Shango: How to Automate Core UC Fulfillment Processes Through the Cloud
Some carriers have created one-way integration between their internal MIS, or management information system, and web-based tools via XML-based platforms, but this method doesn’t address integration for the other party. Systems integrators have long promised CSPs a truly integrated enterprise, but the ability to mass- and custom-integrate order management, customer relationship management (CRM), billing, operations, and APIs or import tools across all trading partners will come at a truly hefty cost.
The telecom industry’s OSS/BSS landscape is changing, however, with the emergence of software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings that allow carriers to bypass large, traditional, holistic OSS deployments. Typically synonymous with big risks, big budgets and big impact, operational systems integration can wreak havoc on capital and operational expenditures (CAPEX and OPEX), especially as CSPs' provider agreements, services and product sets expand or evolve. Existing SaaS solutions may address some sourcing and fulfillment needs, but inefficiencies can crop up when it’s time for companies to scale.
To satisfy the demand for automated, integrated supply-chain management, Shango has established an open, common, cloud-based service-orchestration platform for UC, giving CSPs the ability to source a growing number of applications from any provider anywhere in the world. Through a single point of integration, CSPs can gain access to multiple trading partners and connect their disparate OSS and billing systems via available common APIs in order to more fluently source both on- and off-net services from the supply chain as well as manage, activate and provision native and third-party inventory down channel.
Although the development of provider APIs and mass or custom OSS/BSS integrations can automate processes and may be built with open standards in mind, they lack a neutral, transparent, flexible architecture that can scale easily over time. But an open, common platform has this kind of architecture, and utilizes common APIs that are constantly updated for the user while acting as a medium that brings trading partners together and allows each to expose pricing groups from a CSP’s underlying providers.
In fact, this kind of platform doesn’t have any proprietary products or services, making it possible for various providers, including ITSPs and those in the fields of wholesale services and cloud applications, to import their existing provider relationships and, better yet, source from new trading partners, who, across the telecom supply chain and distribution channels, can effortlessly pull down and push out IP-enabled services and applications to each other faster and more seamlessly than before.
An open, common platform also provides a meeting point for technical simplification of OSS/BSS processes. Its ability to integrate the supply chain can save significant amounts of time and money for CSPs and reduce the amount of unexpected provisioning changes and errors that can occur as services are fulfilled, helping to improve time to market (TTM) for new providers and the products that are delivered down channel to resellers and customers.
