Page 457 - Handbook of Modern Telecommunications

3-248 CRC Handbook of Modern Telecommunications, Second Edition

end-to-end service, augmenting the network inventory with the complex relationships introduced by
value-added services.
Unified data management needs to provide the following:

• Traditional inventory, capturing information about all the network and IT resources, and how
they are connected. This includes the traditional telecom network inventory as well as informa-
tion on the traditional IT equipment that is in the call path.
• Services inventory, which maintains information on how the individual service instances are pro-
visioned. It also needs to provide information on the sequence of interactions among the compo-
nents that define the service.
• Product catalog, which captures information on the service offers that are available. This would
include information on how to decompose a service offer into the service elements that make up
the service.
• Discovery, reconciliation, and data-loading facilities. Discovery is necessary since the sheer
amount of data and its dynamic nature means that the only way it can remain current is through
automatic discovery processes. Reconciliation is necessary since any discrepancies between the
discovered as-is and as-planned configurations need to be understood: the network is not always
right. Data loading needs to be performed to provide the necessary data to applications that
require local caches for performance reasons.

While theoretically, security management is no different than any other form of management, we pull
out the management of the security mechanisms because of the importance, and oftentimes the require-
ments for closer auditing. Note that security management is not the security mechanisms, but the rather
the management of those mechanisms. For example, a firewall protecting systems from external threats
is a security mechanism. Configuring the firewall to implement the business policies and monitoring it
for any breaches in security is part of security management.
Finally, we need to provide support for the actual communications mechanisms. Foremost here is
some form of technology to carry the information from application to application. This could be provided
through middleware, a communications bus, or other mechanisms. Note that there is no requirement
that this be a single communication infrastructure. Sometimes interlining different communication
mechanisms provides a better solution; we will consider later why this may make sense and how to do it
so it does not increase complexity. It is necessary, however, to ensure that proper governance takes place
over the interfaces (or IT services) that are exposed to the communication mechanisms.
Within the communications and orchestration functions we also need to provide support for the pro-
cess and policy engines that need to handle the orchestration of the processes across OSS components.
Since processes and policies are integral parts of many applications, it is not expected, or even desirable,
to have a single overarching process or policy engine that is used everywhere.
Figure 3.10.3 provides an illustration of the OSS/BSS integration functions.

3.10.4.4 Fulfillment Functions
As we look to understand the functionality that needs to be supplied by the fulfillment area, we need
to remember that all three of the service lifecycles that characterize our business processes need to be
supported. Figure 3.10.4 provides an overview of fulfillment functions.
3.10.4.4.1 Service Subscription Lifecycle Support
The functionality most people initially think of when considering fulfillment is that of service fulfill-
ment. This is the functionality that fulfillment adds to support the service subscription lifecycle.
We can look at three main functional areas within service fulfillment: order management, provision-
ing/engineering, and service activation. In addition, the inventory functionality that is part of the OSS/
BSS integration area is heavily involved in service fulfillment, to the point of sometimes being consid-
ered part of fulfillment.