Page 369 - Handbook of Modern Telecommunications

3-160 CRC Handbook of Modern Telecommunications, Second Edition

TABl E 3.6.4 Summary of Principal Processes Used in the Practice of eTOM (Continued)
Process or Function Name Definition
Inventory Management Allows maintaining, first of all, technical inventory data about equipment and
circuits for the geographical reach of the service providers. Both CAD/CAM and
GIS solutions may be implemented. Connections to the data warehouse are
obvious. Sophisticated Inventory Systems have built-in autodiscovery functions,
which updates the inventory with minimal manual effort.
Network Systems Administration May be considered as part of the maintenance process, limited, however, to version
control, backup, archiving, and distribution of software to equipment.
Capacity Management Process of periodic surveillance of capacity in equipment and circuits. If capacity
thresholds are exceeded, capacity extensions are initiated automatically.
Traffic Management Process of observing typical traffic patterns by customers, customer groups,
geographical areas, equipment, and facilities types. As a result, parameters and
controls can be changed in equipment and facilities.
Workforce Management Allows the central, policy-based, dispatch of workforce to monitor, test, maintain,
inspect, and install equipment and facilities.
Resource Planning and Development This process encompasses development and acceptance of strategy, description of
standard network configurations for operational use, and definition of rules for
network planning, installation, and maintenance.
This process also deals with designing the network capability to meet a specified
service need at the desired cost and for ensuring that the network can be properly
installed, monitored, controlled, and billed. The process is also responsible for
ensuring that enough network capacity will be available to meet the forecasted
demand and support cases of unforecasted demand.
Network Planning and Term often used instead of Resource Planning and Development.
Development
Design and Planning Allows, as a result of capacity bottlenecks, initiation of design processes that may
include the deployment of new technology to equipment and facilities.
Resource Provisioning The process encompasses the configuration of the network to ensure that network
capacity is ready for provisioning of services. It carries out network provisioning as
required to fulfill specific service requests and configuration changes to address
network problems. The process must assign and administer identifiers for
provisioned resources and make them available to other processes. Note that the
routine provisioning of specific instances of a customer service—in particular,
simple services such as plain old telephone service (POTS)—may not normally
involve network provisioning, but may be handled directly by service provisioning
from a preconfigured set.
Installation and Inspection Allows, as part of the provisioning process, the physical deployment of equipment
and facilities on the basis of provisioning and service order change requests of
customers.
Testing Process of testing equipment and facilities prior to deployment or as a part of the
error repair process.
Resource Trouble Management Resource Trouble Management processes are responsible for the management of
troubles with allocated resources. The objectives of these processes are to report
resource failures, isolate the root causes, and act to resolve them.
Principal processes and functions are:
• Survey & Analyze Resource Trouble
• Localize Resource Trouble
• Correct & Recover Resource Trouble
• Track & Manage Resource Trouble
• Report Resource Trouble
Reactive Fault Management Process of determining, diagnosing, and resolving faults detected and reported by
customers or by fault monitoring devices.