3. Your company cannot visualize the Network and IT infrastructure from end-to-end. At present the market offers plenty of tools that can provide a functional view of either the Network or the IT infrastructure, but very few that can visualize and model it end-to-end — from devices, services, and applications all the way to the customers.

4. Your company takes a long time to introduce new devices and applications into the service environment. The multiple OSS across the Network and IT are incapable of capturing and modeling new devices (handsets, CPE, gaming consoles, etc.) and applications cannot understand the dependencies and relationships among them.

5. Your company has limited ability to understand service quality and the customer experience on an end-to-end basis. Again, you need to use multiple OSS platforms to capture and correlate Network, IT, Service, and Customer data to build a single picture of the Service Experience.

This misalignment is due to cultural differences and a lack of appropriate technology and, given the change that’s taken place, is understandable. Functionality that used to be embedded in the Network Layers is now being deployed on IT systems. The mobile industry is a perfect example. Close to 70% of the infrastructure used to create and initiate services such as voicemail,

If multiple OSS are used that are either Network- or IT-centric, then the cost of integration, the ability to create new services and service bundles on the fly, and the cost to build end-to-end visibility can be 4 to 6 times higher than when a single system is used to do the same.

Today Network and IT are working far more closely than they did in the past. This is creating a new dynamic of simultaneous co-operation and competition; not surprisingly, the best and most successful service providers are usually those where the CIO and the CTO are on the same page, driving transformation of the business. In the long run there will be no takeover of one side by the other — the best Service Provider environments will see a harmonious balance between the two. Getting that balance right will involve choosing the right OSS.

If OSS is to be relevant in the world of converged infrastructure and services, then it must transcend the two domains and not limit itself to Layer 3 and below. Instead it must evolve with the times and help Service Providers merge the power of Network and IT.