Service Assurance is the New Black for Mediation, BSS and OSS
The horizontal layer approach is important. Today’s reality is that most network operators rely on multiple, fragmented mediation systems that address individual tasks and are, more often than not, vertically integrated into operational silos that each serve a different network, sub network, technology or otherwise. Unifying these systems to produce the common data feed necessary for end-to-end service assurance would likely be both time consuming and cost-prohibitive – if the operator even had the appetite to do it in the first place.
This is why CEA is leading to a requirement for a horizontal, best-of-breed data collection and processing layer or assurance mediation system. Such a horizontal layer sits between the network and operational systems, eliminates functional overlap, increases efficiency and speed of data delivery and guarantees the quality of the data it provides to service assurance systems. It also ensures that the data delivered to a Service Assurance system is as valuable as it can be (through effective data source correlations of transactions), allowing the Service Assurance system to focus on what it’s good at rather than pre-processing high volume events.
In addition to offering the core functions common to a traditional mediation solution, Service Assurance Mediation adds:
High Volume Data Capture from more diverse sources. In addition to billions of CDRs, the system needs to capture billions of performance counters and subscriber call, session and location detail traces from a myriad of different elements. This needs to be done at a very high scale, with absolute reliability, and in real-time if required.
Understanding different types of network data. In order to filter, de-duplicate and aggregate data in a valuable way, the mediation system has to understand it. Thus, it needs knowledge of numerous different telco formats, both traditional and more modern, such as Diameter protocols, each handled according to its own differing processing requirements. Siloed mediation systems, by definition, struggle to do this.
The ability to reduce data in a customer-centric way. Given the flow of data already outlined, this needs to be reduced without its value being compromised – essentially, the “right” events cherry-picked – if effective service assurance is subsequently to be carried out.
Rapid detection of trends. Operators have to become more proactive in being able to meet customer demands for a high quality network experience. Service Assurance places the mediation system as a front-line tool in achieving this. For instance, through saving key data points and carrying out trend comparisons of aggregated data over time.
Service Assurance Mediation, I believe, meets the foremost concerns of today’s operators in a highly cost-effective and efficient way. It is rapidly re-defining the conversation for mediation vendors and telcos alike, breaking down the invisible barrier between the functions of OSS and BSS in the process. Furthermore, Service Assurance mediation works in a way similar to how mediation meets the Big Data requirements for Business Intelligence. Here too, Big Data needs to be "semi-structured"; hence, the data ingestion layer works with the same type of source data that we describe in this article.
The bottom line is that, increasingly, there is a new and valuable way for operators to extend their investments in a mediation solution while addressing the key ingredients of the essential customer experience.
