A decade or more after a new wave of software vendors stormed the market promising standards-based, plug-and-play solutions, service providers say they're still not speaking the same language.

During a next-generation OSS conference put on by IQPC last week in Boston, three of North America's largest operators offered their assessment of operations support systems (OSS) integration, which by all accounts these days includes business support systems (BSS) as well as traditional IT. It wasn't pretty.

A panel led by moderator John Petrie, vice president of business development for Progress Software, and consisting of Dan Druta, senior OSS integration architect for Cingular (now AT&T); Fabrice Cornet Libon, head of OSS integration for Sprint; and Clint Heckel, enterprise architect for Verizon Business, concluded that the problem is a basic one: semantics. Systems may now be talking the same language, but their grammar is still proprietary.

The industry has been trying to solve the interoperability and integration problems plaguing this segment of the market with various middleware solutions over the years, including enterprise application integration, enterprise service buses and the latest in service-oriented architecture (SOA). These are all ways of centralizing the many point-to-point interfaces required for different software solutions to talk to each other. But they are not the problem. In fact, they will be the solutions going forward.

Lorien Pratt, director of global OSS/BSS competitive strategies for Stratecast Partners, said 80% of service providers the company surveyed for a recent report are using one of these approaches, and 90% have some kind of SOA initiative under way. But, according to Pratt and the conference panelists, there isn't much sense moving forward with these solutions until the industry takes a step back and solves the problem of data integrity.

“If you don't have a common data model, you can't realize the benefits of SOA,” Pratt said. “Data issues and information integration issues are the underpinning for solving all OSS/BSS integration issues.”

Druta explained the problem this way: “We may have a standard from a data point of view or an integration point of view, but semantic mismatches still exist. Vocabulary is important and so is grammar. It's not about having the same words, but it's how you use those words that makes communication.”

Recognizing the basic communication problem, Libon said the 3- to 5-year goal at Sprint is to have a common information data model for the company. It is starting today with its revenue assurance and customer relationship management systems and will go from there. “Integration is not so much about OSS tools themselves but how we talk to each other from a data point of view,” he said.

“This is important. I don't know why the industry isn't talking more about it,” Pratt said. “Maybe it's boring because it's just data. [But] unless we get our data models consistent, integration will remain expensive and as high as point-to-point solutions.”

Heckel said reaching a common language was the most difficult piece of integrating MCI and Verizon. Although the problem of mapping systems gets better every year, he said, there is no single solution that works across the enterprise.

“Web services is certainly working for us in the service management area, but will it solve all our problems? Probably not,” Heckel said. “Gone are the days when someone starts a multimillion dollar initiative to get their hands around all their data. It's not going to work. The industry moves too fast.”

Norman Rice, vice president and general manager for CA and emcee of the event, said service providers have to take the initiative from vendors and begin to drive standards in this area. “If you are going to ask the vendor community to support a standard, you need to start with yourself,” he said.

Petrie said the panelists are beginning to make headway in that area. “Twelve to eighteen months ago, uptake in [TeleManagement Forum] standards was more advanced in Europe and Asia than North America, yet fast forward, and here we have three Tier 1 operators from the U.S. with a common theme and vocabulary for an integration approach,” he said.

ONLINE

Twice a year, Telephony brings you focused news on the latest technologies and issues in regards to IPTV. If you missed it, view Telephony's Guide to IPTV on our Web site.
www.telephonyonline.com/supplements