Thanks, Phil. The egos becoming a factor occurred to me too, but I didn't know enough about the individuals involved to take a position on that point. But you're right, anthropology is anthropology, no matter where you go.
The newer Data CLECs and some of the fiber barons are beginning to see the light, so to speak, when it comes to back office integration and the need to be backwards compatible with the PSTN, even if it's only a transitory condition in their eyes.
Some good articles have been written recently on this subject, one of which I've posted below. It's from the August 1, 1998 Americas Network Magazine. The article focuses on the specific efforts in this area being put forth by Level 3, GST and Allegiance.
americasnetwork.com
Enjoy, and Best Regards, Frank Coluccio
=================
"Tales From The Trenches" By Shira Levine
Three CLECs talk about how they're building the operations framework for tomorrow's suite of services.
Think of a regional Bell operating company's (RBOCs) back office
systems as your grandmother's living room. There's a lot of clutter in there (a
lot of pieces of furniture that don't quite match, although if you dress them up
with some doilies and squint a little, they look OK. They're big and bulky and
can't be moved around very easily, though, and are filled with years and years
of stuff.
Taking the analogy one step further, a competitive local exchange carrier's
(CLEC's) back office systems are more like your first apartment. There's may
be a table, a mattress on the floor and a few milk crates, but lots of wide-open
floor space, just waiting for you to invest in sleek, modern furniture that actually
goes together.
It's a great opportunity-a chance to start from scratch, to do everything right.
The question is whether the CLECs will invest the time and money required to
implement systems that are not only more streamlined than those of the
incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs), but are also easily integrated for
internal automation.
Lindsay Hiebert, Cadalyst project director at the Network Management
Forum (Morristown, N.J.), sees the CLECs' progress in this area as a mixed
bag. "We've seen the CLECs scrambling to put together solution sets quickly
with off-the-shelf products, and they have not really achieved good levels of
integration within their infrastructure," Hiebert says. "Right now they're taking a
piecemeal approach, buying solutions for each of their systems, such as billing
and service activation, and none of those pieces is talking to each other well."
But, as always, there are exceptions. Industry experts have singled out Level 3
Communications (Omaha), GST Telecommunications (Vancouver, Wash.) and
Allegiance Telecom (Dallas) as the three CLECs far ahead of the game when it
comes to implementing the open, flexible operations support systems (OSSs)
required to support the next generation of services.
Level 3: using TMN as the muscle behind IP telephony
Level 3 Communications may be differentiating itself from other CLECs by
building an entirely Internet protocol (IP)-based network, but Van Macatee,
vice president of network operations, is reluctant to focus on infrastructure
issues.
"We believe very strongly that while we are building an IP-based network
architecture, we're really selling service-powerful, state-of-the-art,
customer-accessible service," Macatee says.
The carrier's strategy is to build local networks in cities across the country,
then link those networks with a national long-distance network. Level 3 plans
to begin providing services in as many as 15 cities by the end of the year, and
expects to complete its network by 2001.
In keeping with the its commitment to Internet technology, Level 3 is trying to
integrate the Web as much as possible into its services. The CLEC's ultimate
goal is to extend to customers as much control as possible via the Web-giving
them the power to do everything from placing orders to opening trouble tickets
to remote testing.
Macatee says that such capabilities will become more of a necessity than a
novelty over the next decade. "We think that in the next 10 years, having that
kind of high-speed, user-controllable, Web-enabled configuration for
self-service management will be key," he says. "Our customers will require it in
order to deal with the challenges and the rate of change in their businesses. It
will be a strategic advantage for them."
The biggest challenge is building back office systems to support those
capabilities. Scalability and flexibility are key, Macatee says, so Level 3 is
building along the lines of the telecommunications management network (TMN)
model wherever possible and staying away from anything proprietary.
"If it's not open, not standards-based, it's not in our network," Macatee says.
"We're not necessarily strictly following the TMN model, but we're largely
following it, in terms of organizing management systems and building
functionality. We don't want to make a purchase that becomes a legacy system
that is not scalable and that we become irreparably strapped to."
Adhering to an open, standards-based model also allows Level 3 to implement
flow-through capabilities, which is key to their Web-based strategy. If a
customer wants to provision a circuit via the Web, the back office systems
need to be completely automated, with each step of the process clearly defined
and integrated with the next, so that transaction can flow through each support
system without human intervention.
"There's a lot that has to happen in the back office," Macatee says. "You have
to have a solid network inventory database, a real-time representation of the
network, and very clearly defined processes. All this is going on behind the
curtain, behind the end user's graphical user interface."
The result is the customer's can quickly and easily order services and, as an
added bonus is served by a more reliable network. "Our collective experience
from the ILEC and IXC environments is that 15% to 20% of processes
touched by human hands have some defect in them," Macatee says. "All
networks work their best when those that operate them or touch them go
home. If you can mechanize processes to the greatest possible extent, you take
that risk of error out and improve reliability."
Macatee calls Level 3's OSS buildout "a work in progress." Each back office
system-provisioning, fault management, element management, etc.-has been
assigned a team responsible for selecting and deploying a solution, then
ensuring that that solution is successfully integrated with the rest of the OSSs.
The carrier will begin bringing its OSSs online in tandem with its market
launches, but that doesn't mean the process is over, Macatee says.
"I don't think there will be a point in time when we're finished," he says. "It's a
continuous process that will go on for years."
GST: weaving together disparate systems
When Kevin Wright began his current position as chief technology officer of
GST Telecommunications nearly a year ago, little of the CLEC's back office
systems were integrated-information was exchanged among systems
manually.
Wright's mission is to change that, and he's succeeding. GST's back office
systems today are what he calls a "hybrid" between manual and automated,
and he expects them to be fully integrated by the end of next year.
"It's an evolutionary implementation," he says. "We're taking it on in bite-sized
chunks."
Complicating the integration issue is GST's appetite for acquisitions. The
CLEC has aggressively expanded its footprint in the western United States,
Hawaii and Texas by absorbing a number of other carriers, including Internet
service provider Whole Earth Networks (San Francisco) in May, CLEC Icon
Communications (Seattle) in April and CLEC Action Telcom (Abilene, Texas)
in June 1997.
While GST plans to eventually integrate those companies' systems into its own,
it's taking that process slowly, says Julie Blouse, chief information officer.
"Right now, we're in a transition period," Blouse says. "We're integrating them
on a case-by-case basis today-our thinking is that it's better to leave things as
they are for now until we're sure we have the additional capabilities to support
those systems. But our long-term vision is definitely to incorporate them into
our core systems."
GST first needs to integrate its own back office systems, which it has chosen
on a best-in-class basis. "In some cases it was easily narrowed down to one
vendor, while in others it was a matter of narrowing it down to two or three,"
Wright says. "In those instances we simply spent a week or two checking with
people in the industry, looking at who was using what and what kind of success
they were having. We wanted to make sure that everything we purchased was
ready for showtime, so we could install it and get particular areas up and
running right away."
One of GST's biggest concerns is avoiding the stovepipe problem that many of
the RBOCs have with their OSSs. "Their systems tend to be multiple
standalone systems that don't cross-reference each other's data," Blouse says.
"Some have four or five different systems with different facilities data that aren't
updated at the same time, or aren't updated at all."
The carrier is addressing that issue with several ongoing projects. To avoid the
problem of multiple databases containing inconsistent data, GST has
implemented a single database that comprises all network information and is
conducting what Blouse calls a network audit to check the accuracy of the
records and ensure that all data is properly entered and cross-referenced.
A second, larger project is the GST Framework, an object-oriented model of
how data is maintained across multiple systems. If a customer service
representative enters order information into a customer care system, the GST
Framework ensures that the relevant data is passed onto other relevant
systems, such as billing, facilities management and provisioning.
Enabling customer access via the Web is certainly viable, but it's a project
that's a few miles down the road, Wright says.
"Our focus right now is how to improve the productivity and accuracy of our
core processes," Wright says. "We're trying to make sure those processes
work flawlessly, and then we'll see about extending that functionality to the
customer."
Allegiance: following through on a promise
Earlier this year, Allegiance Telecom Chairman and CEO Royce Holland told
AN that the CLEC would have the best OSSs in the industry by March, and
would continue to improve on them going forward ("Q & A with Royce
Holland," Feb. 1). Several months later, the carriers following through with
those words and is well on the way toward its goal of implementing completely
open, standards-based back office systems.
"Our ideal is to have systems that allow us to enter information a single time,
then have that information flow through to different parts of the back office
systems," says Dan Yost, president and chief operating officer of Allegiance.
"Our objective is to automate as many of our interfaces as possible."
Many CLECs have avoided the wholesale market, preferring to build out their
own networks. Allegiance, however, has opted for what it calls the "smart
build" approach-deploying switches in several major cities, including Dallas,
Atlanta, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, co-locating transmission
equipment in the central offices, and leasing capacity from the incumbents. As a
result, Allegiance must focus much of its attention on interfacing OSSs with
those of the ILECs.
"Our major requirement is that we have the ability to provision a high volume of
unbundled local loops," Yost says. "We need to make sure that our OSS
gateways are in place so information can flow through to support that."
Allegiance's vision is complete flow-through capability between its own
systems and those of the ILECs, Yost says, but he admits that there's a major
roadblock in the form of the ILECs' legacy systems.
"A lot of them have written graphical user interfaces to interact with our
systems, and the next step beyond that is to flow information via electronic
bonding," he says. "Our eventual goal is to eliminate redundant entry, but a
single ILEC might have many different systems, so a lot of manual entry is still
being done." |
