OS3 Suite Overview

The Operations Service and Support Suite (OS3) has been designed to meet the specific service management requirements of Communication Service Providers and Enterprise Telecoms departments.

The suite of products provides comprehensive out-of-the-box workflow based functionality for Trouble Management, Work Order Management, Site Management, Vendor Management, Change and Configuration Management. The suite also provides powerful graphical reporting and integration capability to help service providers address critical industry challenges such as convergence, quality of service (QoS) and to become ‘lean operators’.

Adherence to Industry Standards and Best Practices

A key aspect of the product suite is adherence to telecoms industry standards and best practices such as those set out by the Telemanagement Forum (TM Forum). This ensures current and future interoperability and integration with other telecoms industry solutions. Alignment with the TM Forum will also enable organizations to benefit from on-going TM Forum initiatives to enhance business models and meet new market requirements.

To support the continuing convergence of IT and Network operations, the OS3 Suite also embraces relevant service management standards and best practices set out by IT specific frameworks such as ITIL, COBIT and MOF.

Clients benefit from a commercial off-the shelf software suite that provides ‘the best of both worlds’ and supports interoperability between IT and Network infrastructures.

Intuitive browser based user interface

Given the complexity of telecoms infrastructure and the critical nature of service delivery, the OS3 Suite interface incorporates extensive client feedback in respect of usability and performance:

• Layout and functionality must be intuitive
• Specific usability requirements of NOC users
• One click simplicity
• PDA access for remote site workers
• Browser based access for all types of users
• Support for SaaS/cloud hosted implementations
• System must be fast and responsive

Graphical Reporting & Analytics

Powerful embedded graphical reporting and analytics provides comprehensive business intelligence and reporting capability. A range of Telecoms / NOC specific report templates are available out-of-the-box and can be further customized or new reports created.

Supports key eTOM Processes

The OS3 suite supports key service management processes as defined by the TM Forum’s eTOM Business Process Framework. These are particularly focused in the areas of Resource and Service Management & Operations and their intersections with the Assurance and Operations Support & Readiness domains (as indicated below).

Bridges the gap between traditional OSS and ITSM

Most if not all service management solutions available in the market today are derived from either a strong OSS background or a strong ITSM/ITIL background. Vendors of these solutions, particularly ITSM vendors, tend to make the case for absolute adoption of respective industry best practices such as ITIL.

We believe that OS3 takes a more balanced and pragmatic approach. The product suite has been specifically designed to manage telecoms environments and to be used by Communication Service Provider NOC users and engineers. However, the product suite also benefits from an underlying BMC ITSM architecture heritage that enables it to embody relevant ITIL best practice while recognising the fundamental functional differences such as support for Method of Procedure (MOP), geographical nature of telecoms infrastructure, alarm management and third party vendor management.

Compliance with TM Forum’s Information Framework (SID)

The objective of the TM Forum’s eTOM Business Process Framework is to encapsulate the entire range of business processes required for a Communications Service Provider to efficiently and effectively deliver its services to the market. For the framework to achieve these objectives, it requires an information repository that supports the integration needs of these business processes and the underlying system architecture. The structure of this repository is defined in the TM Forum’s Information Framework (SID) specification.

OS3 SID provides both an approach and some class enhancement to BMC Software’s Atrium CMDB platform to meet the requirements of the SID specification.

Standards based integration

Another important component of the OS3 Suite is the OS3 Integrator product which provides telecoms industry OSS/J compliant integration capability.

OSS/J became part of the TM Forum Interface Program (TIP) in 2008. The API’s are multi-technology based and include Java, XML, and Web Services integration profiles. The OSS/J standard provides the foundation for unifying legacy systems and new applications quickly and easily. It also reduces the ‘integration tax’ involved with integrating and maintaining systems.

Available On-Premise and SaaS

SMI Telecoms’ product solutions are available as either traditional On-Premise or ‘Software as a Service’. We also have an extensive Managed Services capability.