Excelling at Telecom Services Provisioning!

To fulfill today's marketing strategies in the wireless and wireline domains, service provisioning plans require advanced and easily-configurable service fulfillment policies. These policies should rapidly execute and modify complex operations toward the service-enabling elements, and at the same time interact with IT systems effectively.

ActionStreamer™, the convergent service provisioning platform from INTRACOM TELECOM, responds to the aforementioned challenge by enabling mobile and fixed operators to introduce new, fast-time-to-market services across multi-vendor networks and multi-technology IT infrastructures.

ActionStreamer™ allows activating any service type by supporting off-the-shelf integration with external OSS / BSS systems, through:

• The most well-known northbound interfaces (e.g. Web Services and XML, CORBA, OSS/J, JMS and J2EE).
• Single or bulk service provisioning mode.
• Service-agnostic workflow engine (including transactional mechanisms), for the design and development of complex business logic.
• A rich library of ready-made network interfaces and protocols.

ActionStreamer™ is based on Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and incorporates an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) construct, which supports unlimited number of incoming service provisioning requests and thousands of simultaneous outgoing connections. The SOA architecture supports reusability, scalability and extendibility of the provisioning solution, whilst the Web Services / SOAP implementation of SOA allows the rapid and smooth integration with legacy systems.

Throttling and prioritization mechanisms ensure the load-balancing of requests in real time, when several requests are simultaneously executed (especially in the same network element). These mechanisms enable the simultaneous capturing of requests, from as many systems as required, without causing bottlenecks in the underlying network. Furthermore, ActionStreamer™ mechanisms ensure the maximum utilization of the available network elements connections.

The ActionStreamer™ convergent service provisioning platform incorporates unique characteristics, which include:

• Standard BPEL workflow modeling to allow rapidly introducing new business logic and advanced fail-over policies in a standardized and graphical fashion – no need for custom code.
• Flexibility to rapidly introduce or modify business logic and BSS / OSS / NEs interfaces through ActionStreamer™'s open Design & Development Framework – implemented workflows and interfaces are delivered to customer as part of the solution.
• Batch provisioning enabling the massive activation / deactivation of services in a scheduled manner.
• Auto discovery and reconciliation capability.
• Resource management and Enterprise Application Integration capabilities.
• Openness and transparency in solution deployment enabling easy maintenance and system extension. Workflows are BPEL 2.0-compliant and interfaces are Java Business Integration (JBI) compliant – each ActionStreamer™ interface supports its own WSDL interface and it is reusable by other systems following SOA and JBI principles.
• High level of performance and build-in mechanisms to ensure that network will always be in operational state.
• Monitoring tools to enable keeping track of all activities toward the network.

INTRACOM TELECOM has a vast expertise in the implementation of provisioning solutions for any customer service (i.e. voice or data) over any network technology: mobile 2G / 2.5G / 3G, CDMA, VoIP & POTS, NGN, IMS, xDSL, IPTV and WiMAX.

The ActionStreamer™ convergent service provisioning platform addresses the needs of fixed and mobile operators regarding the provisioning, or the network discovery of any service type, including:

• Data.
• Voice.
• TV.
• IP/MPLS.
• VPN.

The provisioning of the aforementioned services can be carried out over any telecommunications network, such as:

• NGN / IMS.
• xDSL.
• 2G / 3G / LTE / CDMA.
• IP/MPLS.
• IPTV.
• WiMAX.
• Digital Exchanges.
• SDH / PDH / Metro Ethernet.

ActionStreamer™ employs a pure Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and incorporates an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) construct, where the ActionStreamer™ modules – e.g. Validator, Deployer, Logger, Throttling, etc. – reside.

The ESB is used for module–to–module intercommunication and for allowing ActionStreamer™ to communicate with external upstream and downstream systems.

On top of the ESB, a standard BPEL workflow engine is responsible for decomposing the incoming service provisioning requests. This engine executes particular business logic, according to the service request type.

ActionStreamer™, as part of the OSS / BSS architecture, is at the core of the fulfilment infrastructure. It is responsible to transform the high-level business customer requests, from external OSS / BSS systems (i.e. CRM / Order Management / Inventory / EAI / legacy systems / customer portals, etc.), into actual service activations in the network, or in the supporting service systems, with no manual intervention.

The high-level ActionStreamer™ architecture is depicted below:

ActionStreamer™ offers open northbound interfaces to external OSS / BSS systems for activating / modifying / deactivating the offered business customer services.

As soon as a service request is received through the ActionStreamer™ GUI, specific workflow logic is executed by the incorporated workflow engine for decomposing the request to a number of discrete network operations (e.g. activate subscriber in HLR, download profile, download QoS parameters, etc.). These network operations are executed toward the underlying network, through the activation adapters and in a workflow fashion. Each network operation is translated by the respective activation adapter to specific command(s), which the underlying EMS can understand.

An important feature of ActionStreamer™ is its ability to interact with external inventory systems or databases where network topology information is stored. During activation, the inventory is queried to reserve the necessary resources, and eventually is updated to reflect the activation results. This is necessary in order to allow the deactivation of those services later. In cases where no such inventory systems exist for maintaining a map of the network resources, ActionStreamer™ can provide an internal database, which is controlled by the Persistor functional component, in order to capture a simple view of the network configuration.

Failures during activation are bound to happen. Examples include the addition of a username that already exists, or the exhaustion of physical resources (router ports, modems, etc.). ActionStreamer™ detects activation failures and rolls back to a safe state. Thus, when a discrete action fails, the executing business service stops and all the previous discrete activation steps are cancelled. This is done to ensure that the underlying network is in a consistent state and that the valuable network resources do not end up being allocated but are left unused.

ActionStreamer™ is responsible for the entire lifecycle of the business service request, from reception to decomposition to activation of sub-requests to rolling back, when and where necessary, and finally to closure of requests.