Massive Scalability for 3G Wireless Services: How does OSS/J Fit Into the Picture?

For rationalizing their back-office systems, telecommunications operators are finding themselves between a rock and a hard place, and are scanning the horizon for solutions to help them get new footing. On one hand, they are faced with exorbitant IT system deployment costs. On the other hand,   the rollout of new MMS and 3G wireless services is causing a spectacular rise in transaction volumes and increased complexity,    creating the need for open, flexible solutions that allow them to adapt gracefully to a new scale of activity.

The OSS Through JavaT (OSS/J) Initiative offers an innovative, open API solution that can ease the difficulties of system integration, while ensuring the massive scalability of OSS/BSS systems and their ability to efficiently process exponential increases in mobile data services transaction volumes.

Michel Denis, OSS Practice Manager at Sun Microsystems, driver of the OSS Through Java initiative, and Fergus O'Reilly, Director of Product Marketing at Highdeal, an enthusiastic backer of the initiative, discuss how, in the coming months, OSS/J will help telecommunications operators meet the challenges and risks that are part of this new environment.  

Michel Denis, OSS Practice Manager, Sun Microsystems

Fergus O’Reilly, Director of Product Marketing at Highdeal.

Transaction Reporter: Can you tell us more about the OSS Through Java (OSS/J) Initiative   -  its aim and how it is set up?

Michel Denis: The OSS/J Initiative is essentially an alliance, a work group comprising companies at the forefront of OSS technologies. Member companies pool their expertise to help define and implement open and Java technology- based APIs. The goal is to accelerate the deployment of innovative, low-cost and easy-to-integrate OSS/BSS solutions.

Transaction Reporter: Who are the main players in the alliance?

Michel Denis: Sun Microsystems launched the initiative at the end of 2000. We've always been very involved in OSS systems, which is our leading telecommunications market. Over a dozen companies have joined up in the venture, including Nokia, NEC, Nortel Networks and Ericsson. A number of software vendors are involved as well, among them Highdeal, with its Pricing and Rating solutions.

Transaction Reporter: What type of problems does the OSS/J Initiative plan to resolve, and for whom?

Fergus O'Reilly: The main beneficiaries of the initiative are the telecommunications operators. Right now they have to integrate several different types of systems in order to manage their various back-office functions: rating logic, customer information, mediation, billing and rating. As there is no single standard, integration costs are prohibitive. They can account for to up to 80 percent of a company's total IT costs, compared to 20 percent for software license acquisitions.

Michel Denis: Telecommunications operators are also concerned about the growing industrialization of new services. MMS, for example, currently accounts for a relatively low volume of transactions, but some of its services are growing exponentially. The problem is in finding the right solutions as soon as possible. They must be well-adapted, of course, but even better, specifically designed for mass deployment and capable of managing high peaks of activity. Here is where we get into the idea of massive scalability.

Transaction Reporter: How does massive scalability affect software design?

Fergus O'Reilly: In order to ensure massive scalability, telecommunications operators must be able to boost their system capacity on demand by adding new servers in a distributed architecture environment. This type of solution is not only less costly and but also much safer: if one server fails, others can pick up. The software has to be adapted to this particular environment. Mediation software, for example, will no longer be required to   "push" a ticket onto a designated server, but instead to make it available to be "pulled" it onto the server that happens to be free at that given moment. The OSS/J APIs were specifically designed to fit these types of distributed architectures.

Transaction Reporter: If telecommunications operators will be the ones reaping the real benefits from OSS/J, why aren't they among the major players in your alliance?

Fergus O'Reilly: Standards have been developed in the OSS/BSS space before but were never really adopted. Maybe that is what has made certain companies skeptical, or at least put them on hold for the moment. But OSS/J is beginning to generate considerable interest because operators can clearly see the advantages in it for them.

Michel Denis: Several telecommunications operators recently joined the alliance, notably Vodafone, ATT Wireless and British Telecom, creating an advisory board and a new work group. Other new members will be announced in a few days, at the 3GSM World Congress 2004 in Cannes.

Transaction Reporter:   Where do you stand at the moment and what do you foresee in the future?

Michel Denis:   A good number of OSS/J APIs have already seen the light of day: Trouble Ticketing, Quality of Service, IP Billing, Inventory, Service Quality Management, among others. We expect to cover most of the eTOM (Enhanced Telecom Operations Map® of the TeleManagement Forum) model territory. We   also plan to implement Web Services technology for internal B2B operations. We've developed proofs of concept for a number of operators. The big challenge right now is in getting the idea accepted. There have been some encouraging developments. We are starting to see the OSS/J compatibility criteria appear in telecommunications operator specifications, for CRM and billing applications, for example.

Transaction Reporter: Why was Highdeal invited to join in the OSS/J Initiative?

Michel Denis: Highdeal is a first-rate player in its field. It has participated in many special events and developed numerous proofs of concept for telecommunications operators. Highdeal has the most advanced, open, "multi-threading" system in the world for real-time management of billing and rating for 3G services.

Fergus O'Reilly: Our software solution was designed from the very beginning with the aim of reducing IT system integration costs and TCO, while offering unprecedented flexibility and unbeatable performance. The ideas of open Web Services and Java technology-based APIs are in our genes!