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Operations Support System (OSS) – An introduction
Every service provider requires an Operations Support System. An OSS comprises of multiple OSS applications. Each application implements work flows of one or multiple business processes.
Legacy OSS
Traditionally, OSS has been an offline system which worked similar to an ERP system. A legacy OSS were designed to automate various work flows of a service provider. Key work flows among them are:
- logging new service requests from customers and activating the services
- logging customer complaints, raising respective trouble tickets and assigning them to support staff
- Tracking the progress on logged trouble tickets
- Managing contracts
- Monitoring service level agreements
- Invoicing and collection
Traditionally, OSS and NM were considered two different set of applications. OSS was meant to automate work flows, whereas NM applications were meant to just monitor and control network elements.
OSS today
Today’s OSS are combination of legacy OSS functions and NM functions. For example when a subscriber request for a new service, it is logged through CRM application and that results in service activation which involves provisioning of network elements. There many similar scenarios where business processes like assurance, invoicing, etc. can be made more efficient by direct interface with NM applications which are responsible for resource management.
NGOSS
NGOSS stands for ‘New Generation Operations Systems and Software’. It is an initiative from tmforum to standardize the way OSS and NM applications are designed and deployed for service providers. NGOSS defines frameworks that provide standardized definitions for OSS business processes and their information model. NGOSS defines following frameworks:
- Business Process Framework (a.k.a. eTOM)
- Information Framework (a.k.a. SID)
- Applications Framework (a.k.a. TAM)
- Integration Framework
eTOM
eTOM stands for ‘enhanced Telecommunications Operations Map’. It standardizes all the business processes that a service provider requires. At Level 0 it divides all business processes in three categories, namely ‘Strategy, Infrastructure & Product’, Operations and ‘Enterprise Management’.
‘Strategy, Infrastructure & Product’ mostly deals with processes related with designing and tracking lifecycle of service products and infrastructure.
‘Operations’ mostly deals with all work flows initiated by the consumer, vendor or network elements. It comprise of wide range of business processes, starting from provisioning services & resources to monitoring service assurance, and subscriber management to invoicing & collection.
‘Enterprise Management’ mostly deals with work flows like managing human resources, financial management and asset management. These are similar to traditional ERP work flows.
‘Level 1 processes’ defines verticals and horizontals for each Level 1 process. Whereas Level 2 processes list out all key work flows essential for a service provider.
Each ‘Level 2 process’ may not correspond to an OSS application. Rather each ‘Level 2 process’ refer to business flow that service provider needs to implement. Service provider can implement it through manual work flow or by automating the work flow through an OSS application.
SID
SID stands for ‘Shared Information Data’. It attempts to standardize all data entities related with an OSS. For example a data entity like ‘Customer’ should be represented by same set of attributes in a CRM application, as in the service assurance and billing applications.
SID defines various building blocks to accomplish this data modeling at OSS level that helps in bringing consistency among data elements used by different applications within an OSS.
TAM
TAM stands for ‘Telecommunications Application Map’. It is an attempt from tmforum to map business processes defined in eTOM to various OSS applications. An application may implement multiple business processes. This standard is still evolving and will take some time to mature and stabilize.
Maintainer: Brij Bhushan Ravat
Category: Nm
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