Trying to address the various issues systems integrator companies face in the telecommunications industry is like stepping into a mine field, say industry experts.
The increased level of competition spurred by the 1996 telecom act, corporate mergers, diversity of standards, customer demands, growth and changing business cases are a few of the factors driving the need for system integrators to continually develop new solutions that will allow, for instance, the customer-care database to communicate with the billing database.
System integrators are the intersection point between those that deliver product solutions and the customer itself, said Mike Moloney, executive vice president of the communications division with Logica, a customer-care, billing and customer-loyalty system integration company. As third-party vendors continually develop new applications on different platforms, system integrators do the work to make sure these disparate systems interconnect. That job is getting more difficult as wireless operators, in the heat of competition, are continually looking to create and deploy new services quickly and are putting a heavier emphasis on customer care.
“The whole business has gone from being regulatory centric-where what systems integrators did was driven by government regulations-to a customer-centric model. It has created an increased focus on quality of service,” said Ed Merchant, director of systems architecture with KMPG Consulting, a division of KMPG Peat Marwick L.L.P. “Quality of service basically means better information in terms of timeliness, accuracy and availability. That says that people need to have better access to their systems.”
In terms of customer care, for instance, customers expect wireless companies to answer all of their questions, whether it be about billing or the different types of services they offer. This requires the carrier to be able to access multiple infrastructures in order to answer the customer’s questions.
“You need to have a process and business-rule type of interconnection because many of those things are policy-driven. At the same time, you have to get to the databases for interconnection. The question is: how do I provision a customer across multiple infrastructures. The policies and rules are buried in different applications,” said Merchant.
Many system integrators today use point-to-point solutions, said Merchant, which in the long-run can prove costly and ineffective. Point-to-point interconnection involves linking only one application with another. But what happens when more and more applications should be connected?
“You’re trying to get two different programs to interact and interface to solve a business problem, and if you’re lucky, it’s only two,” said David Friedman, a product marketing manager with Objective Systems Integrator, a software developer. “There are a number of systems already in place … How do you find each other?”
The point-to-point method ends up resulting in a web of complex interconnection, as more and more applications get added to the mix, said Merchant.
“Even if you were able to get the agreements with various partners, what they would be wanting in terms of information and processes would be changing too rapidly to keep up with,” he said.
To solve this problem, many systems integrators work with software developers that build systems to migrate their way through the different infrastructures. Many only address one area of a system, like customer care and billing, which carriers are finding is becoming a key area within which to differentiate themselves.
OSI offers a platform called NetExpert that provides for flexible interface capabilities, rapid development and deployment tools and the ability to capture expert knowledge, said Friedman. Andersen Consulting, Logica and other customer-care and billing system integrators use this system, said Friedman.
KMPG said it has developed a low-cost holistic approach to the integration problem. It has developed a service product called Access OSS, a business-model driven architecture that separates interconnection into three layers-process and business rule, operation support systems database access and network access.
“We believe we are in a unique position. We haven’t seen anything like the solution we’re proposing,” said Merchant. “It’s a middleware-driven product coupled with the understanding of the industry. It’s a tool kit. Customers have real problems because of the speed of things moving in the market. They need something now. So what we’re coming to the market with is not just concepts, but a real set of tools that can facilitate building this solution … We believe by bringing to customers a full architecture that already acknowledges the need for this cross-service, cross-database type of integration that has the hook and handles necessary to execute the interconnection incrementally, we can give companies a headstart in the competitive marketplace.”
KPMG is working with Softwire Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. to create the solution. Softwire offers ObjectSwitch, an object-based server that captures, processes and manages distributed events and transactions across disparate computer and network systems. The server allows carriers to quickly develop and deploy new services in a short amount of time without modifying the network’s existing capabilities. For instance, the server can translate the interface of a provisioning system into the interface of a billing system.
