Resource Inventory Management Systems

Integrating Resource and Service Layers For an End-to-End View of Services

T-Mobile is a business unit of Deutsche Telecom. Responsible for mobile operations, it concentrates on the most dynamic markets in Europe and the United States. By the end of the first quarter of 2009, more than 149 million customers were served on ten T-Mobile markets. T-Mobile is gradually integrating OSS systems used in its European operations in order to simplify network management and provide a common management platform for an entity that is composed of multiple national GSM operators in Europe.

Faced with the challenges of today’s telecommunications world, T-Mobile Germany was consolidating its OSS landscape using NGOSS principles. The resource and service inventory (R&SI) is used to manage customer-facing services, resourcefacing services and resources used for these services coming from different Inventory and configuration management systems. The Resource and Service Inventory system is also integrated with other OSS systems, such as fault management and trouble ticketing. The R&SI project is a crucial element of T-Mobile’s strategy of migration towards next generation networks and OSS. This is the first step towards a self-organizing and self-optimizing network concept, which is a natural continuation of the R&SI project.

The Approach

Because of the large scope of the project, it was divided into several phases, the first being proof of concept. Comarch implemented basic functions of the system, and provided sample integration with other T-Mobile systems. The goal of the initial phase was to develop and agree on the system functions and to check the functionality of integration interfaces. Meanwhile, the requirements for the final solution were gathered and crucial functions were also discussed.

When the system was accepted by the operator, the functionality developed during the first phase of the implementation became the basis for further expansion of the inventory management system, within both the fields of functionality and integration.

T-Mobile demanded a system that offered integrated and flexible service modeling and a strong ability to integrate seamlessly and cooperate with other systems.

The Business Need

T-Mobile constantly faces ever more complicated operations related to providing services and optimizing incident, problem and change management processes at the resource and service level.

The main challenge of the T-Mobile project was cooperation between the service inventory and different resource inventory management systems.

The Challenge

Optimize Incident, problem and change management processes, at the level of resources and services
Improve cooperation between the service inventory and different resource inventory management systems
Design a system that offers integrated and flexible service modeling and a strong ability to integrate seamlessly and cooperate with other systems

The Implemented Products

In some network domains, R&SI is the master system for the creation of resources, while in others it holds only the read-only copy of the resources used for service creation. Integration with third-party systems was realized by the common information present in the environment, which enables simplification of the overall architecture and reduction of the number of interfaces.

Comarch Service Inventory is provided with a flexible service modeling function that enables representation of complicated mobile service in today’s networks. It allows the definition of many-to-many relations between resources and resource-facing services, and between resource-facing service and customer-facing service layers. The data model of Comarch Service Inventory is based on SID. It enables association of RFSs with different types of resources:

Equipment
Groups of equipment
Connections
Groups of connections
Components of devices
Applications
Configuration

It also enables flexible representation of services in mobile networks. In accordance with NGOSS and eTOM principles, R&SI is the master system for the service models. The service models maintained within R&SI are used by fault management and trouble ticketing applications, and in the future all applications requesting access to service inventory (e.g. SLA management). This approach results in more consistent service modeling processes and management. Event propagation up to service level and down to resource level is possible, as is event suppression based on change information.

The Results

The results of R&SI project implementation are improved Incident, problem and change management processes thanks to end-to-end visibility of the services, smooth integration of service and resource layers and consolidated overview of ownership for services.

Cooperation between T-Mobile and Comarch is not limited to a single system installation. Far from it, this is only the beginning of a complex transformation of the whole environment of T-Mobile. With an ongoing effort towards consolidation of the environment composed of multiple national operators, solutions developed by Comarch will play a central role in the future operations of T-Mobile. An increasing need for unified operations will inevitably push T-Mobile towards integration, and Comarch will be a key enabler in this process.

Why Comarch?

"Of all vendors offering similar OSS solutions, only Comarch offered an already established product with significant market position, together with the possibility of implementing specific functional requirements regarding advanced data sharing."

Thomas Kiemle, Head of Configuration & Provisioning Systems
Telekom Deutschland

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