Autonomic QoS & Collaboration Systems

Published as Helping Systems Help Themselves, in Pipeline, July 2006

By Wedge Greene… Providing management systems robust enough to not just measure but to also assure QoS will require adoption of new management paradigm. This paradigm, evolving from the TMF’s NGOSS program and the work in SOA governance architectures, will rely foremost upon the collaboration of services for the delivery of management applications. Collaboration can also be extended to replace existing trouble ticket systems with a Groupware solution.

Getting it right: Proactive monitoring and response has been a core goal of Network Operations Centers (NOCs) for as long as I’ve been a part of telecom. The very first problem I was given when I moved into designing OSS systems was to “build a Frame Relay performance reporting system that will show users that data really is flowing over the pipes.” The business requirement was to preempt calls from customers who were confused about virtual circuit turn-ups. Soon after the first report was sent to a customer, our competitors jumped to match and better this ad hoc product feature; starting an escalation war that went way beyond original business requirements. So the whole data performance reporting industry was started in order to be proactive in satisfying customers. Rather ironic now, given how it turned out: thousand page performance reports headed by “top problem circuit” lists of dropped packets and low utilization - that actually were not problems (see Complex Systems, Part 2). In retrospect, we, as OSS systems designers got this solution attempt very wrong. But the business goal (better customer relations by being proactive) is still quite valid.

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Wedge Greene is a consultant for LTC International.