New report tackles the issues resulting from OSS/BSS complexity and examines how four CSPs solved these problems using Ontology's OSS/CAD.

London, November 4, 2009 – Today, Ontology Systems announce a custom report that describes the challenges faced by service providers as they undertake efforts to improve both OSS/BSS processes and solutions.  It examines the unique approach offered by Ontology Systems that can rapidly and inexpensively utilize existing systems and data to further those efforts, ease the transition to next generation service delivery, and make better use of existing OSS/BSS.  The report concludes with profiles of four service providers that are addressing urgent operational issues using the Ontology solution.

In setting the scene for the custom report, entitled ‘Taming the OSS/BSS Beast – Exploiting Existing Solutions and Data to Deliver Results’*, Nancee Ruzicka, Sr. Research Analyst – OSS/BSS Global Competitive Strategies at Stratecast noted: “Communication Service Provider business realities are changing rapidly.  The opportunity to deliver new, innovative services is limited largely by the ability of the business to create, manage, and bill for them.  Delays in bringing new products to market are no longer network issues.  Rather, the focus has shifted to the OSS/BSS platforms and the business functions that they support.”

In the report Ruzicka quickly cuts to the OSS/BSS complexity issues: “As a result of the continuous deployment of OSS/BSS stacks to support new services, there are multiple systems collecting, storing, and acting on the same data.  There are multiple instances of each customer, service, configuration, and transaction.  This data is often not aligned or reconciled and quickly becomes inaccurate.  So, in addition to multiple instances of data, it is entirely likely that much of the data is wrong.  Add to that the hundreds of customized interfaces that require continuous maintenance, modification, and testing and this approach cannot be sustained.”

The report singles out key instances where the ability to consolidate and accurately align OSS/BSS data is critical to customer satisfaction, revenue generation, and/or cost reduction.  Problem areas include:
•   Revenue leakage
•   Fraud
•   Service management and SLAs
•   Order orchestration
•   Service inventory reconciliation
•   Impact analysis and fault prioritization
•   Customer support and outage notification
•   Change management
•   Unified topology views for planning and design
•   Stranded assets

Benedict Enweani, Ontology’s CEO, commented: “The report is a great opportunity to share our experience over the past year with fixed line, mobile and next generation carriers who have used OSS/CAD to rapidly and inexpensively utilized existing OSS/BSS systems and data to ease the transition to next generation service delivery, as well as make better use of their existing OSS/BSS.”

Ruzicka neatly sums up the report by concluding: “Whether managing a transformation or solving pressing service management or revenue assurance problems, balance between long-term strategies and short-term pain is a must.  The Ontology OSS/CAD solution is an affordable, reliable tool that can be quickly implemented and rapidly delivers results using existing OSS/BSS systems and data.  Deploying a new system to address every new function or problem feeds the OSS/BSS monster rather than taming the beast.”

The full report is available for download from Ontology’s website at http://www.ontology.com/media-center/resources and a Live Webinar is schedule for 2PM UK GMT on Thursday 19th November, 2009 – Register at www.ontology.com