Page 462 - Handbook of Modern Telecommunications

Network Management and Administration 3-253

OSS/BSS Process & Technology Integration
Usage
Business management
Business intelligence

Service utilization
Fulfillment Assurance Charging & Data retention

& compliance
billing
Fraud
Resource management management

Usage mediation Charging
control

Usage functionality
FIGu RE 3.10.6 Usage functionality.
Beyond billing, the usage functionalities introduce two additional functions that need to understand
the individual service instances. The data retention and compliance facility addresses the increasing set
of regulations that require both the collection of data for law enforcement uses coupled with increasing
protection of the data privacy. Fraud management, which also stretches into the resource management
lifecycle, seeks to minimize fraudulent use of services or infrastructure resources.
Finally, the business intelligence functions collect information from disparate sources into a business-
focused data warehouse. Information that was previously only used for billing can now provide rich
information about competitive opportunities.

3.10.5 How to Build an OSS

Over the years, many approaches have been taken to try to standardize how OSS should be built to
enable and simplify interoperability among the various components. These have been primarily focused
around methods of communication rather than the content of the communication. The primary area
where a concerted industry effort had taken place in defining content is in the standardized definition
for some of the managed resources. While standardizing the Management Information Base (MIB),
which describes the managed resources, allows applications to relatively easily manage resources from
different vendors, it does not address the issue of different OSS applications communicating and coop-
erating to address a business process.
The current trend these days is Web services. Build everything using Web services and it will be
magically interoperable. Unfortunately, life is not that simple. To understand why, let us first look at how
people communicate with each other.
In human communication, we often speak of the method, structure, meaning, and effect of com-
munication. The method (sometimes called the empirics) discusses how the message transfers from
one person to another: spoken word, written words, signs, etc. The structure of the communication is
defined by the syntax and usually tied to a language. The meaning is conveyed by the semantics of the
communication. Ultimately, the intended goal or desired effect of the conversation is covered by the
pragmatics. For example, if you call me on the telephone (method of communication), I might say in
English (syntax) “I am busy” (which has a semantic meaning to it). What I really mean is, “please call
back” (intended meaning). While all the steps leading up to the pragmatics are necessary for the com-
munication to take place, the goal of human-to-human communication is at this layer.