25 years ago communications companies pioneered the use of CAD, GIS and enterprise technology to support the management of their physical network inventory (PNI). Over multiple generations they have deployed increasingly sophisticated technology, ultimately supporting true enterprise grade solutions.
Despite this long history of innovation these solutions have stood apart from the rest of the OSS/BSS “stack” of solutions that drive the back offices of communications companies. This isolation has persisted for various reasons; first many vendors of PNI solutions became convinced that spatial data required special proprietary data management solutions (some insist on this to this day). For decades this locked valuable information away to all but a chosen few users. In addition, because the solution was not based on mainstream IT data storage products, data quality became a serious industry problem. PNI based systems became notorious for unreliable data quality, badly affecting adoption by the rest of the organization.
In the mid 1990’s database vendors started adding spatial extensions to their commercial databases. In time, Oracle (others have since followed) adopted a spatial data type which at last provided a platform to unleash this data. The decision to make this technology part of their core platform also provided the access to other key enterprise technologies like RAC and GoldenGate.
Timing as they say is everything; just as this technology was becoming production ready, the crash of 2001 swept over the communications industry. Investment in back office systems declined as service providers retrenched. For the first time in history we saw an actual reduction in spending in the communications market. Where they spent money was on network gear to drive their network from TDM and towards IP, on the OSS/BSS areabilling and service inventory commanded most of the rest in order to bill and account for these rapidly emerging IP based services. Investment in PNI systems lagged the market.
Figure 1: OECD Communications Outlook 2011
As the above graph demonstrates, service providers have dramatically under invested relative to revenue growth. The ongoing relentless growth of network demand (which continued unabated through the downturn) is forcing CSP to seriously revamp their networks and their OSS/BSS architecture. They are under ever increasing strain, and their physical inventory is now a prime target to recognize real efficiencies in lower costs while reducing time to market.
One example is NBN Co., the Australian government entity that is deploying high bit rate fiber based access to 94% of all Australian homes (the remaining 6% are getting a mix of fixed wireless or satellite link). NBN Co. is using a variety of integrated technologies to rapidly deploy a vast network with a relatively lean organization, compared to their peers in the industry, in a reasonably short period of time.
Today as service providers are turning over their incumbent systems they are demanding four simple things:
- Open access to the data: The data must be open in order to support the company in driving better business decisions depending on the physical network
- Do more with less: The solution must support managing the network using dramatically fewer resources
- Deliver faster: Time to market has become a core issue, and CSPs are focusing on how to evolve networks to meet consumer demand faster than ever
- Make it better: Data quality must be dramatically improved in order to make it more trust worthy and reliable, a particularly pernicious issue with PNI
I spend most of my time talking to customers, partners, and anyone else trying to figure out how to achieve these four critical goals. Over the coming weeks I will focus on some of the ways that each of these goals can be achieved.