Three keys to developing and integrating telecommunications service management systems

With the deregulation of the telecommunication industry in Europe and the United States, communication and information services (e.g., multimedia entertainment services, educational services) are being increasingly delivered across value chains of network, service, and value-added service providers. The benefit of such interoperable services is the provision of "one-stop shopping" in which "tailored" services are delivered without their customers dealing with the multiplicity of underlying telecommunication services and network providers. The difficulty with such delivery chains is the complexity of managing these services across the different provider organizations (i.e., across both administrative and technological domains). These difficulties include achieving an understanding of business process across the organizations and the heterogeneity of the components to be (re)used to support these business processes in the organizations. This article examines three crucial elements in ensuring successful and flexible development of such service management systems-namely, a development process which is customized to support management system component development and component reuse; the development of business models capable of representing the underlying business processes for these systems; and an integration strategy designed to assist the flexible and timely cooperation of these management components both within a single organization (single administrative domain) as well as across organizations (multidomain).