OSS to SOA integration

Online, September 18, 2009 (Newswire.com) - The change was stemmed from the willing to reduce the costs. The integration race began. As the hardware manufacturers were not able to keep up with the demand for the integration systems within their operation support systems (OSS), independent software vendors started creating their own products.

Further development of telecommunications companies led to increased complexity of their OSS-s. This of course was not without an influence on the integration software. New types of services and growth of the networks required more integration capability. The biggest problem seemed to be (and still is) compliance with standards. While everything looks fine on the paper, in reality different hardware vendors use their own implementation of standards (with small deviations) making it incompatible with other companies' software. Additionally, convergence and rapidly growing demand for new types of telecommunications services put even more pressure on the integration software.

Enterprise Application Integration

As the telecommunication networks were developing the need of more unified approach than addressing the integration issues became more and more obvious. At the same time, the term Enterprise Application Integration was created and defined. EAI is a set of technologies allowing interaction and exchange of information between incompatible IT systems in order to reflect business processes of the organization. EAI systems typically eliminate need for point-to-point connections (mesh) using a single interconnect bus. This simplifies IT infrastructure.
Introduction of EAI technologies has several key benefits. Maintenance cost of middleware dedicated for specific integration is usually quite high. EAI tools that replace these rigid-structured middleware are able to significantly reduce OPEX IT costs. Additionally, having the EAI structure in place integration of new services as well as changes to business processes are much easier.

Verax OSS/BSS Platform and SOA

Verax Systems has experience of working with many telecommunication companies and is well aware of the challenges that may occur when introducing new software. Verax OSS/BSS, is a powerful suite of applications covering Operations Support Systems (OSS) and Business Support Systems (BSS). It is not only EAI ready but goes a step further into software integration.
All the components of the Verax OSS/BSS Platform are ready to integrate with typical ESB tools as TIBCO or WebMethods using their standard interfaces. It makes the suite EAI ready. What is more, Verax Systems engineers made sure that the solution follows the Service Oriented Architecture principle.
SOA is an architecture that unifies business processes by structuring large systems as a loosely coupled collection of smaller modules called services. These services may be used by all the systems and applications (both internal and external) to achieve better unification and flexibility. SOA concentrates the migration problem on the middleware layer. It allows replacing custom code by processes that can be designed and refactored as required without writing code. It also integrates message mediation into the infrastructure that is provided by the middleware layer. That is to help different systems with different message formats to be combined in one business process.
SOA is a growing trend to help business units to be less reliant on IT departments to actually make changes to IT infrastructure when the business changes. Verax OSS/BSS Platform is fully enabled to exist within a SOA network. It uses open interfaces (i.e. SOAP, RMI, AMF) to communicate with other pieces of software and/or graphical user interface.

Example integration scenario

Verax OSS/BSS is capable of communicating with typical EAI tools - one of which is TIBCO BUS. An example integration scenario would be cable modem provisioning with Verax NMS. When an order is taken in the CRM system, a physical installation is scheduled. A cable modem device is created (with disabled status) in Verax NMS. The on-site personnel indicates when the physical installation is over via a dedicated portal. The information goes through the TIBCO BUS to Verax NMS. The NMS starts measuring HFC parameters of the modem.
If the parameters measured are satisfactory the field personnel is allowed to leave the customer's premises. The CRM system is notified that the system is provisioned and active and billing cycle may begin.

Summary

Enterprise Application Integration as well as Service Oriented Architecture are the approaches that are often introduced into telecommunication networks. Although the process of switching to SOA is not easy, the benefits are significant. Verax OSS/BSS Platform is a product that enables such integration. To find out more see the Verax Systems website.