Operation Support Systems (OSS) represent the technical infrastructure that allows business such as ISPs to provide services directly to their customers through the use of software. The reader will gain enough understanding of, and confidence in, the domain of OSS that they will be able to ask about the OSS implications of any telecom service that they might come across in their day-to-day work as a telecom professional. The reader will also gain enough understanding that they will be able to determine which aspects of OSS they would like to know more about.

Klappentext

Places OSS software in the context of telecommunications as a business

Gives a concrete understanding of what OSS is, what it does and how it does it, avoiding deep technical details

Frequently relates OSS software to business drivers of telecom service providers

Inhalt

The book introduces and describes the software that is used to manage modern telecom networks. Such software is encompassed by the expression 'operational support systems" or OSS. OSS software provides the data that is necessary for the day-to-day operations of a telecom network including delivery of telecom services to end-customers. In addition to providing the necessary data, OSS software is increasingly responsible for issuing commands to the network infrastructure to activate new service offerings, to activate services for new customers and to detect and correct network faults. Cost imperatives have driven increasing automation in the operation of telecom networks. The need for new revenue streams forces telecom service providers to offer increasingly complex services, especially to enterprise customers. Cost-effective provision of rich services demands a central role for software and a minimal role for human technicians. Thus, OSS software is becoming central to the service offerings of telecom companies. Therefore, it is important for telecom consultants, sales people and managers to have some understanding of OSS software that manages telecom networks on a day-to-day basis. This book targets such people. The book also targets telecom engineers who are not familiar with modern OSS software. The book is designed to give a hands-on feel for OSS software. The reader should walk away with a clear idea of what it is like to sit down in front of an OSS application and make it do something. There is a large amount of literature which describes the goals of OSS software in engineering abstractions or in marketing jargon. This book aims to give the reader a concrete understanding of OSS. The reader will come to understand that OSS software is now a very real part of modern telecom operations and should be able to talk about it as such. Among its many strengths, the biggest strength of the book is that the subject area is timely. We are entering an eraof