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BSS/OSS
in the era of
INSIGHTS digital services
RESEARCH
January 2014 | www.tmforum.org
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BSS/OSS IN THE ERA OF

DIGITAL SERVICES
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kmitchell@tmforum.org BSS/OSS in 2014
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Choosing a path
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www.tmforum.org INSIGHTS RESEARCH 3


BSS/OSS IN THE ERA OF
DIGITAL SERVICES
Executive summary
For communications service providers,
the era of digital services represents
unprecedented opportunity combined with
a nearly incomprehensible competitive
operating environment. Today any business
can conceivably deliver digital services on
top of any network infrastructure, yet service
providers that operate networks are hamstrung
by network construction and operating
expense.
Electronic communications has evolved from
convenience to necessity and from productivity
enhancement to critical infrastructure. For
customers, it’s no longer fixed or wireless,
voice, data or video – only devices and
applications. However, as providers of critical
infrastructure, network operators will become
more, not less, regulated in the future. How
then to compete?
Customers are being driven to buy based
on device and application choice rather than
network or service provider loyalty, and driven
away by inadequate offerings, inflexible
product and pricing plans, inaccurate activation,
poor performance, and incompetent support.
Ensuring a positive customer experience
entails more than collecting metrics: Managing
the customer experience in the era of digital
services needs service providers to implement
high quality, customer-focused business
processes and Business and Operational
Support Systems (BSS/OSS).
Service providers worldwide know they must
significantly alter their businesses to deliver
digital services and compete with over-the-
top (OTT) providers. Recognizing the need for
business-wide optimization and automation of
operational processes, end-to-end customer
visibility, data-driven information technology
(IT) architectures and seamless BSS/OSS
integration will establish the role of BSS/
4 INSIGHTS RESEARCH
Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.
OSS (and IT) as an agent of change in a very
powerful way.
The silver lining for service providers is that
each has access to mountains of data about
customer preferences, behavior, location and
communication habits. Why then, wouldn’t
service providers use this data to better
support the business and power innovative
BSS/OSS solutions? The answer, for now
at least, is that it’s difficult. Specific issues
include:
n Volume – There are hundreds and, in some
service providers’ operations, thousands of
IT and BSS/OSS solutions and data collection
points in use. While service providers
do have access to every transaction that
traverses the network, the volume is
staggering and growing daily. Quarterly
data consumption is currently measured
in petabytes and continues to increase
exponentially.
n Congestion – Examining trillions of packets
from thousands of devices creates a
bottleneck. Correlating and distributing that
data to hundreds of applications creates
another one. Multiple parallel interfaces from
digital services delivery environments, BSS/
OSS and customer applications requires
tremendous processing power, and each
application must have the ability to evaluate
and correlate the incoming data stream.
n Cost – Equipping a network with the probes
required for continuous data collection and
examination is expensive. The BSS/OSS
solutions and other applications requiring
access to that data must implement and
maintain expensive discovery and correlation
engines in addition to the substantial library
of adaptors required to interface with all
the necessary network elements, probes
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Achieving customer focus requires innovation
in operational processes and BSS/OSS
and management systems. Monitoring and
distributing customer transaction data as
well as service providers’ existing operational
requirements multiplies costs.
n Multiple interface standards – Network
and infrastructure probes, elements,
and management systems use a variety
of formatting approaches for status and
monitoring data. BSS/OSS solutions that
access data from any of those sources has
to accommodate each type of interface. As
elements and devices change, the interface
adaptors must be updated and tested to
ensure continued interoperability. As the
number and type of connected devices and
digital services grows, so too will the cost of
maintaining interface adaptor libraries.
Achieving customer focus requires operational
processes and BSS/OSS innovation. Working
together with BSS/OSS solution suppliers will
enable service providers to harvest 100 years’
experience, capture the important lessons,
and move forward with the new business and
operating models required to deliver digital
services and compete with over-the-top (OTT)
retailers. The alternative is the utility model,
and while that may work for some network
operators, most need something more.
Section 1 of this report looks at the status of
digital services rollout and BSS/OSS support
within service providers’ organizations. Service
providers are recognizing that existing BSS/
OSS solutions, while very capable, are not
designed to deal with the onslaught of digital
services’ definition, delivery and management.
In Section 2 we explore the business
models that service providers are choosing
when determining how to focus on digital
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services. The challenges associated with
digital services delivery generally have little to
do with the technology and everything to do
with the business processes, organizational
structure and staffing. Rethinking the business
processes that support digital services leads to
rethinking BSS/OSS strategy.
At a minimum, BSS/OSS strategy must be a
central part of the digital services strategy.
Section 3 outlines the operational challenges
that are prompting a new look at BSS/OSS
strategy. Service providers are struggling
with how to define and deliver an entirely
new set of services to the market. Some
have implemented business separation and
new silos of BSS/OSS; others are evolving
processes and systems; and many are
undecided.
There is a strong argument for putting
process innovation and BSS/OSS at the center
of a digital services’ strategy as the volume
and complexity of new digital services and
connected products need more automation and
tighter integration.
Responses from 44 service providers
surveyed for this report are included
throughout. However, in Section 4 we present
the bulk of the results and analyze the progress
of service providers in the digital services
marketplace. We share their views of BSS/OSS
as it relates to their digital services’ strategies.
Finally, in Section 5, we offer conclusions
and recommendations based on discussions
with service providers and vendors. A variety
of approaches to digital services’ delivery
and BSS/OSS support of digital services
are underway in the marketplace which will
ultimately benefit both service providers and
their customers.
INSIGHTS RESEARCH 5

BSS/OSS IN THE ERA OF
DIGITAL SERVICES
Section 1
BSS/OSS in 2014
As we start 2014, service providers find
themselves in a precarious position. The
changes that are taking place in the network
with the deployment of Long Term Evolution
(LTE) technology and the transition to an all-
Internet Protocol (IP) infrastructure are only the
tip of the iceberg. Economics and profitability
necessitate that disjointed processes become
efficient and automated while existing,
cumbersome Business and Operational
Support Systems (BSS/OSS) and data are
consolidated.
All traffic is data
Yet defining, delivering and managing the
myriad of digital services demanded by
consumer and business customers requires
capabilities that are difficult to coax out of
existing systems and processes. Delivering and
managing digital services means that all traffic
is data and all services are applications which
should promise some amount of consistency.
However, not all applications are created
equal, and every transaction must be
scrutinized to ensure an optimal customer
experience.
Service providers continue to ‘add on’ to
existing BSS/OSS platforms, hoping that the
upgrades will power them through the digital
services development efforts now underway.
But the changes that are occurring in the
network are just the beginning.
An all-IP network from the device to the core
of the network should serve to simplify some
aspects of network operations but places a
heavy burden on the services infrastructure and
BSS/OSS. If all traffic is data and all services
are applications, how do operators manage
quality and performance? How do they ensure
availability and reliability? How do they enforce
service level agreements (SLAs) and activation
6 INSIGHTS RESEARCH
Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.
guarantees? Add to that the complexity that
comes with layers of virtualization in the
network and data center, and it becomes clear
how difficult the challenge is.
Part of the complexity associated with
delivering digital services is the requirement
that service providers have to see across
converged networks and applications in order to
deliver the services, understand utilization and
manage demand. For existing BSS/OSS that is a
difficult proposition. As the number of network
elements, service elements, products, features,
applications, devices and users explodes,
the BSS/OSS must step up and perform the
monitoring, data collection, correlation, analysis,
policy enforcement, customer support, and
billing required to deliver a unique and desirable
customer experience.
To monitor the customer experience, ensure
quality and anticipate customer demands, it
is incumbent on service providers to create
an end-to-end view of customers, products,
connectivity and infrastructure that includes an
accurate representation of interconnections and
relationships. In order to accomplish that, BSS/
OSS that is currently not well integrated and
data that is not currently interoperable or even
accurate must be harnessed for the benefit
of every business function – not just billing,
network management or any of the individual
functional silos that currently exist within service
provider operations.
Curing complexity starts with data
Without forgetting that this is a 24-hour-per-
day, 365-day-per-year, always-on business, the
challenge for service providers becomes: how?
Curing complexity starts with the data. A device
is not a consumer; a device collects data and
that data must then be correlated, analyzed and
presented to a user who will benefit from it or
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Service providers wholeheartedly agree that
existing BSS/OSS cannot be summarily replaced
it must be input to an application that can act
upon it.
That sounds suspiciously like BSS/OSS and
that’s the point. Service providers have systems
in place that poll devices, applications and
infrastructure; BSS/OSS collects data about
every transaction, correlates it and distributes it
to a multitude of users and applications.
The key is data management, simplification
and alignment of operating processes, and
orchestration of data flows between and among
BSS/OSS such that each business user and
system has access to the data it needs, when
it needs it, in a form that is understandable
and consumable. Data-driven architectures and
consolidated or federated data sources are the
first step.
Connectivity is only a small element
Connectivity is only a small part of digital
services enablement. Service providers don’t
need to build the devices or the applications;
they need to build the ecosystems, protect
the users and broker the data. In short,
service providers need to go over the top and
deliver a well-integrated, secure ecosystem
that is inclusive of any variety of partners and
developers using simple, automated, open
interfaces and data models.
Those products can then be offered to millions
of customers, quickly delivered, supported and
billed. Each link in the ecosystem supply chain
gets paid, and the customer is being served by a
trusted company with an established brand.
Service providers wholeheartedly agree
that existing BSS/OSS solutions cannot be
summarily replaced to accommodate digital
services. Beyond that, existing BSS/OSS
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solutions generally accomplish the functions
they were installed to execute and keep the
business running around the clock. However,
service providers also admit that despite
numerous efforts to evolve BSS/OSS to fill
the gaps, many existing billing, customer
relationship management, fulfillment, assurance
and inventory systems cannot be extended to
fill the orchestration gaps that are preventing
end-to-end automated execution of the complex
processes needed to define, deliver and support
digital services.
The complexity created by new digital
products and services can be managed,
provided that existing BSS/OSS is augmented
with solutions and overlays that reposition
foundational data and core functionality to
execute end-to-end streamlined processes that
can ultimately be automated from the end user
to the core of the network.
What the customers want
Service providers will benefit from evolving,
retrofitting or replacing existing BSS/OSS with
the ability to rapidly provision connected devices
and just as quickly turn them off; implementing
micro-billing that accommodates fractions
of a cent and pays partners per transaction;
monitoring virtual layers in parallel to quickly
detect and correct errors; automatically boosting
performance based on customer value;
launching new products in days or hours rather
weeks or months; and so much more.
That’s what customers want from a provider
and that’s what service providers need from BSS/
OSS to increase revenue, improve profitability
and become retailers of connected products
rather than wholesalers of network capacity.
INSIGHTS RESEARCH 7
 Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.

BSS/OSS IN THE ERA OF

DIGITAL SERVICES

Section 2

Choosing a path
Increased competition and the challenging Figure 2-1: Business models for digital services
economics of delivering and supporting
the explosion of digital services are forcing
service providers worldwide to consider their
fundamental business models.
Since there are no templates for what the
service provider of the future should look
Retailer Global
like, service providers are examining the retail Alliances
strategies of over-the-top providers (OTT) like
Amazon, Google, and even brick-and-mortar
retailers to understand what customers expect
from digital services providers.
“In any and every business no one is sure
what business model is going to work,” says
Supplier Enabler
one European service provider. “So, the
biggest challenge is whether the business
model that the company is defining is going to
be beneficial in the future.”
As companies evaluate their business Source: TM Forum, January 2014
strategies and determine a path forward, there
are three dominant business models that
emerge (see Figure 2-1).

Retailer and new connected products are emerging

To meet customer demands, service providers
wanting to operate as retailers will sell
products that include connectivity. All traffic is
data and all products are applications.
Whether that application is voice calling,
TV programming, e-mail, text messaging,
movie downloads, pay-per-view, e-books,
supply-chain management, home health
monitoring or a host of other connected digital
services, customers will be buying devices
and applications, and ubiquitous, converged
connectivity will be assumed.
Given this definition, nearly any business
could potentially become a communications
retailer. Amazon includes connectivity with
the Kindle; home security companies include
connectivity with remote monitoring services,
daily.
Service providers that want to compete as
retailers will require open, configurable and
readily integrated BSS/OSS solutions that
enable hundreds (if not thousands) of supplier
agreements and partnerships.
To manage those partnerships and complex
supply chains, service providers will also
need sophisticated mediation and settlement,
revenue assurance, security, fulfillment, service
assurance, and customer support BSS/OSS
solutions. Commercial operations-ready (CORe)
solutions can help (see panel on page 9).
Enabler
Most service providers have always been
enablers. They support business customers

8 INSIGHTS RESEARCH www.tmforum.org

 Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.

Commercial, operations-ready solutions can help

operators engage in multiple partnerships

Help with getting to the CORe of new services

Service providers’ investments, decision-making processes and procurement landscape are
changing rapidly. The first obvious and visible trend over the past year or two is toward service
providers buying commercial operations-ready (CORe-like) solutions.
The focus is on leveraging economies of scale that can be obtained through the ‘industrialization’
of Business and Operational Support Systems (BSS/OSS). In this context, industrialization is a
shared responsibility between vendors and the buyers, as they jointly work to exploit economies of
scale.
These economies are achieved by reducing the money and efforts wasted in developing,
procuring, implementing and operating proprietary, custom-built solutions, which are hard to
evaluate, and maximizing standards-based, higher-volume CORe solutions, which can be more easily
assessed.
CORe solutions are pre-integrated, productized solutions that have been certified by TM Forum
as being Frameworx-conformant to implement a broad range of business processes. As BSS/OSS
moves toward becoming a commodity acquisition, CORe solutions are industrialized at higher level
than traditional solutions.
This places extreme demands on investment decisions and procurement processes. New industry
consensus and tools are needed to objectively evaluate technology and benchmark business
performance in functional/process terms, but also in terms of solution performance and partner
performance in the case of outsourcing.
Frameworx is TM Forum’s suite of standards-based tools and best practices, evolved over many
years by the Forum’s unique Collaboration Community to meet the changing needs of all kinds of
services providers – see page 36 for more information about the latest release.
TM Forum Conformance Certification program is gaining traction in the market with more than
60 products and solutions certified (go to www.tmforum.org/ConformanceCertification for more
information). It helps with the Frameworx conformance aspects of procurement, but it does not yet
cover the full set of dimensions associated with the business decisions made by vendors to invest
in developing products and solutions or service provider decisions to acquire them.
The purpose of TM Forum’s CORe project is to refine the dimensions of the CORe approach,
building upon the experience gained with early CORe-like case studies and their benefits for services
providers and vendors. The goal is to formalize the definition of CORe solutions and maximize the
value buyers and vendors can derive from Frameworx certification.
For some of the other CORe dimensions, the aim is to reach an industry consensus on the
definition of expected benefits, associated metrics and objective evaluation and benchmarking tools.
Participants in the CORe Project include Analysys Mason, HP, Oracle, Telekom Malaysia, Verizon
Telematics and Vodafone.
For more information, or if you’d like to get involved, contact Joann O’Brien, Vice President,
Collaborative R&D, TM Forum, via jobrien@tmforum.org.

www.tmforum.org INSIGHTS RESEARCH 9


BSS/OSS IN THE ERA OF
DIGITAL SERVICES
with the customized solutions, infrastructure
and professional services required to install,
operate and maintain network services.
However, many service providers are
now expanding their professional services
capabilities to provide industry-specific
consulting that facilitates the definition and
implementation of connected digital services
tailored to the unique needs of an industry, its
supply chain and users.
Enablers don’t have to be service providers
in the traditional sense. Systems integrators
and managed services providers that bring
together infrastructure, connectivity and
applications to deliver a product for business
customers to use or resell are also enablers.
It is true that enablers that own and operate
infrastructure and network access are often
better able to help design-in connectivity and
deliver bandwidth, hosting, storage and other
necessary infrastructure. Enablers that are
suppliers can also offer integration services
and outsourced or cloud network management
and IT operations.
A number of Tier 2 and 3 service providers
are recognizing that they do not have the
resources to fully implement a retail model and
are building their business as enablers.
Supplier
Suppliers are network and data center
operators and wholesale service providers.
“It is true that enablers which own and operate infrastructure and network access
are often better able to help design-in connectivity and deliver bandwidth, hosting,
storage and other necessary elements.”
10 INSIGHTS RESEARCH
Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.
They sell bandwidth and infrastructure
resources which could include hosting,
storage, installation, operations and
maintenance.
Service providers that have functionally
separated network operations from retail
operations have created a business distinction
between their supplier and retailer functions.
Suppliers are regulated in most countries,
and in some the government is deploying
a national broadband network and will be
acting as the supplier of connectivity for every
enabler and retailer.
Suppliers are geographically restricted to
locations where they have been awarded
spectrum and/or right-of-way for construction
of network infrastructure.
As communications networks become
critical infrastructure, supplier networks will
be more, not less, regulated and many service
providers will split those operations away from
their product business to improve efficiency
and become more competitive.
There are currently wholesale service
providers that sell bandwidth along specific
routes such as undersea or satellite
connections, wavelength connections, or high
capacity wholesale bandwidth and colocation
services. In addition, suppliers are making
acquisitions and forming partnerships to own
and operate infrastructure from the network
core to customer access worldwide.
www.tmforum.org

Current BSS/OSS solutions are insufficient
for delivering complex digital services
Decisions, decisions
At the intersection of these business models
is the ‘global alliance’. Because service
providers that own networks are regulated
by the countries where they operate, they
are prohibited from owning and operating the
network infrastructure that would make them a
global supplier.
In order to meet demand for global products
supporting business and retail customers,
service providers must establish alliances and
implement BSS/OSS interfaces that enable
access to and delivery of seamless global
connectivity.
Much like the airlines have created global
alliances to deliver passengers wherever they
want to go, service providers are establishing
alliances to deliver digital services wherever
they need to go.
Service providers are currently choosing one
or more of the three service delivery models. A
number of large service providers are choosing
to be retailer, enabler and supplier, while many
smaller service providers that own and operate
network infrastructure are choosing to be
suppliers and enablers. Amazon is an example
of a retailer that is also acting as an enabler for
its small business partners.
There are opportunities and obstacles
associated with each model or combination,
but the choice of operating model(s) is a
strategic business decision and must be
intentional. In our survey of 44 service
providers from around the world, 60 percent
indicate that they consider themselves retailers
of digital services as shown in Figure 2-2.
Likewise, the operating processes and BSS/
OSS solutions that are implemented to support
each business model or combination must
be carefully defined and selected to meet the
needs of that particular model. The customers,
processes, systems and people required to
succeed in each space are unique, and once
implemented, service providers cannot expect
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Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.
Figure 2-2: Digital services’ business models
With regard to digital services, please indicate which business model(s) best describe your
current operations?
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Retailer Enabler Supplier Global
Source: TM Forum, January 2014
to rapidly switch from one model to another.
Service providers are well positioned to
deliver connected digital services; however
the BSS/OSS solutions that enable delivery
of infrastructure and network connections is
insufficient to deliver complex digital services.
Service providers have access to customers,
industries and data at a level no other provider
can approach and they need to leverage that
access. To take the next step and be relevant
for the next chapter, service providers must
define their own version of over-the-top that
delivers the entire connected ecosystem to
customers in ways that are simple, effective,
reliable and profitable. If they don’t, others
will, and even though the result may not be
as elegant or reliable as what a service provider
is capable of, customers will take what they
can get.
INSIGHTS RESEARCH 11

BSS/OSS IN THE ERA OF
DIGITAL SERVICES
Business challenges
With the deployment of Long Term Evolution
(LTE) technology in mobile access networks
and fiber in broadband access networks,
service providers are rapidly upgrading
infrastructure to complete the transformation
to an all-IP public network. Most of the
challenges associated with implementing
all-IP infrastructure are understood and being
addressed. Data center virtualization and
ultimately network functions virtualization are a
consideration for service providers as well with
technical strategies being defined.
Business transformation is getting underway,
and as service providers decide where they
fit in the new connected digital services
economy, there are dramatic strategic and
operational changes taking place. Making the
right strategic changes to processes, IT and
BSS/OSS is critical for any service provider
wanting to differentiate its business from that
of a carrier utility.
Service provider differentiation will be the
result of innovative processes and strategies
for product and customer management.
Defining, delivering and supporting unique
connected products and digital services in a
way that profitably satisfies customers are
keys to revenue generation and cost control.
“Organizations that had network as a
strategic advantage have to change,” says
a service provider doing business in India.
“Transforming the organization to change from
selling voice services to data service providers
is what is needed.”
When asked to describe the business
challenges to becoming a digital services
provider, respondents noted that organizational
and structural changes to the business and
definition of a digital services strategy are
primary concerns as shown in Figure 2-3.
n Organizational/structural changes –
Service provider executives understand
12 INSIGHTS RESEARCH
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Figure 2-3: Top business challenges to providing digital services
Not an issue May be a concern Significant challenge
Culture/mindset
Definition of digital
services strategy
Organizational/structural
changes
Staffing/skills
Process changes
Cost
Regulatory
Other
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Source: TM Forum, January 2014
that organizational or structural changes will
be challenging and painful, but in the end,
nearly all believe that employees will adjust.
To ease the transition, business leaders
must clearly communicate that the coming
changes affect every single part of the
business and every person working there.
Transparency, continuous communication of
the changes that are underway, reasons for
the changes and expected results will create
less disruption and encourage cooperation.
Communication of expectations combined
with relentless execution of clearly defined
plans and unwavering commitment are
required to accomplish the fundamental
organizational and structural makeover
required to deliver hundreds or even
thousands of complex connected digital
services to millions of users.
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Service providers admit their current mindset
is closer to that of a utility than a retailer
n Definition of digital services strategy –
In conjunction with the business model,
service providers require a digital services
strategy that emphasizes the type of digital
services to offer, BSS/OSS requirements
and go-to-market strategies. Retail consumer
offerings are different than managed
business services, and the ecosystem
required for digital services used by shipping
and warehouse companies is different than
the ecosystem required for connected
healthcare services. Service providers
offering professional services and consulting
must decide which industries to target and
hire staff that understands those vertical
markets. In all cases service providers will
need to rely on higher levels of automation
and the BSS/OSS must be fully featured,
agile and configurable enough to support any
combination of these strategies.
n Staffing/skill set – As service providers
migrate from legacy services to complex
digital services, there is an urgent need for
personnel with an entirely different skill set.
Service providers struggle with how best to
deploy, deliver and support new connected
products and digital services while continuing
to operate and maintain legacy products.
While automation will help with routine and
redundant tasks and some service providers
will outsource network management and
maintenance, there remains a void in the
digital services space.
IT resources including servers, storage
and operating environments must be
operated and maintained at the same high
levels of quality, reliability and availability
as network resources. Developers of real-
time applications, interfaces and complex
integrations are needed along with data
warehouse administrators, analytics
modelers and data scientists. The demand
for the highly skilled engineering, IT,
operations and support personnel required
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Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.
to deliver digital services remains largely
unsatisfied and is cited as a risk by numerous
service provider executives.
n Process changes – All BSS/OSS solutions
execute a process and with the introduction
of complex digital services, those processes
must change. Process changes are especially
risky for service providers since many have
not focused on process in the past and
are unprepared to engage in the type of
overarching analysis and mapping required
to define an entirely new process. Existing
functions are so embedded in the culture
and operations of service providers’ legacy
business that it becomes very difficult for
leaders to step out of the tactical world and
suddenly become strategic. The fact that most
service providers remain profitable without
such disruptive change and the risk of getting
the processes wrong also continue to stifle
BSS/OSS innovation. However, the reason that
90 percent of the service providers responding
recognize process change as at least a
concern is that the added complexity of digital
services makes existing operational processes
unsustainable and unaffordable.
n Culture/mindset – In the same way that
organizational changes present significant
business challenges, changing the culture
and mindset of an industry that has been
successful for more than a century is genuinely
difficult. Many service providers acknowledge
that the current operational mindset is closer
to that of a utility than a retailer.
Their business has not been built to
compete but rather to deliver ubiquity,
consistency and quality. In a regulated
environment every customer gets the
same service the same way and quality is
universally high, regardless of cost. Changing
that culture to one of tiered quality, service
level agreements, product variety and ‘the-
customer-is-always-right’ support in a hyper-
competitive marketplace is a lot to overcome
INSIGHTS RESEARCH 13

BSS/OSS IN THE ERA OF
DIGITAL SERVICES
and represents a significant concern for
many service providers.
n Cost – Cost is never far from the minds of
service provider executives. It is always a
factor when choosing BSS/OSS solutions
and the cost of upgraded or new systems
must compete with daily operations and
maintenance for budget. Willingness to invest
in new BSS/OSS solutions or the evolution of
existing systems to implement new processes
and ensure that each capital expenditure
contributes to the digital services strategy is
critical for demonstrating commitment and
ensuring success. Spending on executive
oversight, training and hiring is required
to maintain the vision of becoming a retail
digital services provider, reinforce the desired
corporate culture and implement change.
n Regulatory – For better or worse
communications service providers and
the networks they own and operate will
continue to be regulated, and as critical
infrastructure, those networks will be more,
not less, regulated. Meeting the burden
of regulatory demands is expensive and
takes resources away from product and
customer management. OTT competitors
face no such restrictions or expense. As
regulators continue to enforce competition
at the network level, they are inadvertently
inhibiting service providers from competing
at the digital services level.
As a result many service providers are
structurally separating network operations
from digital services retailing so that those
business units can compete on a level playing
field. According to our survey, this approach is
very popular with regulated network operators:
Nearly 60 percent of respondents have already
established a separate business unit for digital
services operations as shown in Figure 2-4.
14 INSIGHTS RESEARCH
Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.
Figure 2-4: Separation of business functions
Have you established a separate business unit (structurally separate from existing service
offerings) for defining, delivering, and supporting digital services?
13.3%
Yes
No
Don’t know/still considering
30% 56.7%
Source: TM Forum, January 2014
Changing culture and business processes
while managing costs and complying with
regulators creates a formidable task for service
providers. Profitability remains a priority and
the investment in upgraded BSS/OSS solutions
must quickly show positive return.
The cost of construction, operation,
maintenance and regulation of multiple
network overlays is a costly redundancy that is
limiting service provider competitiveness. As
a result, infrastructure is being separated from
product development and sales.
Numerous surveys, including this one,
indicate that customer experience, while
important, is a less critical driver for deploying
new BSS/OSS solutions to deliver digital
services than generating revenues, responding
to competition and improving profitability.
Fortunately, an improved customer experience
is a by-product of those efforts.
www.tmforum.org

A majority of survey respondents are separating
the business of digital services from the network
Section 3
Addressing BSS/OSS requirements for digital services
While not all network operators will become
retailers of digital services, the requirement
to consolidate, automate, and improve the
processes and BSS/OSS solutions that deliver
digital services at every level is undeniable.
Service providers are very concerned with
how they will execute a digital services
strategy and whether existing BSS/OSS
solutions are up to the challenge. While BSS/
OSS solutions are regularly upgraded and
updated, the BSS/OSS changes required to
define, deliver, manage and support a full
menu of digital services requires more than
modernization.
A majority of our survey respondents
indicated they are separating the business
of digital services from the network, but
nearly half, as shown in Figure 3-1, indicate
that they will not be establishing a separate
infrastructure and operations unit to deliver
digital services.
There are several reasons for this. First, with
the rapid deployment of Long Term Evolution
technology (LTE) in the mobile access network,
the vast majority of core, aggregation and
access network infrastructure has now been
converted to IP.
As a result the public network is, by and
large, an IP network and is the primary network
technology for delivering services going
forward, and those services will be digital.
Second, because of the conversion of
network infrastructure, legacy operations are
being retired and, when that is not feasible,
outsourced. Only minimal investments are
being made in continuing operations of legacy
network infrastructure and BSS/OSS.
Finally, even though the results of BSS/OSS
transformation efforts of the past decade have
been mixed, significant upgrades have been
implemented by many service providers and
www.tmforum.org
Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.
Figure 3-1: Separation of technical functions
Have you established a separate infrastructure and operations unit/group that is separate and
distinct from legacy services offerings and infrastructure operations to deliver digital services?
Yes, legacy infrastructure
and operations will operate
in parallel to serve existing
32.1%
customers
46.4% Yes, legacy infrastructure
and operations cannot
evolve quickly enough to
meet the needs of digital
services
No, existing infrastructure
and operations will meet
the needs of digital services
21.4%
Source: TM Forum, January 2014
those efforts have created a foundation for
evolution to a fully functional digital services
framework.
Recognizing process gaps
Overall, service providers are confident that
the BSS/OSS solutions currently in place
can manage existing product and service
offerings. However, service providers are also
becoming painfully aware that they are missing
the orchestration, integration and oversight
required to effectively and efficiently define,
deliver and manage this new crop of complex
digital services.
The service delivery model currently in use
by many service providers has evolved over
time to become an unmanageable collection
of manual processes, BSS/OSS, and data that
are inefficient, inaccurate and expensive to
operate and maintain. There are multiple sales
channels, each with its own product catalog.
INSIGHTS RESEARCH 15
 Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.

BSS/OSS IN THE ERA OF

DIGITAL SERVICES

There may be a single customer relationship
management system but multiple instances of
it are being maintained across the business.
There are duplicate sources for customer,
product, service, configuration, network and
support data, which creates confusion for
product managers and service representatives
as they interact with customers and errors
when capturing and activating orders.
In addition, each service silo has its own
fulfillment and assurance systems with
separate order management, tracking,
service catalog, network inventory, service
management and network management
systems.
Features and functions that are added to the
communication service to deliver a product
exist in yet another silo. In this maze of
processes, systems and data it is no surprise
that it takes months to bring new products to
market – orders get lost; configurations are
wrong; products fail; and customers complain.
At the BSS/OSS architectural level, service
providers will benefit from considering some
fundamental foundational adjustments. They
can also get help building complex, innovative
services through programs such as TM Forum’s
Open Digital Program (see panel below).
These fundamental changes include:
n Data-driven architecture – Aligning
customers with products, products with
digital services applications and digital
services with network and IT infrastructure
implements a horizontal approach that
collapses service silos and creates a
customer-centric view across the business.
Implementing a component-based product
creation environment gives service providers
the ability to independently model products,
offers, configurations, connectivity and
changes using pre-defined components,
processes, rules and workflows. In that
way, products are consistently defined and
delivered across the business regardless of
the underlying systems and infrastructure.

Open Digital Program eases digital services’ development

TM Forum’s Open Digital Program helps service providers, enterprises and their suppliers
succeed in the digital world by making it easier to create, build and operate complex
innovative services. Our goal is to enable an open digital ecosystem where new services can
be delivered quickly, easily and securely using a wide range of business models and partners.
As the world turns digital, the complexity of integrating and managing digital services is
growing. New services are created everyday through a complex value chain of partners.
Delivering customer satisfaction and long-term success demands end-to-end manageability,
security, scalability, and efficiency.
We’re bringing together the best minds to overcome the business and technology
challenges that stand in the way of successful digital partnerships. Connecting a wide range
of industry verticals and leveraging the work of many organizations, we’re collaboratively
developing the tools, application programming interface, standards and best practices
needed to enable an open digital ecosystem.
Learn more about the Open Digital program at www.tmforum.org/opendigitalprogram.

16 INSIGHTS RESEARCH www.tmforum.org


A common data model is essential for real-time mediation
and implementation of security and billing functions
On the activation side, automation of the
fulfillment workflow, based on the product
component definitions, significantly reduces
the time required to deliver a new product or
change to a customer. Orchestration across
existing BSS/OSS is an effective way to
implement a component-based architecture;
however, that requires significant integration.
As vendors develop and service providers
implement end-to-end operations platforms,
the commonality of data and integration
of processes becomes easier, but the
transformation from existing, independent
silos of BSS/OSS to a common platform is
time-consuming and expensive.
n Common data model – The variety of
sources and immense volume of data being
collected and used by service providers
requires that networks, applications and
BSS/OSS solutions implement a common
method for the capture, correlation, storage
and sharing of critical data. A common data
model is essential for real-time mediation
and implementation of security and billing
functions but goes beyond revenue assurance
and affects all aspects of operations including
service assurance, fulfillment, customer
support and business intelligence.
Whether using a single, centralized
catalog or multiple product, service and
resource inventories, service providers
require a consistent and trusted view of the
service from the customer to the core of
the network. Many BSS/OSS solutions add
another database to an already cumbersome
integration environment. Aligning around
a common data model, whether through
replacement or federation, enables service
providers to simplify integrations and open
BSS/OSS interfaces to external partners and
third-party content suppliers.
n Interoperability – The daily operation and
management of the IT and network assets
required to deliver thousands of unique digital
www.tmforum.org
Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.
services and connected products will present
a continuous challenge to service providers.
Ensuring quality of the digital service, product
performance and customer satisfaction
requires anticipation of the impact of failures
and automated reconfiguration and recovery.
The need for service providers to simplify
operations and take advantage of economies
of scale dictate that standardized processes,
applications, networks, data models and
interfaces be adopted.
This type of interoperability cannot rely
on continuous software development
and testing. Developing adaptors and
maintaining integration is expensive and
error-prone. As the volume and complexity
of products grows, continuous development
and maintenance of integration solutions
is unsustainable. BSS/OSS solutions
implemented to support digital services will
necessitate integration of some existing
systems and data, but those integrations
should implement open interfaces and
common data models.
n Commitment – Service providers must
define and implement a long-term,
customer-facing digital services strategy
that includes achievable goals that can be
implemented quickly to deliver a positive
customer experience, return on investment,
and reduced total cost of ownership. While
all service providers may never agree on
a single, common network or application
interface or a common data model for the
industry, each should insist on its own set
of standards. If BSS/OSS requirements from
each individual service provider are based on
open, standard architectures and principles,
vendors will comply.
Although most BSS/OSS transformation
efforts imply commitment from the highest
levels of the organization, that commitment
must be continuously reinforced by
the policies, budgeting, standards and
INSIGHTS RESEARCH 17

BSS/OSS IN THE ERA OF
DIGITAL SERVICES
communication from the executive level.
From the project level there must be well-
defined deliverables and incremental progress
that is provable and delivers immediate value
to the business to ensure that commitment
does not diminish over time.
The flexibility to execute an end-to-end
digital services strategy will benefit from being
implemented and automated across at least
some existing BSS/OSS solutions. Delivering
end-to-end integration and a common view of
the customer that can be shared by all work
groups is not easy, but service providers must
insist that BSS/OSS vendors deliver solutions
that optimize and simplify operating processes
and automate tactical operations.
Service providers that are defining digital
services strategies continue to treat BSS/
OSS functional areas the same as for legacy
services. Until new processes can be defined
and required changes understood, new BSS/
OSS solutions will simply upgrade outdated
processes. Service providers competing with
OTT providers will create differentiation at the
process level. While specific BSS/OSS upgrades
may lead to cost savings, foundational business
and process changes will create differentiation.
Many service provider executives report that
the biggest challenge they face in transforming
their operations is transforming the processes
and the people necessary to realize those goals.
Bringing change to an industry that has operated
successfully for more than 100 years takes
executive-level commitment, careful planning,
relentless execution, resources and time.
Operational challenges
When asked about operational challenges,
most service providers surveyed indicate
serious doubts about their ability to execute
their digital services strategies. While
confident in the deployment of network and IT
infrastructure, there are lingering doubts about
18 INSIGHTS RESEARCH
Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.
Figure 3-2: Operational challenges to offering digital services
Not an issue May be a concern Significant challenge
Execution of digital
services strategy and
BSS/OSS roadmap
Availability and quality of
BSS/OSS solutions
Availability and quality
of consulting and
professional services
Availability and quality
of skilled personnel
Ability of new BSS/OSS
to integrate with existing
solutions and data
Partner ecosystem develop-
ment and management
Network and IT
infrastructure construction
Compatibility of
existing service delivery
environment
Management of
outsourcing contracts
Other
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Source: TM Forum, January 2014
the availability and quality of the BSS/OSS
solutions and personnel required to deliver
on the revenue promises of digital services.
Shown in Figure 3-2, tactical concerns include
everything from partner and outsourcing
management to compatibility with existing
service delivery environments.
While specific BSS/OSS upgrades may lead
to cost savings, business and process changes
will create the kind of differentiation required
to implement a successful digital services
strategy, but service providers are facing a
number of significant operational challenges.
n Execution of digital services strategy and
BSS/OSS – There are hundreds – and in
some service provider operations, thousands
– of systems and data collection points in
www.tmforum.org

Existing BSS/OSS solutions cannot evolve
quickly enough to manage digital services
use. Consolidating and/or replacing existing
BSS/OSS to enable digital services delivery
while ensuring that existing customers are
supported and services are delivered quickly
and reliably is extremely risky and error-
prone. A common alternative is a new BSS/
OSS silo specifically for definition, delivery
and management of digital services.
Of the service providers surveyed, 53
percent are choosing to establish a separate
infrastructure and operations group to deliver
digital services that is distinctly separate
from legacy services operations. Some will
operate the new BSS/OSS solution stack in
parallel with existing operations, while others
will replace or outsource legacy operations.
The reasons given are that existing BSS/OSS
solutions cannot evolve quickly or completely
enough to manage digital services.
Conversely, a number of service providers
have decided to evolve and collapse existing
systems to create a single BSS/OSS stack
for digital services. Their arguments are that
an evolution is less disruptive and there
are fewer training and staff augmentation
requirements, which should reduce costs
and confusion.
n Availability and quality of BSS/OSS
solutions – Some of the concern associated
with the ability to deliver emerging digital
services lies in a perceived lack of available
or high-quality BSS/OSS solutions. Many
of the BSS/OSS solutions being presented
to service providers for IP networking and
digital services come from the enterprise
service management market and are not as
well-suited to the public network as service
providers would like. Scalability, always an
issue for service providers, is often not a
design consideration for enterprise solutions.
Likewise, enterprises have the luxury of
specifying a limited number of vendors and a
fixed set of interfaces that must be managed.
To deliver digital services across the public
www.tmforum.org
Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.
network, service provider BSS/OSS solutions
will be required to interoperate with a wide
variety of applications, servers, hosting
platforms, network elements, operating
systems and databases. A lack of specific
and validated standards for data models,
application interfaces and device management
leaves service providers with the same
integration and interoperability issues that
they face with legacy BSS/OSS solutions.
n Ability of new BSS/OSS to integrate with
existing BSS/OSS – Along those same
integration lines, many service providers
cannot avoid some amount of interaction with
existing BSS/OSS solutions and data. There is,
however, a disconnect between the BSS/OSS
solutions available for digital services and those
already installed. While BSS/OSS vendors
and systems integrators offer development
services, service providers are growing weary
of time-consuming and costly integration
efforts. Likewise, the costs to develop and
maintain hundreds of unique interfaces and
regression test each interface and integration
when changes are made are out-of-control.
While some service providers will consider
managed services or outsourcing of tactical
operations, most still want to control their
BSS/OSS. Cloud offerings are an alternative
that reduces licensing and IT infrastructure
costs, but integration and interface issues
remain, which diminishes the actual value of
cloud BSS/OSS services.
n Partner ecosystem development and
management – To become a retailer of
digital services, service providers know that
they will engage with many partners. From
microchip manufacturers to application
development environments, there is the
potential for hundreds or even thousands of
partners to be included in the digital services
ecosystem and each needs to be integrated
into the product, fulfillment, assurance and
revenue management BSS/OSS functions.
INSIGHTS RESEARCH 19
 Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.

BSS/OSS IN THE ERA OF

DIGITAL SERVICES

For businesses that have traditionally
operated in isolation, adding partners and
managing a supply chain is new territory.
(TM Forum’s Business Partnering Guide can
help with this -- see panel below). Apple’s
app store generated $10 billion in revenue in
2013; the digital services revenue potential
for service providers is too great not to solve
the challenges posed by implementing a
partner ecosystem.
n Availability and quality of skilled personnel
– This challenge is both strategic and tactical.
In a digital services environment, the role of
IT changes. Demands for IT infrastructure and
applications in every aspect of digital services
operations means that IT must lead with
common data models and corporate standards
for infrastructure, storage, operations,
procurement and governance. IT must also
meet requirements from the business to
acquire – not build – responsive, agile, pre-
integrated off-the-shelf BSS/OSS solutions. IT
must function as the BSS/OSS gatekeeper,
not a BSS/OSS competitor.
Finally, the IT systems and digital services
applications have to be every bit as scalable,
reliable and available as network elements.
IT personnel are required in the network
operations center to monitor performance
and quality while rapidly solving infrastructure
and application problems. In a data-driven
environment nearly every business unit will
want to incorporate sophisticated modeling
and analytics to improve products and
maximize revenue. Specialists in network
functions virtualization and software-defined
networking and data scientists are required
to fill those roles. The number of skilled
professionals in these emerging areas is
limited as demand steadily increases.
n Compatibility of existing service delivery
environment – Most service providers are
currently delivering some number of digital
services. While the products are typically

Partners are the key to success with digital services

The key to success in an open digital ecosystem is through partners. TM Forum’s Business
Partnering Guide, (TR211, Release 1.0) is a business-oriented, practical manual for
establishing and running mutually successful partnerships and part of the Forum’s Open
Digital Program (see page 16).
It helps all players understand how to create and manage partnerships to deliver services
to end-customers, both enterprises and consumers. The material is based on experience
gained from practical implementations by TM Forum’s member companies that have
worked together to share the lessons and best practices they have evolve to create practical
demonstrations of these solutions.
The Partnering Guide offers approaches tailored to the rapidly moving market, where
new services must be delivered quickly. As a result, the partnering mechanisms must be
efficient and automated wherever possible. It provides a series of steps with corresponding
worksheets and exit criteria to enable profitable partner relationships.
The Guide covers business model design and business rules and the selection of
contractual, financial and operating models. It also provides a series of exemplar use cases
contributed by TM Forum’s members. It is free for all employees of the Forum’s member
companies to download from www.tmforum.org/businesspartnering.

20 INSIGHTS RESEARCH www.tmforum.org


IT personnel will be required in the network operations center
to monitor performance and solve application problems
network services (for example, carrier
Ethernet), operators have implemented a
service delivery platform or environment that
abstracts applications like voice over IP or
IPTV from the network infrastructure. Those
service delivery environments have been
standardized, and service providers anticipate
using the same or an expanded version of
that same service delivery environment to
host future applications and digital services.
BSS/OSS solutions that implement a
separate service layer interoperate with
most existing service delivery environments
and should form a solid foundation for
evolution of a digital services delivery
environment, provided that the service
layer accommodates open interfaces and
multiple data models. The maturity of service
delivery environments could help or hurt
service providers’ digital services strategies.
Older service delivery platforms may not
be extensible or compatible with emerging
digital services and catalogs. On the other
hand, if the existing environment is open,
data-driven and the architecture can evolve,
then service providers will have a good place
to start.
n Availability and quality of consulting
and professional services, network
and IT infrastructure construction, and
management of outsourcing – Service
providers generally feel they have these
challenges under control. Service providers
“The anxiety service providers feel relative to executing digital services strategies
can be somewhat offset with professional services, but eventually they will benefit
from having those skills in-house.”
www.tmforum.org
Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.
have been building IP networks and data
centers for decades, and many have been
managing outsourcing arrangements for
nearly as long. It is encouraging to see that
there is optimism that qualified staff is
available, even if service providers are having
difficulty hiring specialized employees.
Implementing a cohesive digital services
strategy requires good planning but also
relies on dedicated and capable staff to
execute. The anxiety that service providers
feel relative to executing digital services
strategies can be somewhat offset with
professional services, but eventually they will
benefit from having those skills in-house.
BSS/OSS solutions for digital services
will be delivered in pieces. In some cases
existing systems can be evolved and in others,
replacement is the only answer. Regardless
of the approach, a careful examination of
existing processes and BSS/OSS solutions
will yield a better strategy and resolve a lot of
challenges. Every service provider has access
to the same BSS/OSS technology and service
provider differentiation will ultimately come
from the way that processes are executed and
the quality of the experience delivered to the
customer. Although some BSS/OSS functions
pose more of a challenge than others, spending
priority will be given to those projects that best
advance the digital services strategy while still
meeting business and customer goals.
INSIGHTS RESEARCH 21
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BSS/OSS IN THE ERA OF

DIGITAL SERVICES

Section 4

Service providers talk transformation

We surveyed 44 executives from service Figure 4-1: Service provider demographics by region
provider organizations worldwide including
What is your organization’s primary region of operation?
mobile, cable, fixed and converged operators.
Not all respondents answered all questions, 6.8%
but each shared insight into the BSS/OSS North America
25%
opportunities and challenges that accompany 11.4%
Latin/America/Carribbean
the rollout of digital services. The survey
demographics are shown in Figures 4-1, 4-2 Europe and/or Russia
and 4-3. Middle East and/or Africa
Not all of the service providers included in
Asia/Pacific
the survey own and operate networks, and less
than half serve retail customers as shown in Global
25%
Figure 4-4 below. However, service providers
are making the necessary strategic decisions 20.5%
to implement business models that suit
their infrastructure, target market and digital
11.4% Source: TM Forum, January 2014
services strategies.
Within these broad areas, service providers
are defining and delivering specific services
Figure 4-2: Service provider demographics by number of customers
based on the markets and customers each Please indicate the number of customers served by your organization.
serves. Analytics tools are being incorporated
to help service providers understand the Fewer than 5 million

30.2% 5 million to 25 million

37.2% More than 25 million to 50 million

More than 50 million to 100 million

More than 100 million to 150 million

More than 150 million

4.7%

4.7%

4.7%
18.6% Source: TM Forum, January 2014

“Expanding expectations and rapid delivery, all while

maintaining a long-term competitive cost structure in a
perceived commodity industry, requires transformation.”

22 INSIGHTS RESEARCH www.tmforum.org

 Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.

There is no one-size-fits-all digital services strategy;

operators of all types are launching services in their niches

markets and customers served and define Figure 4-3: Service providers’ demographics by revenue
digital services that appeal to those segments.
Please indicate your organization’s annual revenues.
“Expanding expectations and rapid delivery,
all while maintaining a long-term competitive 9.3%
cost structure in a perceived commodity 20.9% Less than $100 million
industry, requires transformation,” says one
11.6% $100 million - $1 billion
North American service provider. “Growing
threats from traditional, non-related industries Greater than $1 billion
to $25 billion
present long-term challenges.”
There is no one-size-fits-all digital services Greater than $25 billion
strategy, and service providers of all types 11.6% 14% to $50 billion

are launching products that fit their own local, Greater than $50 billion
regional, national and global marketing niches. to $100 billion
Whether a retailer of digital services, an Greater than $100 billion
enabler of digital services delivery, or a supplier
of infrastructure and bandwidth, service 32.6% Source: TM Forum, January 2014
providers are putting infrastructure, processes,
staff and BSS/OSS in place to deliver a wide
variety of digital services. Some of the services Figure 4-4: Choosing a business model
that currently available or soon to be offered Which of the following applies to your organization? (Please select all that apply)
are shown in Figure 4-5 on page 24.
80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%
Network
operator

Data center
operator

Connectivity
reseller

Voice services

Data services

Video services

Wholesale
customers

Business
customers

Retail
customers

“Growing threats from traditional,

non-related industries present
long-term challenges.” Source: TM Forum, January 2014

www.tmforum.org INSIGHTS RESEARCH 23


BSS/OSS IN THE ERA OF
DIGITAL SERVICES
Hot digital services
Infrastructure, hosting and data center services
have been available for some time, but it is
interesting to note that a high percentage of
respondents are involved in mobile payments.
Banks and payment processing companies
are implementing network-enabled mobile
payment technology for use by mobile
applications rather than connecting via the
Internet, to manage identity and help ensure
security.
While mobile payment services lag behind
in North America, payments and other mobile
financial services are becoming popular in Asia-
Pacific, Africa and Europe. (Please note that
when referring to payment, video and other
digital services, the question specifically stated
that these are not Internet-enabled services but
offered natively across the network.)
The most logical extension of existing service
provider offerings is ‘as-a-service’ products.
Service providers have begun offering a full
complement of managed or stand-alone
services that include hosting, software as a
service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS),
infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and all
associated infrastructure and facilities.
Service providers are also offering colocation
facilities both in conjunction with data center
services and as a stand-alone product. Most
digital services offerings include some amount
of software if only for email, messaging and
identify management.
Expanding inventories
Not all operators offer devices but those who
do are expanding their inventories from set-top
boxes, routers and smartphones to include
tablets, wearable exercise and health sensors,
security sensors, environmental sensors, and a
wide variety of other connected devices.
Service providers are establishing monitoring
centers to provide facility management and
security services, including establishing contact
24 INSIGHTS RESEARCH
Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.
Figure 4-5: The availability of digital services
Do you offer now, or will you soon offer, any of the following digital services to business or
consumer customers?
Infrastructure facilities/colocation
for data center, hosting, etc.
Hosting/data center services
Infrastructure as a Service
Platform as a Service
Software as a Service
Live digital video
(native, not Internet)
Multi-screen digital video
(native, not Internet)
Digital product delivery
(app store or app retail)
Bundled third party apps (phone
with free Facebook, etc.)
Location based services
(navigation, app integration, ad
insertion, etc.)
Home/business/facility monitoring
Security services (physical and
cyber/data security services)
Device sales (smart phones,
connected devices, set tops,
routers, etc.)
Device remote control
(home systems control, BYOD
device management, etc.)
Mobile payments
Bill inclusion (charges to third
parties show up on phone bill)
Telematics/auto/transportation
services or platforms
Other M2M platforms
Other digital services
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%
Source: TM Forum, January 2014
www.tmforum.org

Service providers recognize that offering
digital services requires partnerships
with local emergency services providers
to deliver remote monitoring of intrusion
detection, fire alarms and emergency sensors.
Machine-to-machine (M2M) or connected
devices are important to service provider digital
services strategies in every industry they
serve. Service providers in different parts of
the world have begun selling digital services for
eHealth, agriculture, shipping, logistics, energy
and other connected industries. Monitoring
of power, temperature, humidity and other
parameters at unstaffed or remote facilities
is of growing importance to businesses and
supply chains worldwide. Power and water
utilities, oil and gas exploration, and agriculture
are just a few examples of facility monitoring
that go beyond physical security.
Specifically aligned with transportation, service
providers worldwide are providing the platforms
and cloud-based services for automotive
manufacturers to deliver connected vehicle
technologies for driver convenience, traffic
management, and automobile maintenance.
With the flood of apps reaching the market,
service providers have begun to bundle specific
(for example, maps) or popular apps (for
example, Facebook) with devices and service
agreements so users don’t have to search
for them. In some cases access to the app is
bundled with the service and does not affect
data allotments. Some service providers have
established app stores or they white label a
combination of access to other app stores to
maintain their branding and interactions with
customers.
They also maintain app stores for individual
business customers to secure access to
specific apps that are available only to
employees. Location-based services (LBS) are
used by numerous applications and devices
and as a result service providers may include
them and charge partners and app providers
rather than customers for LBS access.
www.tmforum.org
Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.
Figure 4-6: Partnerships are essential in offering digital services
Approximately how many partnerships or alliances have you established to offer, deliver,
and/or bundle digital services?
10.3%
13.8%
Currently no partnerships
in place for digital services
offerings
6.9%
1-10
11-20
21-50
20.7% More than 50
48.3%
Source: TM Forum, January 2014
Video services are a key ingredient
Whether delivering live access to video across
multiple screens or ensuring high-definition
broadcast quality video to a big-screen
television, video services are a big part of
service provider digital services strategies.
Netflix, Hulu and others offer access to video
recordings via the Internet and are subject
to the broadband capacity available to the
customer. However, live, high-definition,
broadcast-quality video delivered via direct
network connection enables cable and satellite
providers to manage quality and differentiate
the customer experience.
Other digital services include remote control
of devices to close a garage door or turn lights
off and on. A number of service providers have
implemented extensive mediation, billing and
settlements upgrades that enable them to bill
their customers on behalf of other companies
– for example, sending a text to make a
charitable donation which is then included on
the monthly mobile billing statement.
INSIGHTS RESEARCH 25
 Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.

BSS/OSS IN THE ERA OF

DIGITAL SERVICES

Finding the right partner Figure 4-7: Evaluating existing processes’ suitability for digital services
Service providers recognize that they cannot
offer digital services on their own, and although As currently implemented, which existing operational processes are least able to support
digital services? Please rank in order from most vulnerable (1) to most reliable as-is (5).
it is a difficult cultural adjustment, most are
tentatively establishing partnerships as shown 100%
1
in Figure 4-6.
In addition to the challenges of billing and 2
settlements, service providers must ensure 80%
3
that content and devices are compatible
4
with the network and they must monitor
60%
performance to ensure quality operation. 5
Again, quality is an important part of the
dialogue in telecommunications. To deliver 40%
important services like healthcare and security
monitoring, the digital services infrastructure
and BSS/OSS solutions that manage it are 20%
also considered critical. Service providers of all
types are recognizing the need for ‘five-nine’s’
availability (99.999 percent) and reliability that 0%
was delivered by the public networks of the Trouble- Activate- Order-to- Offer- to- Idea-to-
to-resolve to-revenue activate order product
past.
Source: TM Forum, January 2014

Automation is key
In order to profitably deliver digital services,
service providers worldwide are examining
their operations and beginning to understand
which processes can be improved, which
should be evolved and which should be
replaced. When asked which major operational
processes are most vulnerable, shown in
Figure 4-7, respondents recognize the need for
change in all areas.
The sheer volume of customers, services
and infrastructure requires that service
providers break up operational processes
into manageable parts. Originally, the
largely manual processes were divided into
functional areas (for example, billing, customer
relationship management (CRM), provisioning,
network management), but as each area grew,
it became less a part of an integrated process
and more isolated.
Putting those processes back together in a
layered approach takes more than automation
and integration; it takes a new operational and
BSS/OSS focus.
Disconnected processes
When it comes to digital services, service
providers responding to this survey are most
confident in existing processes related to
fulfilment and assurance. However, when
asked for details, even those most confident
in existing fulfilment and assurance processes
indicate that the processes are disconnected
from customer-facing processes related to
product development, revenue assurance and
order management.
Implementing stand-alone processes,
existing BSS/OSS solutions may be reliable,
but end-to-end there remains too much
manual intervention and a severe lack of
interoperability. End-to-end automation is the
key to profitably delivering digital services on
demand, and service providers recognize that

26 INSIGHTS RESEARCH www.tmforum.org


Delivering complex digital services requiring a
rapid response means automation in the BSS/OSS
existing processes are too disconnected and
require too many manual tasks to be efficient or
cost-effective.
When delivering complex digital services
that require rapid response, configuration or
accounting based on real-time transactions,
there is no way that a human can respond
quickly or accurately enough to complete
service requests, resolve problems or
reconfigure a complex array of resources in real
time.
As service providers and enterprises
implement layers of virtualization in both the
data center and the network, complexity
is multiplied beyond a human’s capacity to
respond in a timely manner.
BSS/OSS solutions that handle the processes
required to define, deliver, operate, manage
and bill for digital services must implement
end-to-end automation and intelligent decision
capabilities to automatically meet the needs of
customers on-demand.
Federal Express activates millions of
boxes, envelopes and containers every day.
That cannot be accomplished with manual
handoffs from order capture to activation to
billing. Numerous trouble thresholds exist that
systems must be able to respond to quickly and
accurately anywhere in the world so that, for
example, temperature-sensitive medications
don’t sit too long in a hot warehouse.
In that example, the BSS/OSS must not only
detect a problem, it must also automatically
notify the sender, the warehouse and the
recipient. If the problem is not addressed in
“Deployment of BSS/OSS solutions to support digital services is being delayed by
the need to rethink and revamp business processes. The risk of ‘getting it wrong’ is
one that service providers are unwilling to accept...”
www.tmforum.org
Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.
the specified timeframe, the BSS/OSS must
automatically escalate the problem, send other
notifications and push to resolve the problem.
Recent investments in real-time mediation,
revenue assurance and billing to meet customer
and regulatory demands has helped service
providers automate a number of important
operational tasks.
Likewise, trouble management and service
assurance solutions are monitoring status
and performance across network and service
delivery platforms thereby collapsing some of
the network- and element-management silos.
Modernization speeds up process execution
and provides visibility, but overwhelmingly
service providers recognize that automating or
upgrading BSS/OSS solutions to support a poor
process still leaves you with a poor process.
Deployment of BSS/OSS solutions to support
digital services is being delayed by the need to
rethink and revamp business processes. The
risk of ‘getting it wrong’ is one that service
providers are unwilling to accept, and therefore,
they are proceeding with caution – but they are
proceeding.
The weakest link
In rolling out digital services, service providers
are developing strategies intended to create a
simple, reliable, accurate and unique customer
experience. They are upgrading CRM, billing,
assurance and fulfillment capabilities but still
report that the time-to-market for new products
has not substantially improved.
Indeed, the service providers responding to
INSIGHTS RESEARCH 27
 Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.

BSS/OSS IN THE ERA OF

DIGITAL SERVICES

Figure 4-8: Which BSS/OSS upgrades are needed most?

Which BSS/OSS upgrades are most critical to launch and support digital services? (Select the Top 3)

80%

60%

40%

20%

0%
Product/service
delivery and fulfillment

Real-time billing

Revenue assurance

Fraud management

Product/service
assurance

Infrastructure
assurance

Customer care

Network/infrastructure
management

Order management

CRM

Product development

Marketing and sales

(web/social analytics)

Source: TM Forum, January 2014

this survey point to the fulfillment process as easily updated and tested. Large BSS/OSS
the weak link in the digital services delivery vendors offer service layer platforms designed
chain as shown in Figure 4-8. Seamless to accommodate any combination of functional
end-to-end order management that includes products, while smaller BSS/OSS vendors are
orchestration and automation from product implementing open interfaces and ensuring
definition, offer development, order capture that new products work in concert with BSS/
and delivery through billing notification and OSS solutions and platforms.
customer care is critical to profitable delivery of
digital services. Quality of software is a concern
Service providers are implementing Another point that has been made repeatedly
centralized product, service and resource is that there is a growing need to address the
catalogs; sophisticated workflow management quality of the software delivered by BSS/OSS
to eliminate order fallout; sophisticated policy solutions. Development of software to fill an
management and enforcement solutions; and app store is entirely different than the software
analytics that correlate fault and performance design and development discipline required to
data with customers and products. build the complex transaction-driven applications
Service providers are also insisting that BSS/ required to manage digital services customers,
OSS solutions be pre-integrated such that data products and infrastructure in real time. Good
and application interfaces are seamless and software developers are difficult to find and

28 INSIGHTS RESEARCH www.tmforum.org

 Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.
More than three-quarters of respondents are optimistic
that they are succeeding as digital services providers
quality software architects and structured
programmers are nearly extinct. The BSS/OSS
solutions used to manage software-defined,
virtual networks and data centers must be every
bit as reliable as the hardware infrastructure.
Software quality will become a discriminating
factor when choosing BSS/OSS solutions and
defining service level agreements for managed
services and cloud offerings. The development
of BSS/OSS solutions for digital services
must focus on software scalability, reliability,
availability, performance and security consistent
with the requirements placed on hardware.
At the heart of service providers’ digital
services strategies are new processes and
BSS/OSS solutions that implement more
streamlined, less complex end-to-end product
design, delivery, billing and support functions
built around a single view of the customer and
its individual services. The volume and variety
of products that customers demand point to an
approach that aligns BSS/OSS solutions around
a horizontal, product-driven digital services
model that is network agnostic.
Service providers understand that BSS/OSS
solutions that execute agile and optimized
business processes will make or break their digital
services business. Customers are becoming
less and less tolerant of errors and delays,
and enterprises are using digital services for
business-critical functions that simply cannot fail.
Making the grade
We asked service providers to give us a
measure of how they think they are doing in
the digital services arena, and even though
all recognize that there is plenty of work left
to be done and that the need for BSS/OSS
changes are urgent, more than three-quarters
are optimistic that they are, in fact, succeeding
as digital services providers as shown in the
grades they gave themselves (see Figure 4-9).
Service provider grades were assigned based
on the following scale:
www.tmforum.org
Figure 4-9: Service providers’ evaluation of digital services initiatives
With regard to the definition, delivery, and support of digital services please grade your
organization.
3.8%
A
19.2%
B
C
D
46.2%
F
I/C
30.8%
Source: TM Forum, January 2014
n A – earning revenue from digital services,
attracting partners and customers, processes
and BSS/OSS operational
n B – rolling out digital services; completing
process, BSS/OSS and integration activities
n C – evaluating our ability to launch and deliver
digital services, BSS/OSS trials underway
n D – behind the curve; desire exists but
development has been hindered by any
number of business, regulatory and technical
reasons; existing BSS/OSS is inhibiting
progress
n F – processes and BSS/OSS failed when
launching digital services and we’re
regrouping
n Incomplete – no current desire to offer
digital services; no BSS/OSS efforts
underway to deliver digital services
Getting started
For all their efforts, service providers recognize
that the BSS/OSS changes required to
successfully deliver potentially thousands of
digital services to millions of customers cannot
and will not occur overnight. Billions have been
INSIGHTS RESEARCH 29
 Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.

BSS/OSS IN THE ERA OF

DIGITAL SERVICES

Figure 4-10: Service providers’ initiatives to support digital services

What changes and initiatives are underway to define, deliver, and support digital services? (Select all that apply)

80%

60%

40%

20%

0%
Business/
organizational
restructuring

Leadership
changes

Process
re-engineering/
optimization

Digital services
strategy definition

Digital services
strategy execution

Prioritized investment
in digital services
infrastructure and BSS/
OSS architecture

Implementation of
BSS/OSS platform to
deliver digital services

BSS/OSS upgrades

Partnership/channel
development

Product development
emphasis

Source: TM Forum, January 2014

invested in infrastructure and still more has been complement of digital services offerings.
spent on BSS/OSS solutions. Critical data is While a majority of the service providers
scattered throughout the business and even with surveyed indicated by their grading that process
orchestration layers that abstract functionality engineering and optimization is completed
from systems and infrastructure, there are (again, see Figure 4-9), more than 40 percent
process and BSS/OSS gaps to be filled. indicate that work still needs to be done before
BSS/OSS procurements can commence.
Business and operational changes
There are a lot of changes happening at Greatly improving customer experience
both the business and operational levels Digital services need BSS/OSS solutions that
within service provider organizations (see improve quality, reduce redundancy, eliminate
Figure 4-10). As digital services strategies complexity, provide better visibility and deliver
and process optimizations become tactical more products to customers faster. Those
and are translated into programs, schedules, solutions will dramatically improve the customer
requirements, BSS/OSS solutions and success experience and enable service providers to
criteria, service providers are proceeding as create differentiation. BSS/OSS will lead the
budget, staffing and demand allow. way in enabling service providers to compete
Service providers would seem to be in a digital services marketplace and take
prioritizing investments in the infrastructure advantage of existing brand recognition and
and BSS/OSS solutions necessary to deliver customer loyalty. However, in order to make
digital services. For some, BSS/OSS upgrades digital services a reality, both service providers
will suffice, while for others nothing short and vendors must recognize the need to
of complete replacement will enable a full transform to the realities of this new market.

30 INSIGHTS RESEARCH www.tmforum.org


Digital service providers must do their best
to accommodate applications customers want to use
Section 5
Conclusions and recommendations
As service providers move into the digital
services market and compete with the likes
of Google, Amazon, Apple and others, it is
important that they play to their strengths.
Numerous surveys indicate that service
providers remain the most trusted partner
for enterprises interested in implementing
machine-to-machine (M2M) capabilities and
connected devices.
That reputation is well-deserved based on
the scale, reliability, availability and overall
quality of existing services and the public
network.
However, much of what is offered today as
a digital service is considered reliable only to
two nine’s (99 percent), and that translates
to nearly four days per year of outage. Can a
hospital or pharmaceutical supply chain or a
financial services company go without critical
applications and connectivity for that long?
Users and businesses that rely on
connectivity are also relying on the service
provider, their infrastructure and BSS/OSS
solutions to ensure that the quality and
performance standards established by service
providers in the past are met in the future.
A variety of approaches
Service providers are implementing a variety
of approaches to digital services. Some have
structurally separated their digital services
business and are deploying an entirely new
stack of BSS/OSS solutions solely for that
purpose. Others are attempting to take
advantage of upgrades to existing BSS/OSS
and are either overlaying or integrating the
functionality required to deliver and support
digital services offerings.
Still others are accelerating the retirement
of legacy systems and replacing them with
entirely new BSS/OSS solutions and making
www.tmforum.org
Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.
all services digital.
Regardless of approach, it is important to
recognize the value of partners. The easier
it is to add, delete, support and settle with
partners, the easier it is to rapidly deliver new
and exciting services. Service providers will
not build the applications that customers need
and want for consumer or business use, but
they have to do their best to accommodate
whatever shows up.
AT&T, in conjunction with BSS/OSS
partners, has established AT&T Foundry
centers to enable innovation and accelerate
the development and deployment of
connected technologies. The partnerships
provide economic and intellectual resources
that provide the tools and resources for
collaborative development between the
partners, start-up businesses and AT&T.
Service providers including AT&T, Verizon,
Sprint, Orange, T-Mobile, SoftBank, BT,
Vodafone and others readily publish the
interfaces and provide test subscriber identity
modules that enable device manufacturers to
connect to the mobile network.
Most are also working with component
manufacturers to build compatibility and
connectivity standards into devices. Those
efforts accelerate the development process,
reduce errors and enable manufacturers to
achieve economies of scale.
BSS/OSS will lead the way
As an industry, we are rapidly deploying
infrastructure and creating network and data
center capacity at a rate that could not have
been imagined even five years ago. So we
have the connections, but where are the
applications? For all the connectivity that
has been put in place, it remains incredibly
underutilized because we’re missing the
INSIGHTS RESEARCH 31

BSS/OSS IN THE ERA OF
DIGITAL SERVICES
applications that make use of all that data
and make it useful to consumer and business
users. Creating that market and managing the
resultant digital services should be well suited
to service providers, but it’s time to focus on
BSS/OSS solutions and make them work better
for the business.
Rather than treating BSS/OSS as an
operational expense, service providers must
make organizational changes and adopt a
new perspective. BSS/OSS solutions are a
critical part of any digital services strategy
and the success or failure of those solutions
will determine the success or failure of digital
services.
The new role of IT and BSS/OSS requires
changes that affect people, processes, and
participation in the business. TM Forum offers
a Digital Services Reference Architecture that
can help operators develop their digital services
strategy (see panel on page 33).
People, processes and participation
Contrary to what is widely reported in labor
statistics, there is actually a shortage of
qualified BSS/OSS professionals in the
communications sector. Large vendors have
an insatiable appetite for programmers as
they develop new and better systems, while
service providers are struggling to retain staff
with that rare dual background in software and
networking.
These employees need to be injected into
the business and decision-making processes,
not hidden behind the gates of IT.
“Rather than treating BSS/OSS as an operational expense, service providers
must make organizational changes and adopt a new perspective.”
32 INSIGHTS RESEARCH
Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.
There is a growing need for professionals
who genuinely understand the requirements
of various business groups – marketing,
product development, customer care, service
management and network management – and
can translate that into efficient processes
and system requirements. As service
providers move into the digital services arena,
technologists are needed who understand the
unique nature of each industry vertical that a
service provider intends to serve.
Most businesses – and service providers
are no exception – understand that the
system dictates the process. Once a BSS/
OSS solution is installed it is used in a specific
way and delivers specific results. However,
new software development techniques and
technologies are making BSS/OSS software
more agile.
Configurable process models and policies
It is becoming easier to adjust the process
without code changes and without legions of
programmers. Configurable process models,
policies and oversight that direct specific
functions are becoming easier to build and
manage. However, it is still someone’s
job to define, execute and manage those
configurations. In this role, IT must understand
the desired processes and which BSS/OSS and
data are affected.
The correlation of IT support to a single
system or function (for example, billing or router
configuration) is replaced with IT staff who
understand the end-to-end business processes
www.tmforum.org
 Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.

BSS/OSS is a critical part of any digital services strategy

and will determine whether those services are successful

The Digital Services Reference Architecture and ITIL

TM Forum is developing a Digital Services Reference Architecture (DSRA) for emerging
digital services. It is designed to cater to multiple business models and leverages work in
TM Forum’s Business Partnering Guide (see page 20), which rationalizes the many different
types of business models to three key concepts: sell to, sell through and sell with.
DSRA in intended to deliver on three key value propositions:

n A high-quality user experience – Users are able to access the business application or see
content in the manner they expect.
n A high-quality developer experience – Developers are able to more quickly create
applications in a consistent manner that can be easily incorporated into service-oriented
architecture (SOA) Service Compositions that are readily manageable from a quality of
service (QoS) and service-level agreement (SLA) viewpoint.
n A high-quality operations experience – Service providers are able to provide a great user
experience because they have the information necessary to measure what is going on,
quickly assess root causes and impacts, and react to problems in a proactive manner.

While there is little question that digital services are an important step forward for service
providers, it may be less obvious exactly how they are supported by Frameworx. Some
new insights, released as part of Frameworx 13, show how to apply the Business Process
Framework (eTOM) in such scenarios.

Applying the Business Process Framework and ITIL

The Business Process Framework material for Release 13 includes a new document
(TR206) on Exploring SES Service Development Scenarios through ITIL and the Business
Process Framework. This has been developed as a worked example against the DSRA for
development and deployment of digital services.
It uses a combination of ITIL practices and Business Process Framework process
elements. The chosen methodology is to use ITIL to identify steps in the digital service life
cycle and to map these into the Business Process Framework in the appropriate areas of the
enterprise. This can be accomplished by examining representative scenarios in this life cycle
and modeling process flows that address the scenarios.
The TR206 document provides a tutorial on this methodology alongside the development
of the example scenario concerned, which centers on an upgrade of a digital service. Both
ITIL and the Business Process Framework relate to the scenario and demonstrate how the
design methodology is applied in practice.
TR206 also shows how any issues in the detail of alignment between ITIL and the
Business Process Framework can be identified and recorded for action.
Please visit www.tmforum.org/IntroDSRAMay2013 for more information about the Digital
Services Reference Architecture.

www.tmforum.org INSIGHTS RESEARCH 33


BSS/OSS IN THE ERA OF
DIGITAL SERVICES
being executed across the business (revenue
management, order-to-cash).
Service providers need their IT and BSS/OSS
organizations to participate in the development
of digital services strategies. Many are
adjusting their organizations to better engage
IT in day-to-day operations, process planning,
product development and more.
BSS/OSS considerations need to become
part of each business unit at a strategic level
while retaining ties to business-wide IT and
operations strategies.
Whether working with a program office
structure or other type of matrix organization,
IT must become a distributed organization
that delivers value to the business and its
customers. The divide that still exists between
IT and network must be eliminated once and
for all. Support will always be a part of IT and
the help desk will not go away, but there is a
much larger role for IT to play in the definition
and implementation of BSS/OSS solutions for
digital services.
Be agile and take the lead
Clunky user interfaces, strict or complex
command sequences, manual processes,
and workarounds must be eliminated
and replaced with a seamless end-to-end
automated process. Delivering digital services
is all about agility, even if it is an overused
word. “Maintaining all of these interfaces
is counterproductive, out-of-control, and
ultimately devolves into chaos,” notes one
large European service provider.
Amazon, Google, and others operate
gigantic data centers with minimal staff and
continue to automate more and more of the
daily redundant tasks of order processing,
user activation, system management, service
assurance, trouble management and even
workforce management.
This is possible because those companies
insist that everything running in the data center
34 INSIGHTS RESEARCH
Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.
is consistent and meets specific standards
for integration and interoperability. Service
providers must also require conformance with
internal data models and interface standards
and where standards do not exist, insist on
open and adaptable interfaces.
Strong program management
Service providers that have implemented strong
program management and governance capabilities
can use that expertise to manage IT, BSS/
OSS vendors and systems integrators as they
implement the processes necessary to deliver
digital services. Demand for digital services
is resulting in the transformation of BSS/OSS
solutions. However, service providers must lead.
Where vendors claim some amount of
competitive advantage from proprietary
BSS/OSS solutions and interfaces, there is
no benefit to service providers to disagree
on standards. To benefit from a standard,
service providers will have to spend money to
participate, evaluate and implement the results.
BSS/OSS vendors will deliver the standards
that service providers approve and specify.
Service providers must apply pressure to
ensure that BSS/OSS solutions match digital
services strategy and process definitions.
The only way to ensure that vendors will
implement an integrated solution is to make
open interface standards, data models, pre-
integration and accessibility requirements part
of every procurement. All too often, service
providers include only minimum requirements
for integration and interoperability in network
and BSS/OSS requests for proposals (RFPs).
Not only must these requirements be
included in RFPs, they must be selection
criteria; and vendors that do not comply—
lose. Openness must be mandated across
operations and with all BSS/OSS vendors and
partners. Data is collected and used by multiple
systems and commonality is essential to
eliminate duplication and errors.
www.tmforum.org

Openness must be mandated across operations
and with all BSS/OSS vendors and partners
Merge IT and networking
IT must be engaged. Any divisions between IT
and the network operations center have to be
organizationally eliminated. Network engineers
cannot blindly acquire network hardware and
OSS without considering the impact on the
rest of operations and the business. Likewise,
IT cannot continue to insist on developing and
maintaining multiple data models, interfaces and
endless BSS/OSS integration.
IT can manage procurements for off-the-shelf
capabilities while strictly enforcing corporate
standards, and IT should be developing unique
apps for customers and integrating partner
offerings and content rather than building
BSS/OSS.
Service providers must solve the
fundamental problem of defining and
implementing common network and service
element interfaces, common data models and
common operating procedures across the
business.
A large part of the change and automation
efforts associated with delivering BSS/OSS
for digital services is to simplify operations
functions and deliver correlated answers, not
just data, to all of operations.
“Service providers must solve the fundamental problem of defining and implementing
common network and service element interfaces, common data models and common
operating procedures across the business.”
www.tmforum.org
Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.
Consolidating BSS/OSS and data
By consolidating BSS/OSS solutions and data,
participating in standards bodies, and insisting
on implementation of specific transformational
processes as part of BSS/OSS procurements,
service providers will ensure that the BSS/OSS
solutions supporting digital services meet both
service provider and customer requirements.
As service providers come to grips with the
fact that all communications is data, the threat of
commoditization hangs heavy over them. There
is, however, a silver lining. First and foremost,
service providers are trusted providers that have
extensive brand recognition and market clout.
There are numerous applications that perform
better, are more secure and can be more readily
maintained if connectivity is bundled in from the
start.
Service providers are in an advantageous
position to help businesses and developers of all
types to create and deliver connected devices
and applications that are economical, reliable,
secure, profitable, and interoperable worldwide.
Implementing optimized business processes
and BSS/OSS solutions for the definition,
delivery, and support of digital services ensures
that they will succeed.
INSIGHTS RESEARCH 35
 Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.

BSS/OSS IN THE ERA OF

DIGITAL SERVICES

What’s new in Frameworx 13.5 and how can it help you?

Frameworx 13.5 centers around the crucial issues facing
service providers of all kinds in an open digital economy
which are reflected in TM Forum’s three Strategic Programs:

n Agile Business and IT Program focuses on improving

operational agility while reducing cost and risk;
n Open Digital Program is designed to drive new digital
services’ revenue growth; and
n Customer Engagement Program targets better market
share retention and greater growth.

Frameworx was created by and is constantly evolved to meet

changing needs of TM Forum’s members. They include all
sorts of service providers, software suppliers, integrators,
universities, and enterprises. Members set priorities and
lead collaborative project groups to implement the work and
create updates to the standards and best practices.

While Frameworx major releases are published every six
months, some features in Frameworx 13.5 were developed
in short-term agile-style development projects and have
been made available to the broader membership several
months in advance.
Frameworx releases cover the full suite of TM Forum’s best
practices and standards including our core Frameworks –
Business Process, Information, Application, and Integration
– as well as our Business Metrics and our broad range of
best practices. Frameworx 13.5 is no exception with 47 new
items introduced across the full range.
Facts about Frameworx 13.5:
n 27 projects were chartered to create this release;
n 141 companies participated in creating the deliverables;
n About 380 individuals joined projects in the community –
approximately 40 percent of them were active contributors,
while the rest had the opportunity to observe and review,
comment or ask questions.
New B2B best practices and APIs
TM Forum has defined a comprehensive set of Accelerators
– tools, methodologies and standardized interfaces for
creating and managing partnerships in a B2B2X environment
with multiple partners, in a repeatable manner, and at
industrial scale. They include new REST 2 application
program interfaces (APIs) for catalog management, trouble
ticketing and partner ordering.
Big Data Analytics Guidebook
Unleash the power of big data held by service providers
using the new reference model, methodology and more
than 30 use cases. This document defines a crucial linkage
between business value that analytics can unlock and the
big data technologies and information sources represented
in the document’s Big Data Reference Model.
Threat Intelligence Dashboard and ROI Calculator
The Cyber Security Readiness Dashboard uses newly
defined metrics to communicate Cyber Security readiness
for C-Level management. The dashboard reduces risk by
providing insight into issues that could have financial, legal/
compliance and human safety impacts.
Customer Experience Management
Take a new approach to managing customer engagement
with integrated Maturity Model, Lifecycle Model and
Metrics. This new version of the Guidebook (incorporating
250 new metrics) marks the first step in the transition from
managing customers' experiences in a snapshot piecemeal
way toward managing engagement with the customer
across their entire lifecycle.
Core Frameworks Enhancements
There have been key new additions to all four Frameworks
to extend their application and make them more immediately
useful. For more information about how they apply to you and
your business, please see www.tmforum.org/Frameworx13.5

36 INSIGHTS RESEARCH www.tmforum.org

 Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.

inform innovate accelerate optimize

INNOVATE
CATALYSTS · COLLABORATION · AGILE WORKSHOPS

By bringing the industry together to identify

and solve common problems, we enable rapid
and successful innovation, striving to
challenge conventional thinking by bringing
disruptive ideas to the table.

www.tmforum.org/innovate

Sponsored feature
If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them
– The Mutual Benefits of Ops and Aps Partnerships
Mohammed Sha,
Director of International Marketing Communications,
AsiaInfo-Linkage
www.asiainfo-linkage.com
In this article we discuss the evolution
of OTTs from threat to opportunity and
the technology required by operators
to tap the immense potential of OTT
partnerships.
Mobile consumers around the world
have swiftly embraced over-the-top
applications which have now evolved into
a major threat to operators, with their
impact spreading throughout the telecom
value chain. Most operators agree that
partnering with OTTs is the best way
forward1. The question facing operators
now is: what’s the best approach to
materialising these partnerships? In
particular, what IT tools can make
partnerships work effectively, and are
there any proven tools and platforms
available in the market today?
The Market Drivers For Change
The threat of OTTs will not be quashed
by mobile operators blocking OTT
services, or by trying to stimulate usage
of traditional services. Operators must
partner with OTTs and offer combined
(‘mash-up’) services. Partnering with
OTTs should enable operators to cease
being a mere delivery channel, and
gain a place on the app revenue chain.
Moreover, with services in the open
market evolving fast, and consumer
behaviors shifting faster, partnering will
enable operators to formulate business
models that are nimble, adaptable and
mutually beneficial to all parties.
But why would an OTT wish to
partner with a telco? Operators possess
38 INSIGHTS RESEARCH
Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.
qualities and capabilities that OTTs
need, but which many cannot attain
independently: established customer
and billing relationships; comprehensive
customer behavioural data; and advanced,
reliable business and operations support
systems.
OTT developers have their own
challenges: with hundreds of apps
launched each week, most face
discoverability issues and maintaining
popularity is a constant battle. Profitability
for these players, both big and small,
is becoming a long-term issue and at
present many OTTs lack a successful
business model. Furthermore, many
OTTs lack the BSS/OSS systems required
to offer an attractive, dependable and
chargeable service. Therefore, there
lies an opportunity for operators to
mould this industry in its own image by
providing advanced marketing, billing and
distribution.
The Next Step Forward
While there is fairly wide agreement in
the industry about the need for mutual
collaboration between the operators
and the OTTs, the question is how can
such partnerships materialize? How can
operators obtain a long-term position in
the app revenue chain in a very efficient
and effective fashion? One of the proven
approaches has been to adopt an IT
platform that facilitates the open sharing
of resources. This enables operators to
easily provide the required marketing,
distribution and billing services to a large
number of OTTs, instead of having to
‘hand-crank’ the IT systems to support
each partner individually. In unlocking
the value of their network and IT assets,
operators can enjoy a new revenue
stream whilst OTTs can significantly
increase their subscriber base and deliver
an enhanced service to their customers.
Another benefit realised through a
collaboration platform is the ability to
converge products; a mash-up approach
of combining traditional communication
products with innovative digital services
/ content. For example, an operator could
partner with a music streaming app that
needs a new channel to market. Such a
collaboration would enable the developer
and the operator to offer a new, attractive
price plan for the service, charged directly
to the end customer’s phone bill.
A customer could sign up either via the
operator’s portal or via the developer’s
app; his order would then be fulfilled
automatically via both the operator’s and
the app developer’s business systems
using standardized Order APIs. The app
developer broadens its user-base, the end
customer has an enriched experience and
simpler billing, and the operator obtains
additional revenues through settlement
with the developer for the value added to
the service.
Multi-party collaboration can prove
to be a massive headache for IT
departments but these platforms are
designed to eradicate such complications.
Integrated within the operator’s BSS
systems and network capabilities, the
www.tmforum.org
 Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.

platforms act as an intermediary, vastly

simplifying the sharing of resources.
Moreover, developers and operators
have their own respective web-based
interfaces, allowing management of their
roles, users’ profiles, and verification of
revenue settlement, in order to be both
efficient and transparent.

Proof Of The Pudding Is In The Eating

AsiaInfo-Linkage’s award-winning2 Veris
Open Operational Platform (O²P) has
been enabling operator/OTT partnerships
in China for years. China Telecom has

2
OP
been using this solution since 2011 as a
B2B collaboration platform which enables
them to add significant value to OTT
partnerships with China’s large internet
players.
At China Telecom, O²P helps over
20 OTTs to converge their digital
service products with the operator’s
communication products across fixed, ensures that operators can easily scale It is evident that OTTs are a major
mobile and IPTV services. It has also the number of partners they can work force that operators can no longer hope
allowed OTTs to use the operator’s with. Its capabilities vastly reduce the to stamp-out. Partnering with them is
network assets (eg SMS gateway), and complexities of engaging with multiple potentially beneficial, but it is essential that
back-office systems (eg Billing, CRM, partners and ensure developers can BSS/OSS vendors offer out-of-the-box,
BI, etc.) to enhance their services and to fully utilize the resources operators have proven and comprehensive IT solutions to
promote and monetise them at a scale to offer, at a fraction of the cost that facilitate such collaborations. These tools
and precision that was not previously would have been incurred without a are essential to enable operators to thrive
possible. While these APIs are provided collaboration platform. in the new digital economy.
for free, and product convergence is
also made available to the OTTs, China
Telecom claims a percentage of revenue
collected from end customers.
O2P is built to support a variety of
retail and wholesale business models 1
Analysys Mason, ‘Digital economy strategies: new revenue streams, new operations’ webinar, November 2013
2
Veris O2P was part of a TM Forum Catalyst project which won the Greatest Adoption of Frameworx award at TMF’s Digital
between operators and OTTs. Its design Disruption, 2013 event.

www.tmforum.org INSIGHTS RESEARCH 39


Sponsored feature
Get Real about Real-Time
Communication Service Providers
(CSPs) thankfully are entering an era of
digital services monetization, offering
a ray of hope despite the ongoing
margin pressure on traditional voice and
messaging services. In the era of digital
services, possibilities are seemingly
endless. Capitalizing on them requires
CSPs to get real about real-time. The
hallmarks of successful digital service
monetization—personalization, enhanced
customer experience, and revenue
optimization—all depend on real-time
capabilities to attract, nurture and retain
valuable customers.
Why It’s Time to Get Real
The ways of yesterday won’t enable
the profitable growth that will enable
CSPs to compete effectively in a
changing communications market. Voice
margins have eroded; all-you-can-eat
is unprofitable; and new competitors
increasingly skim the highest value
activities. The good news is that the
tools exist to deliver digital services
opportunities to CSPs. Gartner predicts
that digital services will account for 15%
of leading CSPs’ mobile revenue by 2017.
Cloud-based applications, content,
media and entertainment, mobile
payments, machine-to-machine (M2M),
automobile telematics, security, and
mHealth are just a few of the diverse
digital services to be exploited in a
CSP’s service portfolio. Each is ripe with
strategic possibilities. And with each in
the foundling stage, it is unlikely that
any one of these digital services will
dominate the others in the near future, in
40 INSIGHTS RESEARCH
Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.
terms of growth or revenue. A CSP must
experiment with a rich mix of them all to
find the optimal bundle that matches its
brand and serves its market.
Customer Experience
With a seemingly insatiable appetite for
the digital lifestyle, both as individuals
and business consumers, consumers
drive the pace and ubiquity of digital
services. They expect a good experience
across a wide range of activities to make
their lives simpler, more efficient and
effective, and more enjoyable.
The term “customer experience”
describes a consumer’s perception of
using a particular digital service. The
broader business objective of Customer
Experience describes a focus on the sum
of all customer experiences during their
relationship with a service or supplier. In
both cases, the bar is continually being
raised. Customers expect to receive
value, be recognized as individuals
and be presented with personalized
offers and experiences that are relevant
to their personae and the context of
what they are doing at the moment.
These expectations can be met only
through real-time customer experience
processes.
We all know that Apple has set the set
the standard for pairing an intuitive user
interface with a vast content ecosystem,
supported by a seemingly seamless
delivery platform. Today new ecosystems
are evolving that span geographies,
industries, and verticals to extend
relevant, contextual, and personalized
customer experiences in more domains.
From entertainment recommendations
based upon your preferences, to real-
time re-routing of your commute around
traffic back-ups, to enabling the remote
control of your home environment,
services combine information about
behavior and persona and marry it with
device, location, and other data to provide
an increasingly enriched experience.
Key CSP advantages in the digital
service arena
To deliver the movie, traffic and eHome
services mentioned above, the successful
CSPs must strike partnerships and have
a solid understanding of “adjacent”
markets. In fact, Communication Service
Providers are well-positioned to capitalize
in an increasingly complex ecosystem of
partners. Long accustomed to partnering
to provide customers connectivity across
zones, CSPs have strengths that they can
capitalize on to attract participants and
add value to the delivery chain.
First, CSPs have extensive experience
with managing digital services as they
are being carried over and enabled by
their networks. CSPs are at the heart
of the networked economy. They
also have a history of integration and
interconnections, having successfully
fostered collaboration to advance
technologies, adopt standards and best
practices, and share revenue streams.
Second, CSPs have an existing
customer base. With established
customer relationships and
correspondingly lengthy historical
behavioral data, CSPs will have
comparatively reduced acquisition
www.tmforum.org

costs, and a strong initial position for
personalizing upsells and cross-sells, and
identifying the highest potential for other
contextually relevant services to deploy.
And the wealth of customer data that
they own, in and of itself, has growing
value as consumers’ expectations rise.
Finally, CSPs have invested for
decades to establish expertise in billing
processes and infrastructure. CSPs
know how to serve and collect from
customers on a recurring basis. In a
market where the barriers to entry have
been low, and developers are trying
to exploit first-mover advantage, new
players in the digital services arena have
invested energy and resources into
the common business fundamentals.
These players would welcome a partner
who can share an established expertise
and infrastructure; management of
customers, assets, services, and
financials are vital and can become an
attractive partner attribute.
The enemy within
The on-ramp to the digital services
opportunity brings with it more than
a few challenges. There is a rapidly
expanding number of well-funded
new innovators clamoring for wallet
share. And CSPs are under tremendous
pressure to cut costs to both match the
decline in traditional revenue streams and
to fund network expansions. TM Forum’s
research reveals that CSPs are up against
considerable financial constraints. Its
research revealed that 43% of CSP
respondents believe they will struggle
to implement, operate, and scale new
www.tmforum.org
Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.
digital services profitably, and 83% of
those who believed their legacy systems
are too complex or expensive to integrate
into the development of new products
cited BSS/OSS integration as their major
concern.
For CSPs moving swiftly into digital
services provision, the barriers to entry
may be the enemy within—outdated
legacy processes and business systems
which constrain innovation and cannot
support today’s customer experience
or ecosystem economics. Since BSS
will play a considerable role in creating
and maintaining a positive customer
experience and extracting the financial
benefits of a service ecosystem, some
scrutiny here is warranted.
It’s the Right Time for Real-Time
If Fortune favors the prepared, then this
will be especially true as Communication
Service Providers evaluate their BSS
in the era of digital services. Many
dimensions should be reviewed to ensure
their BSS is robust and flexible enough
to handle the scale and complexity of
the digital service arena, but perhaps
none more critical than its real-time
capabilities. Long discussed, the reality
is that very little happens in real time in a
CSPs environment even today.
Today, real-time is essential not only for
facilitating digital service provision, but
also in gathering and acting on real-time
intelligence to deliver a positive customer
experience. All of the hallmarks of good
“Real-time is a BSS-must-have
customer experience, like personalization,
relevance, and contextualization, demand if CSPs are to win in the digital
real-time capabilities. services arena.”
INSIGHTS RESEARCH 41

Sponsored feature
Get Real about Real-Time
Real-time BSS delivers three critical
processes necessary to a successful
digital services business model:
1. Concept to launch
2. Order to cash to settle
3. Customer acquisition to nurture to
retention
Concept to Launch
OTT players have already accelerated
the pace of innovation and consumers
demand that digital services providers
keep their foot on the gas. Real-time
capabilities are essential if CSPs are to
bring new products and services to the
market quickly—in days, not months.
And it will require automating these
processes so new offerings can be
launched at lower cost, AND with
lower risk.
Order to Cash to Settle
Integrated charging and policy
have provided CSPs with some of
the clearest examples of how BSS
operating in real-time supports
innovative revenue charging models.
From bandwidth boosts, to content-
and context-based pricing and
promotions, CSPs have just scratched
the surface with innovation in the
order-cash-settle process. Real-time
billing and charging, coupled with a
robust product catalog and process
automation, will allow CSPs to ensure
no money is left on the table—
facilitating everything from recurring
subscriptions and in-app purchases
to creative bundles and robust loyalty
42 INSIGHTS RESEARCH
Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.
programs. As ecosystem economics
play out and CSPs engage with more
and more partners, the scalability of
real-time systems will become an
indispensable capability as well.
Customer Acquisition to Nurture to
Retention
If you consider apps, media and
entertainment content, M2M, and
some of the other high volume, low-
value digital services, it is clear that
the customer acquisition, nurture,
and retention capabilities will differ
dramatically from the higher average
revenue per user and long payback
horizons that allowed carriers to
subsidize expensive handsets. In
the digital era, to meet and exceed
customer expectations, deliver
excellent services quality and pricing
with no surprises, and strengthen
customer intimacy to ensure repeat
usage, CSPs will require real-time
intelligence to “maximize revenue
potential from a short window of
opportunity.”1
Communication service providers
must adapt in order to profit and grow.
In the era of digital services it cannot
be overstated, BSS must have real-
time capabilities. No longer a “nice-
to-have,” real-time BSS provides the
necessary capabilities to explore the
use of innovative business models and
pricing, and focus on other key areas of
the value chain such as using customer
and network intelligence to enrich the
user experience. Real-time is a BSS-must
if CSPs are to win in the digital service
arena.
Creating New Digital “Frameworx”
Competing and winning in the digital
service era requires CSPs to transform
their BSS with the essential real-time
capabilities. Operators around the world
are using TM Forum Frameworx—a
set of practical tools to improve end-
to-end management of services across
complex environments, including the
digital ecosystem—to reduce costs,
reduce risk, and take advantage of
market opportunities in order to
emerge as leaders in the new digital
economy.2 Singleview Accelerate 8,
the world’s most advanced real-time,
charging, billing, customer and revenue
management system, has achieved
exceptional conformance levels to
TM Forum’s Frameworx Business
Process (eTOM) and Information
Model (SID) Frameworks. TM Forum’s
Frameworx Conformance Certification
recognizes the market-leading ability of
Singleview to provide the compatibility,
connectivity, and integration necessary
for providers to execute effective B/OSS
strategies and set the benchmark for
conformance in the industry.
CSG has long advocated and developed
open-architecture solutions that
adhere to globally accepted standards.
Comprehensive specifications and
requirements allow CSG’s extensive suite
of products and services to be easily
integrated into a provider’s ecosystem.
One leading global operator relies on CSG
Singleview and its massive scalability
www.tmforum.org
 Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.

and availability to support more than 60

million pre- and post-paid subscribers
across 8 countries, more than 600 million
real-time events per day, with five 9’s
availability. For another major Asian
operator, CSG is bringing 15 products
a month to market. Today, more than
60 of the world’s best-known wireline,
wireless, IP, and mobile network
operators rely on CSG Singleview for their
fully converged real-time prepaid and
post-paid charging and billing services.

Summary
As CSPs sit at the table with the chance
to carve out for themselves an even
larger piece of a growing digital service
pie, fortune will favor the prepared.
Seizing on the most lucrative digital
service strategies will require service
providers to have fortified their business
support systems to ensure they have
the real-time functionality to deliver the
valuable personalization, context, and
relevance that consumers demand across
their customer experience.
While real-time capabilities have been
available in the market for some time, and
many communication service providers
have included these capabilities in their
future requirements documents; it is time
to get real about real-time.

1
Heavy Reading, “Monetizing Data: The Role of BSS in the
Digital Revolution” November 2013
2
TM Forum’s Quick insights “New Services: Bridging the Gap
Into the Digital World,”

www.tmforum.org INSIGHTS RESEARCH 43

 Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.

Sponsored feature

The Drive for Idea-to-Install:

Becoming a Digital Business
Catherine Michel,
Sigma Chief Strategy Officer and TM Forum Executive Committee Member

We all know the story. We live in a digital world. Whatever type

of product they want, customers want it right now, right here, at
the right price, and personalized to their preferences. So how do
companies operating under the old regime cope?

Customers gravitate to those companies
that can personalize and deliver today on
the products and services that they want.
Whether your customer is a mass market
consumer in need of a turnkey product
or a large enterprise demanding complex
business data services, you need to be
able to respond and deliver quickly and
accurately. The bottom line is that the
digital world demands that businesses
make it easier and faster for customers to
buy from them.
Therein lies the drive for change for
traditional communications service
providers (CSPs), media and high tech
companies.
Large Business customers represent
one end of the spectrum. Providers
have had to invest a lot of money in
customizing what are seemingly one-off
and unique solutions for their customers,
especially at the network engineering
and IT project delivery levels. Hence the
operations to support large businesses
have always been non-standardized, labor
intensive and have long running cycles for
delivery. Those investments have been
seemingly worth it, however, given the
amount of revenue margins that could be
expected in return.
At the other end of the spectrum is the
Consumer mass market. Providers have
attempted to keep the offers simple and
standardized. As such, operations are
meant to be standardized and automated
to ensure consistency, quality and
low operating costs, taking advantage
of economies of scale against lower
revenue margins. However, the level of
customized infrastructure and the amount
of product proliferation in the Consumer
environment actually resembles Large
Business operations.
The net result is complexity and high
operating costs all around, neither of
which helps the growing demand to
support more automated personalization
and instant delivery in today’s diverse
digital economy.
The leaders are going Digital
Competing in the digital economy means
embracing the broader ecosystem at
work (examples being third party over-
the-top (OTT) providers and multiple
sales channels) and modernizing your
infrastructure to deliver on customer
expectations around this ecosystem:
n Respond quickly and accurately to
customer demand for new services
n Minimize the time and cost required to
bring new offerings to market
n Deliver new products to customers
accurately and on-demand
n Support personalization, selling and
delivery across multiple channels
All these objectives point towards
making it easier and faster for your
customers to buy from you.
Providers leading the change towards
a digital business are focusing on how
these objectives fit into their existing
infrastructure and identifying what
changes need to be made otherwise.
The Idea-to-Install approach
Higher customer satisfaction, lower
operational costs, faster time-to-
market, the agility to scale your service
offerings all depend on how connected
your selling, orchestration and delivery
processes are with your initial product
ideas. In other words, how do those
processes know what offers to make
available to which customers through
which channels, sellable at which price,
available and deliverable on which
networks, and supportable at which
levels of service? By being catalog-driven.
Being catalog-driven is the basis of
Idea-to-Install.
Idea-to-Install enables service providers
to evolve from disjointed and time-
consuming product development, order
management, and fulfillment processes,
to a fully integrated solution for right
here, right now, every customer, any
device, any channel. Idea-to-Install is a
catalog-driven approach that aligns the
enterprise-wide product/service/resource

44 INSIGHTS RESEARCH www.tmforum.org


specifications across the order capture,
delivery and fulfillment processes for
both the business and IT. The result is
a connected experience that makes it
easier for customers to buy from you.
Sigma is the pioneer of Idea-to-Install.
We base our product capabilities on the
pressures of the quickly emerging and
fast evolving digital economy. Our Idea-
to-Install portfolio spans product catalog,
cloud service brokerage, configure price
quote, order management, service
provisioning, service inventory and device
management:
n Rapid, catalog driven, new product
introduction across BSS/OSS domains
n Complete infrastructure for multi-
channel ordering
n Real-time, multichannel sales quote and
order capture enablement
n Availability & credit checks, resource
reservation/ allocation capability
n Accurate and complete order
automation and fulfilment
n Automated provisioning
n End-to-end order visibility and tracking
But we accept that the investment
made in existing BSS and OSS
infrastructure is vast and budgets for new
investment are tight. That is why we offer
a simple, modular approach to deploying
the capabilities of Idea-to-Install, using
www.tmforum.org
Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.
best-of-breed components that can be
integrated with your existing BSS/OSS.
Though we have the full portfolio, we
do not compel you to an all or nothing
decision. You adopt the components you
need to re-orientate your infrastructure.
What they all have in common is
that they are catalog-driven, modular,
implementable in shorter cycles, and
deployable in the cloud or on-premise.
Meaning the benefits are realizable in
weeks, rather than years.
Benefits of Sigma’s Idea-to-Install
With Idea-to-Install, Sigma helps service
providers to master what’s next in the
digital world:
n Decreased Time-to-Deliver
Automated new product introduction,
increased throughput on customer
orders through BAU quoting & offer
creation and rapid order processing
of multiple service requests across
multiple channels
n Decreased Order Fallout
Run-time product rule validations
through connected order creation and
decomposition, ensuring accurate
and concise orders down through
provisioning
n Cost Reduction
Minimized integration and processing
costs through catalog-driven,
standardized data references and
workflows, with emphasis on
configuration over customization
n Multi-Channel / Multi-Network Support
Channel specific rules and network
specific protocols abstracted from
application logic enabling cross platform
support
n Maximized Customer Satisfaction
Personalization without customization,
with real time validation and change
management guaranteeing customer
purchase success
About Sigma Systems
(sigma-systems.com or Twitter @SigmaSystems)
Sigma Systems is the pioneer in catalog-driven
Idea-to-Install products for Communications
Service Providers (CSPs), entertainment and
high tech companies. The company’s BSS/
OSS product portfolio spans cloud brokerage,
product & service catalog, configure
price quote, order management, service
provisioning, service inventory and device
management. Sigma products manage 100’s
of millions of services exceeding $150b of
products defined and installed at over 70
customers in 26 countries including Charter,
Belgacom, BSkyB, Chorus, Cox, Orange,
Rogers, Level 3, CenturyLink, TELUS, Bell
Aliant, American Movil, JCOM and ZON.
INSIGHTS RESEARCH 45
 Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.

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Sigma Systems is the pioneer in catalog-driven Idea-to-Install products for communication, media and
high tech companies. The company’s BSS/OSS product portfolio spans cloud brokerage, product &
service catalog, configure price quote, order management, service provisioning, service inventory and
device management. Sigma’s BSS/OSS products enable CSPs to design and deliver a complete suite
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46 INSIGHTS RESEARCH www.tmforum.org

 Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.

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Customer experience: Hitting a moving target

This latest, in-depth Insights Research report looks at how service providers are working to
INSIGHTS improve customer experience to differentiate themselves, increase profitability and expand their
RESEARCH businesses. The heart of this report is unique insights from in-depth interviews with service
September 2013 | www.tmforum.org
Free to tmforum members $495 where sold providers, and survey results, from around the world. The author, Rob Rich, focuses on mobile
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The report offers pragmatic recommendations about how to get the biggest benefits from
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Hitting a moving target
Sponsored by:
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Digital Life – After the hype, where’s the money?

This is a clear-eyed analysis of how the digital services market is shaping up after the initial hype
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of business. Expectations around the profitability of machine-to-machine (M2M) communications
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examples.
Analysis:
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The regulatory and legal framework will also have a big bearing on the profitability and viability of
Insights:
M2M services of all kinds – as detailed in the second section.
Digital disrupters
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The third element looks at how a number of digital disruptors are changing lives and business
Viewpoint:
KPN Group’s
Erik Hoving on
models. Coursera’s mission is to offer a free college education to everybody and make money.
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Exploring the evolution of digital services
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Less risk, less
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AND SUCCESS
We’ve seen the future. And it’s digital. In just
ten years, the way we communicate,
consume information and entertainment has
There are five core principles of the Initiative:
violations to ensure, for example, service closure was improved to handle 95 percent of instances
been changed forever. And that’s just the start.
From Argentina to New Zealand
The Digital Revolution is transforming our
within 30 minutes.
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TM Forum’s Digital Services Initiative focuses

on overcoming the end-end management
These and many more success stories are available free to everyone to download from
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challenges of complex digital services,
enabling an open, vibrant digital economy.

For more information on the TM Forum Digital Initiative visit www.tmforum.org/digital

DigitalServicesAD2012.indd 1 11/23/12 10:51 AM

Visit www.tmforum.org/researchpublications to find out more

 Report prepared for Tomasz Fidecki of Cisco Systems. No unauthorised sharing.

Everything that can be digital will be.

We’ve seen the future. And it’s digital. In just There are five core principles of the Initiative:
ten years, the way we communicate,
consume information and entertainment has
been changed forever. And that’s just the start.

The Digital Revolution is transforming our

personal and professional lives. We demand
simplicity, but the complexity behind our
interconnected digital lives is only growing.

TM Forum’s Digital Services Initiative focuses

on overcoming the end-end management
challenges of complex digital services,
enabling an open, vibrant digital economy.

For more information on the TM Forum Digital Initiative visit www.tmforum.org/digital