Telcordia's 'Elementive Strategy' (cont'd)

As a result of this more open broadband environment, connectivity, manageability and security are at a premium, but they also must be transparent to the customer. This ideally will be an on-demand environment that requires a high level of automation in basic operations, and it will have to be rock solid from the beginning. If carriers are to maintain their reputation for reliability and quality, their migration to new networks and modes of services must be achieved without affecting existing services and customers, and without a drop-off in quality after the migration.

Although TDM services now seem limited, they seldom break down. Moving to the new, flexible broadband network infrastructure must be accomplished without any degradation in service quality, or customers will have a reason to backtrack or seek alternatives. A customer's perception of service quality is tied to how quickly and efficiently they can be added to the network, and how easily they can choose from a range of services. Unlike the TDM network where adding a new service took a long time, in the new environment customers demand additions and changes rapidly. The carrier with the fastest and most accessible service provisioning will outpace its competition.

Whereas the TDM network was essentially closed, broadband IP networks are exposed to the Internet and all of its security challenges, including viruses and data manipulation. Security is already a chief concern for most users, particularly in terms of personal identity and privacy protection. Carriers will also need to protect themselves from vulnerabilities that threaten service, be they natural or man-made.

Elementive Strategy
Meeting all these challenges by integrating individual solutions into existing systems in an attempt to solve one problem at a time is an expensive proposition – both in effort and economics. But there is no one-size-fits-all answer to building an OSS environment for broadband applications. Though the capabilities that need to be enabled are common, no two carriers will deliver them the same way. Existing OSS environments will bear much of the responsibility for service delivery and management, so whatever solution is designed has to utilize them for everything they can contribute in the new service environment.

Facing these facts, Telcordia developed its Elementive strategy as an alternative to piece-meal approaches that only fix small problems, or replace strategies that are not realistic for large carriers. The purpose of Elementive is to enable service providers to choose from a selection of solution elements that best fit their operational environments. This approach is meant to allow carriers to continue using their existing systems, though it can also provide green field architectures. Elementive is a move away from providing solutions for which every component is a product of one particular supplier. A new approach for Telcordia, Elementive offers multiple solutions based on combinations of components from one or many suppliers that interoperate over an open, flexible, configurable environment.

Dr. Anindo Bagchi is Principal Consultant, Telcordia Technologies, Inc. ( www.telcordia.com ), headquartered in Piscataway , NJ . He can be reached at abagchi@telcordia.com .

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