTOM’s high level process blocks of “Operations” map; OSS/J APIs adequately cover business processes identified by eTOM framework that are candidate for OSS automation.

Guidelines discussed above about business process automation and OSS automation standards such as OSS/J and MTOSI would ensure that automation does not endanger operational flexibility.

would also come in to the play thereby increasing automation complexity.

Zero Touch / Flow through Provisioning: Reality?

Though, Zero Touch or Flow through Provisioning has been buzzword; practically it has never been possible to achieve it for all business lines (services). For example, when it comes to decomposition of service order request for Wire line services (be it PSTN or

For example, OSS/J Trouble Ticketing APIs could be used to greatly automate some of the T-2-R processes. Large Tier1 operators like Vodafone D2 have greatly leveraged TMF NGOSS standards to automate the process of creating trouble tickets when high severity/priority fault happens in the network. Some other service providers have already counted on OSS/J Service Activation APIs to automate their service provisioning processes to greatly improve service velocity which has yielded business benefits for them. Some Service Providers are working on automating the T-2-R processes by integrating Trouble Ticketing applications from different locations and other operating companies. This would help exchanging ticket information in automated fashion from a geography to the other and would also help escalating tickets ( from regional NOCs to CNOC etc). We have now seen that completely automated T-2-R requires customer self care applications to be seamlessly interfaced with Fault Management & Trouble Ticketing components. And if we add a scenario of Automation of Customer Impact Analysis then besides Fault & Trouble Ticketing; Inventory management component

broadband), field engineers are required to be involved in the process and hence 100% automation has not been possible. Zero Touch or Flow through Provisioning aspect works quite well for Wireless services and has already been achieved; i.e. from the time customer places an order for a product/service till the time that service is delivered and customer receives the first bill. However, for new edge services; zero touch / flow through provisioning is not an option but the day one requirement.

OSS Automation: Lifeline for new edge services

As we are in the era of Value added services on broadband or wireless and as network has made service blending possible; there are new challenges for OSS automation. Let’s take a few examples. Considering new edge services like Booster, e wallet and likes; we need an automation solution that talks to the network in a dynamic, real time fashion. And therefore, we would need an additional component in the form of Network Resource Controller

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