Last Edited: 07-17-2004

OSS/TMN Conference Notes

March 8th-9th (Miami Beach Hilton)

I was asked to speak at the OSS/TMN conference session on "an elegant migration from Voice to IP". There were about 30-50 attendees. 

I also attended a tech forum the next day.

March 8th 1pm-2:30pm "An Elegant Migration from Voice to IP" 12:50pm  Dry Run

• 1:05-1:20 p.m. GTE lead off the session.  David Pleva, Manager-Architecture Planning spoke. Talked about maximizing return on embedded investment. No one can impose one technology, no single language, no single OS, no single network.  Showed the Telecom Operations Map (TOM) that shows Business Processes. Talked about challenges and issues in an OSS environment. One point I found interesting was that only 28% of orders get fulfilled on the first pass without workflow automation. Several speakers mentioned this during the conference. I noted that there was no real discussion of VoIP in this presentation. 

• 1:20 p.m. -1:35p.m.  Francois de Repentigny spoke for Clarent. A few of his points. VoIP is not just for arbitrage anymore. advanced services are the key. He showed a LAN network architecture picture.  Talked about an open & flexible back-office environment:
  • Service Provisioning (Web Provisioning) "view builder" HTML creator set up so that each web provisioner customer can only see a subset of the data. Web has a simple intuitive interface.
  • Element Configuration App...web config of gateways...   web provisioning of database

  In this talk, I didn't see what was unique to VoIP, it seemed to be a general web provisioning talk, useful in both the old and new worlds.

   

• 1:35 p.m. - 1:50 p.m. Al Hooshiari from Astracon  spoke on quality of service. Showed IP VPNs running "over everything", frame relay, ATM, SONET/WDM, etc. Different levels of service at different prices.  QoS tools such as RSVP, PVCs, physical bandwidth. Listed a number of challenges including providing end-to-end QoS and security regardless of IP VPN topology. Service Management plays a crucial role on QoS.

• 1:50-2:05 p.m. My talk on  "IN as a stepping stone to IP: an elegant migration from voice to IP"..   
  It was very well received.

• 2:05-2:30 p.m. At the Q&A session, I received a few questions, as many or more than the other speakers.
• 2:30-3:00 p.m. After the Q&A session closed, a few people came up to me to talk.. til about 3pm!!!
  • I fielded questions on "how do we plan to implement all those protocols" to "quality of service for VoIP"
  • People were glad to see a talk that was different from what they usually see. a focus on IN and services.
  • I met Arif Minhas, Director of Professional Services at Compaq. He is using a professional services organization to put together an offer using systems from wherever he can buy them. He was interested in Lucent's NCC. Apparently Compaq has a gap and they would like to use Lucent's product in their offer...
  • By the way, Tony Scafidi (Lucent) was quite excited about my talk. he liked the historical tie in to IN. Shows that Lucent has been in this business for a long time and they know what they are doing.

March 9th, Tec Forum 2: OSSs for the packet networks of tomorrow  

As usual, the title doesn't match well with the talks.... about 70 people attended.

• First speaker, Kathy from ILOG. 8:30 a.m.
  • 30% of developer time is spent on the user interface.  But the work is not based on user needs, but on developer restrictions of time and expertise.
  • Human error is the most common cause of network shutdown. (note: see my slides on this)
  • trivia: 20% of people are color blind and can't read color-only indicators...therefore don't design color only.
  • Need common look and feel. 
  • Research has been done on principles of good human machine interface.
  • Even standardized "clouds" should be used in diagrams...
  • Equipment view... photo w/color overlays are good (skip details such as screws & metal seams)
• Second speaker, Bentley Drake from Night Fire Software, 9:15 a.m.
  • JAVA, CORBA, XML based service management to enable zero touch service management for DSL providers.
  • DSL ordering is multi touch now
  • 28% successful orders on the first pass (Deloit & Touche study (sp?))...the 2nd speaker to say this...
  • Solution: reduce human intervention, web based.
  • rapid flow through (connect OSSs)
  • flexible (programmable, component based)
  • Uptime
  • off-the-shelf.... why?... developers are hard to get...off-the-shelf components makes them likely to be familiar with the interface.
  • standards...connects to other things better.
  • JAVA:
    • yrs ago, C++ look alike
    • 30% productivity boost over C++
    • NT developers ported JAVA app to Solaris... customers never had a problem.
    • last 20% of development take 80% of the time ( I guess another variant of the 80/20 rule)
    • Q&A: JAVA performance? beats their requirements by a factor of ten. Time to market is a bigger issue for them. Data performance is also a bigger issue
  • XML
    • XML is the data representation of the future... no controversy... it is the data format for e-commerce.
    • XML APIs:
      • DOM   Document Object Model
      • XAL?? (sp?)
      • LSR, ASR, telecom forms map easily to XML
  • CORBA: Object distribution fully integrated with JAVA
    • person --> web GUI --> web server servlet <--> XML/CORBA workflow <--> order magmt system
  • Q&A: SOAP seems like a good way of transporting data
  • Q&A: IDL defines data also, so why do XML? XML is simpler. XML does data def. only while IDL does other things...
• 3rd Speaker, Robert Mulrhead from Orchestream (sp?), 9:50 am to 10:30 am
  • Spoke on class of service and engineering class of service into IP...
• 4th speaker from Portal  11:00am to noon
  • "IP/Webtone"
  • services: Charge your cell phone for vending machine payments.... find the nearest store.
  • note: wireless palm pilot is a wireless device.
  • Real Time!!!! Sell services while you are using them.... (while customers are on-line) (e.g., sell card extensions while caller is using the card
  • batch-to-real time: all functions in real time...proactive service creation, time to market?
  • deploying a billing system now takes 5-6 weeks vs. 18-36 months a few years ago.
  • Note: this speaker likes measurements & usage billing... no flat rate here. At the Q&A, I asked about flat rate trends (e.g., AT&T one rate, AOL, 5 cents/min anywhere-anytime, etc.). Someone else added that Level 3 is moving to flat rate. The speaker felt that this was just for initial deployments...
  • "Telcos have no idea who their customers are"  (e.g., the speaker gets 5 mailings/mo. under different names) The telco should have better info not just on customer names but on customer preferences...
  • service: Customer should be able to pick their billing date....
• 1:35 p.m. - 2:20 p.m. The SoftSwitch Source, Dallas
  • a problem: the same form must be filled out differently for each telco...or else the form is rejected
  • Q&A: "some bank teller is filling out a telecom order form and doesn't have a clue as to what to put on the form..." Better systems may not help. "Garbage in.... garbage out".
• 2:25 p.m. Interactive Session Management Mark Farmer, Solect Technology Group
  • ISPs "sneaker net" manual data entry... "command line entry"
  • Policy based networks... networks are now static in nature... For example, 5 levels of service, you get level X when you log in.
    • Policy = class of service (capacity, functional access)... business rules establish policy at time of session.
  • DSLs: bandwidth, minimum rate, burst rate, should be dynamic...

Anthony Clark