Telefónica O2 Germany Case Study

The Approach

With the implementation of Comarch OSS Suite, an advanced network and service management solution, O₂ in Germany aimed at unifying and simplifying the whole network management process while at the same time decreasing maintenance costs. Taking a closer look at the telecommunications network of any existing operator, it is noticeable that it comprises a wide range of network elements supplied by various vendors. The reason for this is quite simple: the highly-competitive nature of the equipment market allows operators to choose the most cost-effective and technologically-advanced solution paying little attention to the provider. Going one step further, it is important to remember that operators need to manage all of these network devices. Of course, this can be done with a set of disparate proprietary management systems, but this this kind of approach is usually expensive and has several flaws unacceptable for O₂. What the operators should be trying to achieve is a single, comprehensive and integrated network management system that directly manages and monitors all the different network elements and services.

The Business Need

For this project, O₂ in Germany did not restrict itself to acquiring a solution that would act as a manager of managers, integrating with its already-existing management systems. Instead, the company aimed to completely replace the element management systems in use. This required a solution with a direct interface to thousands of network elements from different vendors. In order to achieve this, a set of specific data adapters needed to be created.

One challenge was to equip the platform with functionalities enabling the configuration of every network element. The solution should allow the operator to perform all the actions available through the dedicated element management systems used previously, including firmware upgrades, while at the same time should enhancing these platforms with additional features. Further, the integration of the systems entailed the development of unified network-level management functions. Apart from that, the solution needed to correlate and subsequently present data gathered from all the managed network elements in one consistent view.