Operations Support Systems (OSSs) -
systems that perform management, inventory, engineering, planning,
and repair functions for telecommunications service networks.
Traditionally, telecommunications network services have relied on
carriers' investments in circuit-switched platforms and transmission
systems optimized for voice services. But in the mid-1990s, carriers
were confronted with accelerating demand for multiple service types
(frame relay services, Internet services, ATM services, IP network
services, and Intelligent Network/Advanced Intelligent Network [IN/AIN]
voice services). Fast packet-switching technology and high-speed routing
accompanied by separate "data OSS"-based systems have quickly emerged in
public networks worldwide to facilitate these additional services.
However, current carrier operations support systems optimized for
narrow-band, circuit-switched voice services are being stretched by
the requirements to integrate with these versatile new network services
and accompanying data OSS. Concurrently, cost plus rate-of-return
guarantees are being replaced by market-driven investment decisions,
prompting rigorous economic scrutiny of OSS upgrades. Finally, new OSS
functionality is being demanded by customers and other carriers who are
expecting self-provisioning capabilities for network services.
As a result, service providers are increasingly looking to commercial
information technologies to realize new functionality and to achieve
better integration, improved adaptability, and increased
price/performance benefits for their OSS.
To achieve these objectives, telecommunications carriers require a
framework for operations support systems that moves away from rigid,
monolithic, fixed-function, vendor-specific implementations. The new
OSS framework needs to support open, distributed, interoperable, and
programmable platforms. The new framework must make OSS more flexible,
make data more accessible, help shorten time to market, and lower
deployment and operations costs.
This article is an abstract of the large project devoted to
consideration of the main tendencies predominant in the field of
telecommunication services, main aspects of business in this area and
development of main principles of an OSS Architecture Building,
which should satisfy with need telecommunication services providers.
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