Product Foundations - Telecommunications Service Operations Management - Companion Guide

Companion guide
Product foundations: Telecommunications Service Operations Management
Product foundations:
Telecommunications Service Operations
Management
1
2021
Table of contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 3
TSOM overview ....................................................................................................................................... 4
Event Management ................................................................................................................................ 6
Operational Intelligence ..................................................................................................................... 15
TM Forum Open APIs ............................................................................................................................ 21
Taking the product assessment .......................................................................................................... 26
Product assessment.............................................................................................................................. 27
Next steps .............................................................................................................................................. 33
Appendix ............................................................................................................................................... 34
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P1.0_EN_10.14.21 2
Introduction
Welcome to Telecommunications Service Operations

Management (TSOM) product foundations.
Telecommunications Service Operations Management uses the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and
machine learning (ML) to turn a tidal wave of events into a trickle of actionable alerts—cutting through
the noise, pinpointing service issues, and helping to rapidly identify and remediate the root cause.
After completing this course, you will know how to:
• Match each capability to a product.
• Summarize basic capability benefits and features.
• Explain how each capability works within the product.
• Find more information about each capability.
3
TSOM overview
Consolidate event data on the Now Platform for

evaluation and action. Streamline response to
telecommunications network issues with machine
learning and advanced analytics. Deliver high-
performance business services.
Detect network issues
Identify network issues and assess impacts

across multiple network monitoring systems.
Manage service health
Improve agent and customer experiences.

Proactively notify customers of service events
and empower agents with real-time service
status using operational intelligence and
machine learning.
Identify the root cause
Use the power of AI to turn a tidal wave of

events into a trickle of actionable alerts. Cut
through the noise to rapidly identify and
remediate the root cause of service issues.
4
TSOM includes key applications and capabilities that can grow as needs change.
Capability Description
Correlate events coming from several monitoring tools and gain

Event Management
insight into network resource and service health.
Identify anomalies as they cause service outages with AIOps and

Operational Intelligence
machine learning.
TM Forum Open APIs Create, track, and manage alarms with an industry-standard interface.
NEXT: EVENT MANAGEMENT
5
Event Management
Benefits of Event Management
ServiceNow Event Management helps identify health

issues and reduce noise across the datacenter on a
single management console.
Improve service availability
Reduce noise by correlating multiple events

into a single incident.
Turn events into actionable alerts that help

pinpoint the origins of service issues.
Understand the impact
Use Service Mapping to see which assets are

affected, then use that data to prioritize
responses.
6
Revitalize existing tools
Consolidate events from current monitoring

tools, reducing alert noise and service
impacts.
7
Features of Event Management
Noise reduction
Collect raw events and process them to

identify more qualified alerts.
Root cause insights
Rank service issues with automated root

cause analysis and speed up issue resolution.
Health dashboard
Assess business service performance at a

glance from the Operator Workspace
dashboard.
8
Automated remediation
Automate alert responses based on specific

criteria and resolve service issues faster.
9
Functionality of Event Management
Click + to expand section and view video
Event Management demo –

See how noise reduction, root cause insights, and automated remediation are used to resolve and
manage incidents in this demo.
Transcript
10
Go deeper into Event Management
Cut the noise

Business today is increasingly digital, and services are software-based. Network services are growing to
be increasingly complex where they end up spanning multiple domains and different monitoring tools.
With emerging business models, it is a competitive necessity for communications service providers
(CSPs) to know the business impact of an outage in real time, which network components deliver a
specific service, and how these components are connected.
Telecom network is the foundation for CSPs and the management of resources such as equipment,
devices, circuits, and even advanced services like SD WAN, all need to be maintained by service
operations teams. Unfortunately, the multiple disconnected monitoring tools that monitor the health of
network resources supporting the services often increase the challenge operations teams face. Each
tool generates its own siloed stream of data, and multiple tools often report the same issue. Service
operations teams are left to manually correlate this information to understand what is happening and
then struggle to assess the business impact.
Yet, even when staff manage to do this,
there is still a huge amount of noise—a
single issue can create thousands of events
that may have no business impact at all.
ServiceNow Event Management reduces

event noise generated by monitoring tools
using artificial intelligence for network and
service operations (AIOps).
AIOps applies machine learning and analytics to network operations functions. This dramatically
reduces the time and effort of manually correlating events by automatically adapting to evolving
service environments. Legacy event management systems that do not provide this level of artificial
intelligence leave CSP organizations to struggle with huge volumes of poorly correlated events.
Event Management brings events captured by existing monitoring tools into ServiceNow for
consolidation, analysis, and action. Events are then processed through filters that normalize and de-
duplicate the incoming event stream to generate alerts, reducing event noise by up to 99%. The user is
also presented with the service impact—which business services are affected and how badly they are
affected.
11
Check your knowledge about Event Management
With Event Management, users can choose to automate alert responses based on
specific criteria.
True
False
SUBMIT
12
Please match each feature to its description.
Identify the source of impacting issues

Noise reduction
and speed up resolution.
Assess business service performance

Root cause insights
at a glance.
Collect raw events and process them

Health dashboard
to identify more qualified alerts.
SUBMIT
Please fill in the blank.
_________ can be characterized as thousands of events generated by siloed tools

that may or may not have any business impact at all.
Type your answer here
SUBMIT
13
Additional information on Event Management
Product video
PRODUCT VIDEO
To dive even deeper, check out this video.
Product documentation
View all product documentation for the ServiceNow DOCUMENTATION
platform and ServiceNow applications for the enterprise.
Community forums
See what our customers are asking and get relevant COMMUNITY FORUMS
answers.
Case studies
See examples of the value Event Management brings to CASE STUDIES
our customers.
Family release enablement

Check out the latest release enablement to ensure you ROME RELEASE
have the most up-to-date information.
NEXT: OPERATIONAL INTELLIGENCE
14
Operational Intelligence
Benefits of Operational Intelligence
Proactively identify anonmalies before they cause

service outages with AIOps and machine learning.
Improve service availability and reduce MTTR

with AI/ML
Leverage machine learning and automation

to reduce event noise, identify likely root
causes, and automate remediation. Measure
service performance and identify anomalies
that could lead to service outages or
degradations.
Spot issues and prevent service outages

Proactively analyze telecommunications
network infrastructure to spot issues and
prevent service outages.
15
Functionality of Operational Intelligence
Click + to expand section and view video
Operational Intelligence process –
Get a brief overview of Operational Intelligence process and the various dashboards.
Transcript
16
Go deeper into Operational Intelligence
Understanding events with anomaly detection

Operational Intelligence, based on historical metric data, indicates anomalous behavior of continuous
integration (CIs) which events might not capture. Anomaly alerts can be promoted to regular alerts and
appear on the Operator Workspace and service health dashboard for preventive actions. Metric data
is collected by various data sources such as SCOM, SolarWinds, Netcool, or the Federos network
monitoring system. These monitoring systems collect metric data from the source environment regularly.
Operational Intelligence captures the
raw data from these monitoring systems
and uses event rules and the CMDB
identification engine to map data to
existing CIs and their resources. The data
is then analyzed to detect anomalies and
to provide other statistical scores.
Operational Intelligence uses historical metric data to build statistical models. These models facilitate
projection of expected metric values along with upper and lower bounds. Operational Intelligence
then uses these projections to detect statistical outliers and to calculate anomaly scores. Anomalies are
scored on a range of 0-10. High anomaly scores for CI metrics can indicate that a CI is at risk of causing
a service outage.
Terms used with Operational Intelligence
Function Description
A metric such as” % Free Space” or “Current Bandwidth” that can

be measured by a data source for a CI. For each data source, you
Source metric type can choose which of all possible source metric types are
processed. For example, there are about 380 source metric types
that are active by default for the SCOM data source.
Data that is outside the control bounds is considered a statistical

outlier. These outliers are used to compute an anomaly score,
which is a value between 0–10 that indicates the degree to which
Anomaly
the metric appears unlikely. When an anomaly score is above a
threshold, an anomaly alert is generated. Anomaly alerts are
reported separately from regular IT alerts.
17
A component of a CI that consists of multiple individual

Resource components of similar type, where each subcomponent can be
monitored separately.
A series of values (such as metric values) over a time range,

associated with a CI and a metric type. Because an anomaly
score is evaluated for each metric, the series of anomaly scores
Time series over a period of time are also a time series. Time series are
computed by the statistical model built for a metric data series,
and are used with metric data values, anomaly scores, and upper
and lower control bounds.
18
Check your knowledge about Operational Intelligence
Which of the following best describes Operational Intelligence?
Reduces event noise generated by monitoring tools using Artificial Intelligence for IT
Operations.
Helps organizations manage work tasks performed on location.
Indicates anomalous behavior of CIs which events might not capture.
Provides connected digital workflows that give new hires everything they need to succeed
from day one.
SUBMIT
19
Additional information for Operational Intelligence
Product video
PRODUCT VIDEO
To dive even deeper, check out this video.
Product documentation
View all product documentation for the ServiceNow DOCUMENTATION
platform and ServiceNow applications for the enterprise.
Community forums
See what our customers are asking and get relevant COMMUNITY FORUMS
answers.

NEXT: TM FORUM OPEN APIS
20
TM Forum Open APIs
Benefits of TM Forum Open APIs
Create, track, and manage alarms with an industry-

standard interface.
TM Forum standards enable proactive experiences
ServiceNow leverages TMF642 API for alarm management, which provides a seamless
standards-based integration to any network monitoring platform in order to leverage
data in a standardized fashion.
21
Features of TM Forum Open APIs
Align tmforum API for interoperability with any

network monitoring tools
CI classes specifically aligned for supporting

telecom network.
Out-of-the-box workflows for device, port, link,

softWAN failures, etc.
Task orders for easy auditing for network

teams.
Resource service customer mapping
Has intelligent case creation and integration

to work orders.
22
Go deeper into TM Forum Open APIs
Automating service assurance with ServiceNow

At ServiceNow we believe that behind every great experience is a great workflow. As CSPs begin to
reimagine the customer experience to one that proactively informs customers and resolves issues as
they occur, it’s critical to connect the customer and agents to operations and the network in a simple
and streamlined way. TM Forum’s Open API standards ensures interoperability in the evolving digital
ecosystem. As the industry continues to transform, these standards allow CSPs to evolve a component
of their architecture without disrupting the entire ecosystem.
With ServiceNow, CSPs can leverage and enhance existing network planning and inventory tools by
consolidating all network data into the ServiceNow service-aware configuration management data
base (CMDB).
Think of the ServiceNow CMDB as the service

contextualization layer that brings together
data from network planning, inventory, and discovery tools.
The CMDB is relationship

model that provides
information like resources
used, services running on top
of those resources, and the
relationship between
different network
technologies and domains.
ServiceNow also functions in

the service operations layer
working and integrating with
the various tools in the NOC. The business context and instrumentation across a variety of domain-
specific network monitoring tools is the key domain where ServiceNow helps increase efficiency in
operations for a CSP.
23
With a single-pane view, CSPs can now increase productivity while reducing mean time to repair
(MTTR). Proactive notifications can now be delivered to the customer via the channel of their choice,
improving Quality of Service (QoS) and reducing service level agreements (SLA) and operational level
agreements (OLA) breaches. Further, resolution can be automated using assurance workflows tied to
field technicians for increased effectiveness and reduced fulfillment time.
24
Additional information on TM Forum Open APIs
Data sheet
DATA SHEET
To dive even deeper, check out the TSOM data sheet.
White paper
WHITE PAPER
Learn about TM Forum in this white paper.

NEXT: ASSESSMENT
25
Taking the product assessment
About the product assessment
• You must pass with an 80% score for this course to show as completed.
• You can go back and review the sections if you answer incorrectly.
• You have unlimited attempts to pass the assessment.
START ASSESSMENT
26
Product assessment
START QUIZ >
27
01/05
Which of the following best describes Operational Intelligence?
Provides connected digital workflows that give new hires everything they need to succeed
from day one.
Indicates anomalous behavior of CIs which events might not capture.
Helps organizations to manage work tasks performed on location.
Reduces event noise generated by monitoring tools using Artificial Intelligence for Service
Operations (AIOps).
SUBMIT
28
02/05
With Event Management, users can choose to automate alert responses based on
specific criteria.
True
False
SUBMIT
29
03/05
Please match each feature to its description.
Identify the source of issues and

Noise reduction
speed up resolution.
Assess business service performance

Root cause insights
at a glance.
Collect raw events and process them

Health dashboard
to identify more qualified alerts.
SUBMIT
30
04/10
(True/false) Noise can be characterized as thousands of events generated by siloed

tools that may or may not have any business impact.
True
False
SUBMIT
31
05/05
Which of the following is NOT a capability of Telecommunications Service Operations

Management?
Detect network issues
Manage service health
Manage agile planning in one place
SUBMIT
32
Next steps
If you have passed the assessment with a score of

80% or greater, you may now exit the course by EXIT COURSE
clicking the button.
If your score on the assessment is less than 80%, you

will need to take (or retake) the course and the BEGIN COURSE
assessment.
33
Appendix
Video transcript #1
Event management demo

As an operator, Naomi notices in her operator dashboard that a few services are reported with alerts.
She can group, sort and filter the data in multiple ways with Operator Workspace. For example, she has
a private view that shows all of her tag-based services, which are services built using tags to create a
Service Map quickly and easily. Back on her default view, she can also filter the services by a specific
alert to see which services are actually impacted by that alert. She's going to start by looking at her
Order Status service. She sees that there are multiple alerts that are affecting this service, so she'll drill in
to see the details.
Here, she sees a single related alert that's been grouped together from those multiple independent
alerts. This is already a good example of how noise is reduced so that she doesn't have to look at
multiple applications or multiple alerts at the same time. She drills into the group alert and sees on the
Overview tab a lot of information that gives her a head start right off the bat. She sees a list of the alerts
in the group, the affected configuration items, already a high-level list of probable root causes, as well
as the impacted services. On the Details tab, she's going to get some really good information about
how these alerts have been grouped and why. When she scrolls down, she can see a timeline of how
the alerts were grouped together. And she can also see that an incident has been created for her. So
that's a process that she doesn't have to go through on her own. Since this is a group of independent
alerts, she wants to see additional information about those secondary alerts that have been grouped
together. Here, she sees several alerts that have been grouped together from multiple sources. AIOps
takes a look at repeating patterns of metrics and sources that occur within a specific period of time
repeatedly, and then create patterns so that when it happens again, they'll automatically be grouped
together the next time. She's interested in taking a look at additional information on this top alert. This
alert was generated from ServiceNow's Agent Client Collector.
On the Overview tab, we see some additional widgets that have been added in Quebec. We have top
alerts, which includes similar and repeated alerts, as well as top incidents, which are for similar incidents
on the CI, as well as incidents on related CIs. What she's most interested in is looking to see if there have
been some similar alerts in the past. She does see that there is a similar alert generated by the ITOM
Agent and she wants to get some additional information. The main thing she's interested in is how this
particular alert was resolved. So, she takes a look at the task, or in other words, the incident that was
created and looks at the Resolution Information. She sees that the support engineer removed the log
files from the temporary directory in this particular case. That's a great hint for what she can do moving
forward on this particular grouped alert. She heads back to her secondary alert and looks at additional
information regarding the metrics that were gathered by the Agent Client Collector. These metrics
gathered by the Agent Client Collector are done in real time and also include a dynamic threshold that
lets her know when a particular metric is an anomaly.
When it's actually outside the normal bounds of that particular metric. This is really key to show whether
something has just increased due to normal increase activity, or whether there's truly something going
on that needs her attention. She heads back to the group alert and now it takes a look at the probable
root cause. Probable root cause is generated through machine learning and patterns and looks at
recent changes, as well as alerts and incidents to generate a list of probable root causes, along with
confidence scores. Here, she sees that there are two possibilities for probable root cause. Now, one
thing that she noticed was that there was a log file that had been changed and she wants to get some
information here on this unauthorized change that had been detected. As part of the Service Mapping
integration with ITSM, the Change Management application receives an event notification when an
unauthorized change is detected and creates an emergency change. The Discovery process identifies
34
a change on a specific CI property. Here, we're showing the creation of an unauthorized change to
show how Discovery identifies the change in the configuration file and then opens up that emergency
change request.
In addition, Naomi can calculate the potential risk to this particular change using the risk factors that
have been established within ITSM. Back on the group alert, Naomi can take a look at Agent Assist,
which provides knowledge results driven by machine learning. She finds an article that she thinks is a
good match for this particular incident. Here, it gives a recommendation to clean the logs to address
this particular alert. She can then attach this knowledge article to the alert where it's reflected on the
activity stream.
Naomi wants to get some additional details about the unauthorized change. So, she's going to go back
to the service and open the Service Map. Here, the Service Map shows the CIs and their relationships
within our particular service. It also provides information on related incidents and alerts for those CIs.
She's going to take a look at the advanced Service Map. And what she'll do here is be able to
compare values for the log entries that have been changed. She knows that this change was on the
Oracle database. So she's going to select the database and then click Compare. This opens up a new
version of the Service Map that shows any updates during the timeframe that was specified on the
previous screen. When she selects the Oracle database, the Oracle CI, and then scrolls down, she sees
a list of the tracked configuration files and it shows which particular configuration file has been
updated. When she clicks on it, she sees a comparison between the values in that configuration file. She
sees that tracing has been turned back on, which is what has reduced the amount of free disc space
for the server. Back on the group alert, it's time for her to take action. She notices that there's a
remediation action already offered to her as an option. So she decides to run the remediation flow that
removes the log files as was the recommendation. As the flow continues to run, the space is opened up
on the server, and then one by one, the services that are impacted by our particular alert return to
green.
Video transcript #2
Operational Intelligence process

Now let's take a look at the Operational Intelligence process. At the start, OI connectors on ServiceNow
MID Servers on your network collect performance metrics from monitors on your system, like SCOM and
SolarWinds. Like Event Management, OI uses event rules to bind individual metrics to specific CIs. OI
components on the MID Servers normalize the metric data based on the event rules and send it to the
instance. OI uses the metric data to create statistical models of each metric, reflecting the normal
range of values for the metric. OI on the MID Servers continually evaluates metrics from the sources
against the models to identify values outside the normal range or anomalies. OI assigns an anomaly
score to indicate the severity of each anomaly.
For anomalies that exceed a threshold, OI generates an anomaly event and sends it to the instance.
On the instance, OI uses event rules to create anomaly alerts based on the anomaly events, similar to
event management, as we saw earlier. OI can promote anomaly alerts to IT alerts. From here on, the OI
process is the same as Event Management. OI uses alert rules to create an incident, launch a
remediation workflow, or recommend a knowledge article.
Finally, let's look at some ways to view metric data and alerts. The Operational Intelligence Anomaly
Map gives you an overview of anomalies for individual CIs. In the list on the left, you can view the 10
current most anomalous CIs, a list of any CIs you choose, the CIs for a specific business service, or the
CIs in a specific CMDB group. The chart shows the anomaly history for each CI in the list, from earlier
time ranges up to the present. The color of each tile indicates the highest anomaly score for all the
metrics for that CI at that time. Point to a tile to see the details for that CI and time range and click a tile
to open the Metrics Explorer for the CI.
The Metrics Explorer shows the metrics for an individual CI. The list on the right gives you the same views
as the screen we just saw. The 10 most anomalous CIs, a list of CIs you choose, the CIs in a business
35
service, or the CIs in a CMDB group. Click a CI to see the metrics for that CI. The chart shows individual
metrics over time. To add a metric to the chart, just drag and drop it from the list. To see the value at
any point in time, just point to that time. You can choose a different time slice here or select a time slice
on the chart. You can change the settings to see the anomaly scores. You can even correlate multiple
metrics.
Remember the Event Management topology map we saw earlier? When you have Event Management
and OI together, the metrics pane lists the CIs for the service or group. Click a CI to see metrics for that
CI and click "View metrics" to open the Metrics Explorer for that CI.
Another useful view is the Anomaly Alerts list. This is a list of alerts generated from anomalies that OI
detected in the CIs in your system. Click any alert for more details, and right-click any alert and choose
"View Metrics" to open the Metrics Explorer for the CI for that alert.
36

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Companion guide

Product foundations: Telecommunications Service Operations Management

TSOM overview ....................................................................................................................................... 4

Event Management ................................................................................................................................ 6

Operational Intelligence ..................................................................................................................... 15

TM Forum Open APIs ............................................................................................................................ 21

Taking the product assessment .......................................................................................................... 26

Next steps .............................................................................................................................................. 33

Welcome to Telecommunications Service Operations

After completing this course, you will know how to:

• Match each capability to a product.

• Summarize basic capability benefits and features.

• Explain how each capability works within the product.

• Find more information about each capability.

Consolidate event data on the Now Platform for

Detect network issues

Identify network issues and assess impacts

Manage service health

Improve agent and customer experiences.

Identify the root cause

Use the power of AI to turn a tidal wave of

Correlate events coming from several monitoring tools and gain

Identify anomalies as they cause service outages with AIOps and

NEXT: EVENT MANAGEMENT

Benefits of Event Management

ServiceNow Event Management helps identify health

Improve service availability

Reduce noise by correlating multiple events

Identify the root cause

Turn events into actionable alerts that help

Understand the impact

Use Service Mapping to see which assets are

Revitalize existing tools

Consolidate events from current monitoring

Features of Event Management

Collect raw events and process them to

Root cause insights

Rank service issues with automated root

Assess business service performance at a

Automate alert responses based on specific

Functionality of Event Management

Click + to expand section and view video

Event Management demo –

Go deeper into Event Management

Cut the noise

ServiceNow Event Management reduces

Check your knowledge about Event Management

Please match each feature to its description.

Identify the source of impacting issues

Assess business service performance

Collect raw events and process them

Please fill in the blank.

_________ can be characterized as thousands of events generated by siloed tools

Type your answer here

Additional information on Event Management

Family release enablement

NEXT: OPERATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Benefits of Operational Intelligence

Proactively identify anonmalies before they cause