How Oracle is Simplifying Delivery of Network Services to Support NFV and Business Agility for CSPs

As far as the communications service providers (CSPs) community is concerned, the design and introduction of new services is often a lengthy and manual process—especially when such services span physical and virtual networks. Exceptions such as order jeopardy and fallout, the design and delivery requirements for customized business-to-business (B2B) services, and the dynamics of newly virtualized networks add to this complexity.

Oracle Communications has released a new version of its operational support system (OSS) suite to help CSPs rapidly and agilely design services spanning physical and virtual networks. The suite is also designed to help streamline the operational delivery of customer orders—including high-growth B2B and wholesale orders—enabling CSPs to capitalize on the opportunities of a network function virtualization (NFV)-driven communications world.

With the upgraded OSS suite, Oracle Communications continues its focus on simplifying and automating the service design and order fulfillment process, regardless of order size and complexity, or the type of network on which it is delivered. Specifically, with this OSS suite CSPs can:
Efficiently deliver and manage contemporary network-based B2B services: Carrier Ethernet 2.0 is the network connectivity technology of choice in many areas such as the interconnection of data centers to support the growth in cloud services and the back-haul of network traffic to support the growth in LTE mobile services.

To help CSPs leverage these opportunities, the upgraded OSS suite enhances the visual modeling, design, and configuration of packet-based network connectivity, including built-in support for MEF’s Carrier Ethernet 2.0 services such as E-Line and E-LAN, and the ability to efficiently process large B2B or wholesale orders up to 6,000 line items per order.

The suite also supports agile orchestration and delivery of Carrier Ethernet 2.0 services across multiple network operators, aligning with the MEF Lifecycle Service Orchestration architecture recently demonstrated at TM Forum Live.

Seamlessly support the design and delivery of services on physical, virtual, and hybrid networks: Oracle Communications provides CSPs with a single, integrated, end-to-end design environment spanning business, operations, and network processes that, in conjunction with Oracle Communications Network Service Orchestration Solution, extends the OSS suite to deliver services on virtual and hybrid networks.

This helps to ensure that CSPs avoid cumbersome or fragmented design approaches and can achieve not just network agility, but actual business agility.

Accelerate solution design in collaboration with existing provisioning systems: With a new catalog export capability, CSPs can holistically design their fulfillment solution once and then propagate the design to any number of participating systems, from enterprise catalogs to specialized provisioning systems.

This end-to-end design approach enables faster and more efficient solution design by reducing manual steps in the process.

Efficiently manage exceptions in order processing: The upgraded OSS suite includes new tools to more effectively process complex orders and manage exceptions during order processing, including enhancements to order jeopardy and fallout management and batch order changes.

These new tools can help CSPs diagnose and resolve issues faster without requiring custom modeling or specialist skills, in turn reducing operational costs and improving the customer experience.

“Enterprise and wholesale network services represent a significant growth opportunity for many CSPs,” said Dean Ramsay, senior analyst, Analysys Mason. “However, CSP market success has historically been impeded by legacy network technologies and operational complexity. With the increasing adoption of Carrier Ethernet and IP as technologies of choice, CSPs are seeking OSS solutions such as those from Oracle that offer built-in support for such technologies, enable efficient operations, and support the transparent delivery of such services on both virtual and physical networks.”

“As CSPs continue to standardize and virtualize their networks, agility in service design and automation in service delivery have become major focus areas—which is putting a spotlight on OSS to rapidly launch and efficiently deliver innovative services on an increasingly dynamic network,” said Doug Suriano, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Communications. “This release of the Oracle Communications OSS suite accelerates design agility, provides support for the latest network technologies, and further simplifies network-based B2B service delivery in practice, supporting our commitment to delivering innovative OSS solutions in an increasingly virtualized communications world.”