serve atonce activation manager rel. 5.0 product description

Nokia Siemens NetworksServe atOnce Activation ManagerRelease 5.0Product DescriptionApproved

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Serve atOnce Activation Manager release 5.0

The information in this document is subject to change without notice and describes only the product defined in the introduction of this documentation. This document is not an official customer document and Nokia Siemens Networks does not take responsibility for any errors or omissions in this document. This document is intended for the use of Nokia Siemens Networks customers only for the purposes of the agreement under which the document is submitted. No part of this documentation may be used, reproduced, modified or transmitted in any form or means without the prior written permission of Nokia Siemens Networks. The documentation has been prepared to be used by professional and properly trained personnel, and the customer assumes full responsibility when using it. Nokia Siemens Networks welcomes customer comments as part of the process of continuous development and improvement of the documentation.The information or statements given in this documentation concerning the suitability, capacity or performance of the mentioned hardware or software products are given “as is” and all liability arising in connection with such hardware or software products shall be defined conclusively and finally in a separate agreement between Nokia Siemens Networks and the customer.IN NO EVENT WILL Nokia Siemens Networks BE LIABLE FOR ERRORS IN THIS DOCUMENTATION OR FOR ANY DAMAGES, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO SPECI§AL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL OR ANY LOSSES SUCH AS BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF PROFIT, REVENUE, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY OR DATA, that might arise from the use of this document or the information in it. THE CONTENTS OF THIS DOCUMENT ARE PROVIDED "AS IS". EXCEPT AS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE MANDATORY LAW, NO WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT, ARE MADE IN RELATION TO THE ACCURACY, RELIABILITY OR CONTENTS OF THIS DOCUMENT. NOKIA SIEMENS NETWORKS RESERVES THE RIGHT TO REVISE THIS DOCUMENT OR WITHDRAW IT AT ANY TIME WITHOUT PRIOR NOTICE.This document and the product it describes are considered protected by copyrights and other intellectual property rights according to the applicable laws.The wave logo is a trademark of Nokia Siemens Networks Oy. Nokia is a registered trademark of Nokia Corporation. Siemens is a registered trademark of Siemens AG. Other product names mentioned in this document may be trademarks of their respective owners, and they are mentioned for identification purposes only.Copyright © Nokia Siemens Networks 2009. All rights reserved.

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Contents

1 Executive summary..............................................................................4

2 Introduction..........................................................................................62.1 Serve atOnce Activation Manager product briefly................................72.2 Benefits.............................................................................................10

3 Features..............................................................................................133.1 Flow-through provisioning..................................................................143.2 Service Order processing..................................................................153.3 Network topology...............................................................................153.4 Subscription awareness.....................................................................163.5 Network-initiated auto-provisioning....................................................163.6 Mass provisioning..............................................................................173.7 Service Management.........................................................................183.8 Integration.........................................................................................193.9 System monitoring.............................................................................203.10 System management.......................................................................203.11 Security...........................................................................................203.12 Performance, capacity and scalability..............................................213.13 Availability.......................................................................................21

4 User Interfaces....................................................................................224.1 O&M Suite.........................................................................................22

5 External Interfaces.............................................................................275.1 Northbound interfaces.......................................................................275.2 Southbound interfaces.......................................................................285.3 Interface to Network Management System........................................28

6 Integration Tools and Services.........................................................296.1 Integration Suite ..............................................................................29

7 Use Case Examples............................................................................347.1 Fixed Mobile Convergence provisioning............................................347.2 Voice service provisioning.................................................................36

8 Product Configurations......................................................................40

References and additional reading.....................................................43

Glossary................................................................................................44

Appendix 1 - Examples of network elements integrated to SAAM...46

Appendix 2 – Architecture...................................................................49


© Nokia Siemens Networks

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1 Executive summaryNokia Siemens Networks offers well-planned, optimized and fully integrated service fulfillment automation with its state-of-the-art software products and globally available professional services. The product of Nokia Siemens Networks for service activation is called Nokia Siemens Networks Serve atOnce Activation Manager ( SAAM ). Serve atOnce Activation Manager covers the whole process of enabling customer to use communication services, from receiving customer’s order from various channels to activating services in the network elements.

Serve atOnce Activation Manager supports provisioning of a wide range of network elements off-the-shelf from various domains such as mobile, fixed, cable and broadband. The product has been developed to meet future provisioning needs for fully convergent and all-IP based networks.

Serve atOnce Activation Manager enables operators to minimize the time and cost to adapt the fulfillment process for new services by being a very configurable and adaptable product. In addition local system integration work force can be utilized for integration of Business Support Systems (BSS) and 3rd party network elements to Serve atOnce Activation Manager.

Serve atOnce Activation Manager comes along with tools which makes it possible to easily adjust the product to operator’s specific business needs and environment.

Serve atOnce Activation Manager with its flexible workflow orchestration and integral services component enables phased approach for system consolidation, and this way helps operators to reduce the risks and upfront investments related to system consolidation.

Serve atOnce Activation Manager is based on standards such as Service Oriented Architecture Protocol (SOAP), OSS Through Java (OSS/J), Shared Information Data/Knowledge (SID) and complies to relevant parts of enhanced Telecommunications Operations Map (eTOM). Serve atOnce Activation Manager is fully compliant with OSS/J Service Activation interface. eTOM and SID are part of the New Generation Operations Support System (NGOSS) initiative promoted by TeleManagement Forum (TM Forum).






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2 IntroductionToday’s service providers are struggling with a variety of provisioning problems.

In mature markets service providers need to find ways to be more competitive, reduce operational costs and increase ARPU despite the growing complexity of services and underlying network technologies. Operators need not only to create attractive product offerings to their customers, but also to be able to create, deploy and activate the services to their customers quickly and correctly.

In emerging markets operators have similar problems, but, in addition, they need to be able to activate the services to a large number of subscribers fast and effectively to get business up and running. Mature service providers also need to be able to launch new services quickly to a large number of subscribers or a subset of subscribers. Figure 1 Introduces more in detail the operator’s key challenges and reasons.

Figure 1. Operators Key Challenges




Operators are constantly looking for ways to accelerate the introduction of new attractive services to improve their competitive situation in the market. On the other hand, there is constant pressure to decrease operating costs. To reach these objectives operators need effective tools with proper support for the operator’s service development and provisioning process. Automating service provisioning workflows brings operators the required speed with reduced costs.

By automating the service development and provisioning operators can reduce time-to-market and OPEX.

2.1 Serve atOnce Activation Manager product briefly

Nokia Siemens Networks Serve atOnce Activation Manager is a future-proof provisioning system for service and subscriber provisioning.

Serve atOnce Activation Manager is a centralised provisioning system. It supports multi-technology networks such as 2G, 3G, packet core, broadband, IMS, PoC and VoIP.

Serve atOnce Activation Manager is multi-vendor-capable. It supports Nokia Siemens Networks products and solutions and also 3rd party products and solutions.

Serve atOnce Activation Manager brings value to the operator through its zero-touch automated provisioning capabilities. Serve atOnce Activation Manager supports not only traditional flow-through provisioning but also self-service provisioning, mass provisioning and network-initiated auto-provisioning.

Serve atOnce Activation Manager provides flexible and efficient tools for defining services and provisioning workflows.

The main target of Serve atOnce Activation Manager is to be able to automate the service activation process so that subscribers can use services as soon as possible, as much as possible.

Serve atOnce Activation Manager provides capabilities for service configuration and service activation. The solution is independent of specific network domains or technologies.

Serve atOnce Activation Manager is part of Nokia Siemens Networks Service Management product portfolio, which helps network operators and service providers to bridge the gap between an innovative business opportunity and a successful subscriber service.



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Different service technologies and their evolution as well as service integration and consultancy services are important and a significant part of the complete Nokia Siemens Networks end-to-end solution.

Serve atOnce Activation Manager is a key component in Nokia Siemens Networks Integrated Provisioning Solution. Via its interworking with Nokia Terminal Management System (NTMS), the subscriber gets not only the service activated correctly and smoothly, but also the needed device settings to use the service.

The Serve atOnce Activation Manager has following main functions:

1) service configuration and provisioning workflow modelling (service management)

2) provisioning through Point-of-Sales, customer care call-centre or self-service portal (flow-through provisioning)

3) provisioning for a range of subscribers (mass provisioning)

4) provisioning initiated by the network (network initiated auto-provisioning)

Figure 2 Key capabilities of Nokia Siemens Networks Provisioning Solution




Serve atOnce Activation Manager is based upon standards such as the New Generation OSS (NGOSS) initiative. NGOSS is a TM Forum initiative to drive efficiency and minimise costs in telecommunication network operations. In addition, practical solutions are also gained from the OSS through Java initiative (OSS/J). The adoption of new generation standards means that providers and vendors can apply common process integration rules to the integration tasks that comprise business process engineering and re-engineering. They can also apply common and freely available implementation tools to put those rules into practice.

By using Serve atOnce Activation Manager, business support systems gain a standard interface to the network. The solution is compatible with NGOSS eTOM and SID standards. The Serve atOnce Activation Manager complies with only relevant parts of the models see Figure 3 . Compatibility is established through the full adoption of standard OSS Service Activation API, harmonised with SID and eTOM.

Figure 3 Serve atOnce Activation Manager mapping to eTOM processes



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2.2 Benefits

Operators are facing growing challenges in the area of service fulfillment, driven by the need to increase revenue and save costs.

Serve atOnce Activation Manager helps to face these challenges by providing a state-of-the-art subscriber provisioning system, which is technology- and vendor independent.

Serve atOnce Activation Manager enables increased revenue by:

Faster service development. There is a need to introduce more profitable services as well as to introduce them faster to stay competitive. Legacy fulfillment solutions have proven to be very costly and time-consuming when new services are to be introduced, hence deteriorating the business cases for new service introduction. Serve atOnce Activation Manager provides flexible and efficient tools for configuring new services and the provisioning process. Serve atOnce Activation Manager follows Tele Management Forum’s NGOSS principles, combined with an open, standards-based architecture to keep integration costs to an absolute minimum.

Loyal customers through reduced churn. Operators are facing increased churn, which demands ways of improving customer loyalty. A large part of churn is attributed to both the subscriber friendliness of new services and the proper functioning of the service. Service activation will play a major role in fighting churn, by ensuring that subscribers are always correctly provisioned in the network, but also by providing more intuitive ways to activate services, for example, through functions such as auto-provisioning and service discovery as well as self-service. Obviously, services that are easier to activate and that work correctly also generate more ARPU with the customers that stay with the operator. Serve atOnce Activation Manager was designed to support auto provisioning, and it also supports advanced mechanisms to ensure proper provisioning of all data required to enable the service for the subscriber. Through Serve atOnce Activation Manager’s interworking with the device management system, the subscriber experience is further improved, since also proper device settings are provisioned to the terminal, not only the service activation in the network elements.

Serve atOnce Activation Manager reduces costs by:

Process automation. Process automation becomes increasingly important. More people involved and more configuring to be made in multiple network elements and service platforms, makes room for errors




and costs valuable time. Serve atOnce Activation Manager reduces the need for manual provisioning. Serve atOnce Activation Manager is designed to interwork with external systems such as CRM. It can be integrated to inventory and workflow systems and can adapt to any fulfillment process.

Correct provisioning. Incorrect provisioning can generate a lot of customer complaints, which causes a heavy burden on customer helpdesk as well as system administrator personnel. Not only does Serve atOnce Activation Manager have mechanisms in place to avoid incorrect provisioning, but it also provides tools to diagnose the subscription state of each individual subscriber at any given point in time. This can be presented in terms of business parameters rather than technical parameters only. The tool will also show the actual network provisioning state, rather than the agreed state. Serve atOnce Activation Manager helps to keep the business support system (BSS) consistent with the network in terms of services activated to subscribers. With Serve atOnce Activation Manager tools it is possible to define rollback scenarios for cases where the provisioning process fails.

Flexible service configuration. Services are continuously evolving, which means that services need to be updated regularly. The flexible data model of Serve atOnce Activation Manager (based on Shared Information/Data Model, SID) allows adapting to almost any new combination of services. Services and service logic can be configured using a graphical user interface. Also, Serve atOnce Activation Manager can take advantage of an external inventory system to speed up service development even more.

Pre-integrated and standard based interfaces. Serve atOnce Activation Manager provides a set of pre-integrated interfaces thus reducing the integration costs and time-to-market of new services. Serve atOnce Activation Manager also has standards-based interfaces towards the BSS (OSS/J, SOAP).This helps operators to achieve a future-proof provisioning architecture in contrast to implementing various proprietary interface mechanisms supporting point solutions which tend to become a heavy maintenance burden.

Adaptable provisioning system. Networks are continuously evolving, at any given operator. This means that there is a regular need to update interfaces or introduce completely new elements, such as application servers. Through an open connector architecture based on Java, and an extensive library supporting many network elements already, Serve atOnce Activation Manager can adapt to any new network element very fast with a minimum amount of development and downtime.

No vendor lock-in. Operators wish to be able to do best-of-breed selection by picking the best vendor for each network element separately. This means that fulfillment must be extremely flexible in supporting any network element vendor for the actual implementation of new services. The connector architecture of Serve atOnce Activation



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Manager allows for fast adaptation of 3rd party elements. Serve atOnce Activation Manager has a good track record in adapting fast to new elements.




3 FeaturesThis section describes features and functionality of Nokia Siemens Networks Serve atOnce Activation Manager. The features described here are independent of underlying network technologies.

SAAM resides in a layer between Business Support Systems (BSS) and network elements. The main product components are the northbound interfaces, the service order processing and related workflows as well as connectivity to the network elements via the Network Element Integrations (NEI). The O&M Suite is the main user interface of SAAM through which it is possible to manage provisionings, view status and performance data as well as configure the system. The Integration Suite is an off-line tool with which it is possible to define workflows and services. It also provides aids for connector development.



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Figure 4 Serve atOnce Activation Manager product components

3.1 Flow-through provisioning

The main functionality of Serve atOnce Activation Manager is subscriber and service provisioning. The provisioning requests i.e. service orders are originated from upper level BSS systems like CRMs, self-service portals or any other applications used in Call-centres or Point-of-Sales. The provisioning requests can also be triggered from the GUIs of Serve atOnce Activation Manager’s like O&M Suite.

Whenever Serve atOnce Activation Manager receives the request it will be managed by the service order processing and Serve atOnce




Activation Manager executes provisioning logic attached to the provisioned subscriber service.

In flow-through mode Serve atOnce Activation Manager can execute provisioning operations for any user data in network elements without knowing the subscribers or subscription existence beforehand.

After the execution Serve atOnce Activation Manager provides the result of the operation to the client.

3.2 Service Order processing

Serve atOnce Activation Manager offers various capabilities for processing incoming service orders. These capabilities are used in different phases of order processing within Serve atOnce Activation Manager, and they are used for ensuring that orders are processed correctly and according to particular operator needs.

In a normal situation service orders are processed immediately after Serve atOnce Activation Manager receives orders from client system(s). In certain cases there is a need to process requests at a specific time, for example to activate subscription at pre-defined time. Serve atOnce Activation Manager has scheduling support for such purposes; client system can define at which point of time the order processing should be started.

In some cases, for example during peak hours, or during congestion in network elements, the incoming service orders can not be processes immediately. For such situations Serve atOnce Activation Manager has queuing support and support for service orders that take long time; service orders wait in internal queues until the network element is ready to receive new commands, and Serve atOnce Activation Manager sends the commands to elements sequentially from the queue.

Some of the service orders may be more important or more urgent than others. For example blocking of services of prepaid subscriber who has run out of balance has to be done instantly. Serve atOnce Activation Manager supports priorities to ensure high priority service orders are processed as soon as possible in cases where there are several orders waiting to be processed in queues.

3.3 Network topology

Large telecom operators have a number of different network elements for various purposes. Often there are different network domains, like



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fixed, mobile, with various network element types like DSLAM and mobile registers (e.g. home location register). In many cases there are also intermediate elements between OSS systems and network elements, like element managers or provisioning systems used for managing specific subset of network elements.

Serve atOnce Activation Manager offers support for configuring the network topology, and mechanisms for using the network topology information as part of the service order processing. Network topology information is needed for example in order to be able to route the incoming service orders to correct network element instances.

Typical scenario where routing is needed, is a network where there are multiple HLR network elements, and each one of them handles specific range of subscribers. In this case Serve atOnce Activation Manager can route commands to correct elements using IMSI number ranges. Another example is an activation of DSL line, Serve atOnce Activation Manager has to route the service activation command to correct element manager or DSLAM to which the subscriber is connected.

3.4 Subscription awareness

Serve atOnce Activation Manager provides the possibility to add subscription awareness functionality in to normal flow-through provisioning.

The services can be implemented either in flow-through mode or in subscription awareness mode. When subscription awareness is used Serve atOnce Activation Manager stores the subscription of provisioned service to its internal subscription inventory. In that way Serve atOnce Activation Manager is aware of the services provisioned to the subscriber. If some service is implemented in subscription awareness mode Serve atOnce Activation Manager can not execute any operations to the data that does not have subscription in Serve atOnce Activation Manager inventory.

3.5 Network-initiated auto-provisioning

The network can detect that a subscriber wants to use a new service and automatically trigger Serve atOnce Activation Manager to provision the service into the network elements. SAAM can as well notify the CRM that the service has been subscribed to the end user. For an example see use case Voice service provisioning in chapter 7.2.




Network-initiated auto-provisioning is not part of standard SAAM product release 5.0, but can be delivered on a need basis.

3.6 Mass provisioning

Serve atOnce Activation Manager mass provisioning offers the capability to easily manage service subscriptions for a number of subscribers with one operation.

Mass provisioning in Serve atOnce Activation Manager can be divided to two different kinds of functionality: Batch job and mass operations.

Batch job provides a way to activate service subscriptions to a number of subscribers. The operation can contain different subscriptions for subscribers as well as the subscriptions can contain subscriber specific data. It can be used only for creating the subscriptions to network elements. Batch jobs are always based on the XML input file containing the subscribers and related subscription data.

Mass operations provide a way to execute certain operation (create, modify, delete) for certain subscription to the number of subscribers. The operation can be executed for some identifier range (e.g. IMSI) or for the subscribers listed in the XML input file. The file makes it possible also to set subscriber specific attribute values and the O&M Suite can be used to set common attribute values for all subscribers.

The batch job and mass operations can be triggered from Serve atOnce Activation Manager O&M Suite GUI.



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Figure 5 O&M Suite - one of the mass-provisioning views

3.7 Service Management

The provisioning with Serve atOnce Activation Manager is based on the services defined in Serve atOnce Activation Manager. There are two kinds of services: resource facing services (RFS) and customer facing services (CFS).

Resource facing services model closely the network element interfaces that Serve atOnce Activation Manager provisions. Serve atOnce Activation Manager provides various ready made network element integrations with resource facing services in NEI library.

Customer facing services can be used to model the customers’ business model i.e. services that are provided to subscribers. Typically one service offered to subscriber requires interacting with several network elements or registers. That can be defined by using customer facing services formed mainly with resource facing service operations and logic between those.

Serve atOnce Activation Manager provides tools for modelling and managing services in Serve atOnce Activation Manager service catalogue as well as tool for defining the logic for customer facing services.




The service catalogue in Serve atOnce Activation Manager is the storage place for service definitions imported to Serve atOnce Activation Manager.

The definition of the logic for customer facing services is mainly implemented with workflows by using the graphical user interface provided by Integration Suite.

The workflows can be used to include some special functionality for the normal provisioning flow of the subscriber services. Typically these can be related to the handling of different kind of error situations by implementing e.g. rollbacks or retries if the provisioning fails to some network element.

In addition of modelling provisioned services, the CFS/workflows can be used to implement any special business logic needed for subscriber data in network elements. A good example of this kind of service is identifier change of subscriber in the network (e.g. IMSI or MSISDN change). Workflow can execute any needed operations to network elements in order to change subscriber identity.

3.8 Integration

In Serve atOnce Activation Manager there are two different types of integrations: Network element integrations and integration to CRM/BSS systems.

The network element integration includes resource facing services defined for certain network element, rules/logic for provisioning the service subscription to subscriber and connector to provide the connectivity to the network element.

Serve atOnce Activation Manager provides various ready-made network element integrations in NEI library. In addition to ready-made network element integrations Serve atOnce Activation Manager provides tools to define integrations to any network element.

Integration to CRM/BSS systems can be implemented by using interfaces Serve atOnce Activation Manager offers for provisioning the subscriptions. Depending of the customer case it’s possible to implement also customer specific integration by using some protocol that Serve atOnce Activation Manager does not support by default.



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3.9 System monitoring

Serve atOnce Activation Manager offers comprehensive functionality for monitoring the Serve atOnce Activation Manager system for operation and maintenance purposes.

The product maintains key performance indicators (KPI) on the most important aspects of service provisioning, like number of service orders processed within a period of time. KPIs are visible in the O&M Suite graphical user interface, and are reported to network management system (NMS). KPIs are an easy way to verify that system is functioning normally, and to for example identify and troubleshoot potential performance bottlenecks.

Serve atOnce Activation Manager has a capability to send alarms in situations where system has noticed severe error situations, like disk can not be accessed or a processing load is exceptionally high. Alarms can be used to keep O&M personnel informed about serious errors.

Serve atOnce Activation Manager audit trail provides a view to activities executed in Serve atOnce Activation Manager. It provides means to investigate which users have performed which actions.

For monitoring and mainly for troubleshooting purposes Serve atOnce Activation Manager offers a set of log files. By defining the logging level the user can study the relevant details of Serve atOnce Activation Manager functionality.

3.10 System management

For backup and restore purposes Serve atOnce Activation Manager offers means for exporting and importing system data, like Serve atOnce Activation Manager configuration information.

License management controls the usage of Serve atOnce Activation Manager and maximum capacity of the product through the capacity license. Serve atOnce Activation Manager offers functionality for managing the license files.

There is also GUI for displaying and modifying the product configuration.

3.11 Security

There are several levels of security implemented in Serve atOnce Activation Manager product. The platform that Serve atOnce Activation




Manager runs on has been hardened and security tested. Serve atOnce Activation Manager offers capabilities for managing Serve atOnce Activation Manager users. Encryption of traffic on both northbound and southbound interfaces is possible where supported by client system and network elements respectively.

3.12 Performance, capacity and scalability

Serve atOnce Activation Manager has been designed for modern communication operators with a need for large transaction volumes. Serve atOnce Activation Manager supports hundreds of transactions per second and is capable of supporting sub-second response times. Serve atOnce Activation Manager scales up to 50 million subscribers.

3.13 Availability

System availability needs vary depending on the usage scenario of service activation product. Serve atOnce Activation Manager is offered in four different configurations: Entry configuration on HP platform or IBM platform, High End configuration on IBM platform and a PC configuration.

Entry configuration is an entry level product configuration for production use. It is targeted for managing small subscriber base for customers with no need for fully redundant or highly available system. The Entry configuration is available on IBM or HP platform.

High End configuration is fully redundant, highly available configuration with support for automatic fail-over, high performance, capacity and scalability. The High End configuration is currently available only on IBM platform.

PC configuration is Serve atOnce Activation Manager configuration for testing, proof of concept and demonstration purposes. It can not be used in production environment and has no high-availability support.



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4 User InterfacesThe main user interface of Serve atOnce Activation Manager is O&M Suite. It can be used by SAAM system administrators and users.

In addition to O&M Suite there are specific GUIs for viewing alarm status, IBM Blade center and HP HW management.

4.1 O&M Suite

O&M Suite is a web application which provides a web interface. Users access the web interface by using a web browser.

Figure 6. O&M Suite Main View

Through a single graphical user interface it is possible to:




• launch mass provisioning operations

• launch provisioning operations for one single subscriber

• view provisioning status of actions launched by O&M Suite

• view key performance indicators for provisionings. KPIs can be viewed in tables or graphs. Also historical data can be shown on weekly basis.

• configure SAAM authentication information (login and passwords)

• configure access to network elements e.g. IP-address, login, password



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The status view shows the operational summary of provisioning actions launched by O&M Suite as well as detailed view of each operation.

Figure 7 O&M Suite Operation details view




The KPI data helps to correct and optimize the provisioning process and capacity. O&M Suite makes the capacity pain points visible. The KPI data provides information about the provisioning process, the computing platform and the database performance. Also historic data of KPIs can be shown on a weekly basis in the O&M Suite in both graphical and table format.

Figure 8 O&M Suite Key Performance indicator view.

The KPIs help operators to correct and optimise the provisioning process and capacity and provides valuable information about performance of SAAM. The KPIs can be sent to network management system via SNMP.

Some examples of KPIs:

• provisioning KPIs:

• total number of subscriptions per service

• total number of subscriptions per network element type/instance

• total number of provisioning requests failed per day with the reasons for failure shown



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• performance KPIs:

• time taken to process a subscription request

• system information KPIs:

• lost connector connection to any network element

• duration of the loss of connection




5 External InterfacesServe atOnce Activation Manager contains following integration capabilities:

• SOAP/XML and OSS/J northbound interface

• SAAM core functions have been separated from the interfaces to the network elements

Serve atOnce Activation Manager can easily be integrated to the operator’s business support system, for example, an order management system that supports Business Process Execution Language (BPEL), or to any EAI system.

Along with Serve atOnce Activation Manager software comes interface specifications, developing instructions, and examples of how to integrate Serve atOnce Activation Manager to operator’s business support systems.

5.1 Northbound interfaces

Serve atOnce Activation Manager provides an OSS/J and a SOAP/XML northbound interface for integration to the operator’s business support system, for example, Order Management System or CRM system.

The Serve atOnce Activation Manager OSS/J interface is implemented according to the following TM Forum specification:

• OSS Common API

• OSS Service Activation API

The Serve atOnce Activation Manager SOAP interface is based on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) principles.



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5.2 Southbound interfaces

Serve atOnce Activation Manager provides an extensive library of pre-integrated interfaces to Nokia Siemens Networks systems and to 3rd

party network elements.

Supported technologies and solutions include for example 2G/3G mobile networks, packet core networks, IP Multimedia Subsystems, Push to Talk over Cellular, broadband networks, Mobile TV and convergent solutions.

Appendix 1 lists examples of network elements which Serve atOnce Activation Manager has been integrated to. For a complete list, please contact Serve atOnce Activation Manager product management.

Serve atOnce Activation Manager provides technical connectivity to the network elements and the most commonly used services. In addition to the pre-integrated services, it is possible to define more services with the Integration Suite tools.

5.3 Interface to Network Management System

Serve atOnce Activation Manager provides NE3S interface based upon SNMP version 2 for fault management (alarms) and performance management (key performance indicators) purposes towards Nokia Siemens Networks´ network management systems NetAct.

Examples of alarms that are sent to NMS are:

• Available memory low

• Available disk space low

• Database space allocation warning

• Disk access failure

• Network Element Connection Failure

• High CPU load average

• IBM BladeCenter hardware alarm

• Process failure




6 Integration Tools and Services

6.1 Integration Suite

The Serve atOnce Activation Manager provisioning function is extendable. For service provisioning, Serve atOnce Activation Manager supports a number of pre-integrated network elements. Serve atOnce Activation Manager also provides tools for defining the provisioning business logic and for developing integration interfaces, and in this way makes it possible to expand the number of provisioned network elements.

The Integration Suite of Serve atOnce Activation Manager contains three kinds of capabilities:

• Provisioning workflow definition/modelling

• Service definition/modelling

• Integration capabilities for integrating Serve atOnce Activation Manager northbound to BSS and southbound to network elements and service platforms

The Integration Suite is an off-line tool. The Integration Suite tool takes the input given in the GUI and converts it to XML-based rules. The rules are stored in files, which can be exported and downloaded to the Serve atOnce Activation Manager.



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With the Integration Suite it is possible to configure the workflow for the provisioning, what services need to be provisioned in which network elements and in which order. It is also possible to define rollback and retry scenarios for cases of incomplete provisioning, as well as define scheduling and prioritization of the provisioning tasks.

With the workflow function it is also possible to define validation of attribute values as well as formatting of service attributes, e.g. adding prefix or changing parameter type from string to integer.

Figure 9. Integration Suite Workflow Function




The service definition capabilities mean that via the GUI of the Integration Suite it is possible to define the services which can be subscribed to a subscriber. The services can be simple services provisioned to one NE, or service bundles.

A service consists of a set of attributes that are either service or subscriber specific. The attributes can be given default values, or it can be defined that value is provided in the incoming provisioning request.

Figure 10. Integration Suite Service Overview View.



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The Integration Suite contains Java plug-ins for Eclipse. With these Java plug-ins it is easy to integrate new network elements to SAAM. SAAM contains also examples how to make integrations to new network elements. SAAM comes with a broad library of ready-made network element integrations.

Nokia Siemens Networks provides customisation and system integration services. The services can be used for integrating Serve atOnce Activation Manager to the operator’s environment and for defining and customising services and provisioning workflows.

In cases where there is no suitable southbound integration available off the shelf, a Network Element Integration can easily be developed and added to the Network Element Integration library of Serve atOnce Activation Manager. The tasks to develop a new integration are carried out in an integration project and it covers all phases of the project from requirements gathering to final acceptance testing at customer premises. Defining new services and provisioning workflows and/or customising services can also be part of the integration project offered by Nokia Siemens Networks.

Figure 11 Services building blocks: Professional services for systems integration



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7 Use Case ExamplesThis chapter describes two use cases where Serve atOnce Activation Manager is used for subscriber provisioning. These are examples only and are not the only use cases that Serve atOnce Activation Manager supports.

The use cases illustrate the fact that Serve atOnce Activation Manager is a centralised provisioning system regardless of the network domain and can be used to automate the provisioning process, and to reduce churn and OPEX.

Serve atOnce Activation Manager supports a wide range of Nokia Siemens Networks´ solutions. Examples of supported solutions are listed below:

• Fixed Mobile Convergence solution

• Femto solution

• HLR evolution (HLRe)

• IMS solution

• Voice solution

• Communication Key solution

• Rich Client Service solution

• Subscriber Data Management (SDM) solution

This document contains two examples of selected solutions: Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) and Voice solution.

7.1 Fixed Mobile Convergence provisioning

For users, the attraction of FMC is that it will bring personal converge broadband access and mobile access, beyond the home and office. For service providers without a 3G network, FMC is also a viable technology for offering broadband services.




A key factor for successful FMC launch in all scenarios is the ability to manage the subscriber provisioning and service activation. Provisioning is an integral part of Nokia Siemens Networks FMC solution. The FMC provisioning solution covers terminal provisioning, network element provisioning and current provisioning system usage in the FMC provisioning solution. Fixed Mobile Convergence solution provides single integration point between the FMC elements and operators existing customer management infrastructure. This means that all subscriber provisioning operations (such as creation or deletion of subscribers or changes to existing profiles) can be called via single interface. Serve atOnce Activation Manager for FMC is a solution consisting of Serve atOnce Activation Manager and pre-integrated key FMC network element integrations and related customer services. Solution is easily extendable and customisable to meet the changing requirements and service provider needs.The example of the provisioning workflow is illustrated in Figure 12.

Figure 12. Network provisioning example.

Subscriber experience for Network provisioning example:

1. Subscribe to new service (e.g. visit PoS, contact call centre or login to self-service portal)

2. Optional: Receive welcome message and instructions to accept upcoming new settings

3. Optional: Receive and accept new FMC settings to device through NTMS.4. Optional: Receive message about client download; “Would you like to

continue with the download Y / N ?”5. Perform Client installation to PC.6. FMC is available for subscriber.



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Device provisioning is done with the Nokia Siemens Networks device management product called Nokia Terminal Management Server. FMC solution supports over 20 different network elements from the software client configuration towards the subscriber service support. Figure 13 contains examples of FMC services. More detailed description of the supported services can be found from Serve atOnce Activation Manager product documentation.

Figure 13. Examples of supported FMC services.

7.2 Voice service provisioning

Operator challenge is to integrate new voice register infrastructure with operator’s existing business support systems and processes. This is key integration in order to ensure end-to-end activation of services to end-customers in timely and error-free manner

Nokia Siemens Networks Voice service solution complemented with Serve atOnce Activation Manager addresses this critical integration by exposing single, well-documented and standard Web-Services -based integration point from Voice service solution to existing business support systems.

With this, Nokia Siemens Networks Solution can minimize the change impact into existing systems – and this way reduces the risk, time and cost associated with the register solution integration.




The example of the provisioning workflow is illustrated in Figure 14.

Figure 14. Network provisioning example.

Subscriber experience:1. Subscribe to new service (e.g. visit PoS, contact call centre or login to self-

service portal)2. Optional: Receive welcome message and instructions to accept upcoming

new settings3. Optional: Receive and accept new mobile settings to device4. Optional: Receive message about client download; “Would you like to

continue with the download Y / N ?”.5. Voice service is available for subscriber.



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The Voice service solution can also be provisioned to the subscribers seamlessly. Seamless provisioning means that the services are provisioned to the subscribers automatically by network initiated triggering.

Network-initiated auto-provisioning is not part of standard SAAM product release 5.0, but can be delivered on a need basis.

Figure 15. Automated service provisioning example. (network-initiated auto-provisioning)

Voice service solution includes end-to-end provisioning support from device provisioning to provisioning of all needed network elements.




Figure 16. Example of dataless HLR services



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8 Product ConfigurationsServe atOnce Activation Manager is available in four product configurations: Entry Configuration on IBM or HP hardware, High End Configuration on IBM hardware and PC configuration. All configurations except PC configuration include hardware, platform software and Serve atOnce Activation Manager application software plus supporting product documentation. PC configuration is a pure software configuration including SAAM platform and application software only.

Entry Configuration ( IBM )Entry configuration is a product configuration with redundant cluster application server (CLAS) nodes and disks. It can support up to 5 million subscribers.

High End Configuration ( IBM )High End Configuration responds to operators growing needs in the areas of high availability, scalability and performance.

It provides automatic failover for the entire Serve atOnce Activation Manager application. In case of hardware failure, the Serve atOnce Activation Manager application will automatically fail over to secondary hardware blades.

High End Configuration is also equipped with an external EMC storage where the physical Serve atOnce Activation Manager database resides. When Serve atOnce Activation Manager is part of the IPS solution, the EMC storage can be common to both the Serve atOnce Activation Manager and NTMS products.

It can support up to 20 million subscribers in subscription awareness mode and up to 50 million subscribers if all services are in flow-through mode.

Entry Configuration ( HP hardware)Since SAAM release 5.0, Entry configuration is also available on top of HP Proliant hardware. It is a single rack-mounted node and it can support up to 5 million subscribers.

PC Configuration




PC configuration is a product configuration for demonstration, testing and trialing purposes. It runs on RedHat Linux on standard PC hardware.

Required hardware and operating system:

• Disk: 80GB or more

• RAM: 2GB RAM or more

• CPU: AMD Opteron, Intel Pentium at 500 MHz or faster, or Intel EM64T

• DVD-ROM

• RedHat Enterprise Linux version 5.2 (64-bit)See www.redhat.com for certified hardware

Tested laptops include e.g. Lenovo Thinkpad T60.



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http://www.redhat.com/


Table 1. SAAM Product Configuration HW details

ENTRY CONFIGURATION

IBM BladeCenter

HIGH END CONFIGURATION

IBM BladeCenter

ENTRY CONFIGURATION

HP Proliant

CabinetThe rack-mounted cabinet is based on the IBM 19” industry-standard cabinet rack for servers:

IBM S2 standard rack cabinet (height 25U).

HP Universal Rack 10642 G2 Shock

Rack

Chassis 1 x IBM Bladecenter chassis

1 x IBM Bladecenter chassis N/A

CLAS-nodes 2 x LS21-blade with 4GB memory

4 x LS21-blade with 4GB memory

Database nodes



DL380 G5 rack-mounted server with

16GB memory

CPU/node2 x AMD 2,4GHz

Dual Core Opteron 64bit

2 x AMD 2,4GHz Dual Core Opteron

64bit

2 x Intel Xeon Dual Core X5260, 3,33GHz

processor 64bit

HardDisks3 x 146Gb SAS

(Serial Attach SCSI) hot swap disks

N/A 8 x 146 GB 10k disks

Ethernet Switches

2 x Nortel Layer 2/3 Copper GbE Switch

Module for BladeCenter

2 x Nortel Layer 2/3 Copper GbE Switch Module for BladeCenter

2 x Brocade® 20-port 4 Gb SAN Switch Module for IBM BladeCenter

N/A

Fibre Channel N/A Fibre channel kits N/A

External disk storage N/A

EMC CLARiiON

CX3-20 15 x 146Gb 15k disks

N/A

Serve atOnce Activation Manager platform software contains 3rd party software such as RedHat Linux Enterprise Edition version 5.2, Oracle Enterprise Edition version 10.2 and IBM WebSphere application server version 6.1.

High End configuration contains in addition to those also RedHat Global File System, Cluster Suite and Directory Server, EMC NaviSphere Host and Linux Host Attach Kit as well as PowerPath Workgroup.




References and additional reading1. Serve atOnce Activation Manager Roadmap

https://sharenet-ims.inside.nokiasiemensnetworks.com/Guest/Open/366914096

2. Integrated Provisioning Solution, Solution Descriptionhttps://inside.nokiasiemensnetworks.com/global/Work/Sales/NSNSolutions/RevenueGrowth/Pages/IPS.aspx

3. NTMS 6.0 Product Descriptionhttps://sharenet-ims.inside.nokiasiemensnetworks.com/Guest/Open/384037047

4. TMF, eTOM, “Addendum D: Process Decompositions and Descriptions”, GB921D, v4.6

5. TMF, SID Business View: Concepts & Principles, GB922, v5.1

6. TMF, Service Framework GB924, v1.9

7. TMF, NGOSS 4.5, GB927 NGOSS Lifecycle & Methodology, v1.3

8. OSS/J, OSS Service Activation API – JSR 89

9. OSS/J, OSS Common API – JSR 144



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GlossaryAPI Application Programming Interface

ARPU Average Revenue Per User

BPEL Business Process Execution Language

BSS Business Support System

CFS Customer Facing Service

CLAS Cluster Application Server

CORBA Common Object Request Broker Architecture

CRM Customer Relationship Management

DNS Domain Name Server

DNS/ENUM Mapping the E.164 Number Space into the DNS

DSL Digital Subscriber Line

EAI Enterprise Application Integration

EM Element Manager

eTOM Enhanced Telecom Operations Map

FGW Femto Gateway

FMC Fixed Mobile Convergence

GUI Graphical User Interface

HLR Home Location Register

HLRe HLR evolution based upon DX HLR

HSS Home Subscriber Server

HSSd Home Subscriber Server distributed

IMS IP Multimedia Subsystem

IMSI International Mobile Subscriber Identity

IN Intelligent Network

IP Internet Protocol

J2EE Java 2 Enterprise Edition

KPI Key Performance Indicator

MML Man Machine Language

NetAct Network Management System of Nokia Siemens Networks

NDS Network Directory Server

NGOSS New Generation OSS




NMS Network Management System

NPS Nokia Profile Server

NTMS Nokia Terminal Management Server

O&M Operation & Maintenance

OMS Operation and Maintenance Server

One-NDS One Network Directory Server

OPEX Operating Expenditure

OSS/J OSS through Java

PoC Push to Talk over Cellular

PoC-R Push to Talk over Cellular Register

PoS Point-of-Sales

RFS Resource Facing Service

RMI Remote Method Invocation

SAAM Serve atOnce Activation Manager

SDM Subscriber Data Management

SID Shared Information Data/Knowledge

SIP Session Initiation Protocol

SNMP Simple Network Management Protocol

SOA Service Oriented Architecture

SOAP Simple Object Access Protocol

TMF TeleManagement Forum

VoIP Voice over IP

XML Extensive Markup Language



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Appendix 1 - Examples of network elements integrated to SAAM

Table 2 Examples of network elements and interfaces integrated to Serve atOnce Activation Manager

Domain Element Interface Description

Mobile DX HLR MML Interface to DX HLR.

HSS SOAP Interface to Home Subscriber Server

HSSd SPML Interface to distributed Home Subscriber Server based upon One-NDS

SRRi MML Interface to Service Routing Register

Flexi ISN RMI via NPS

MMSC RMI via NPS

NT HLR SPML Interface to One-NDS via PGW

NTMS WSI Interface to Nokia Siemens Terminal Management System (NTMS).

Femto FGW CORBA Interface to FGW via OMS element manager

IN Systems charge@once Advantage

CORBA Interface to IN

charge@once Advantage

XML/http Interface to IN

Comverse IN Interface to IN

IMS CSDM SOAP Interface to Community Service data Manager

HSSd SPML Interface to One-NDS via PGW

iNUM DNS/ENUM

SOAP Interface for DNS/ENUM.

IP-Unity UM RMI Interface for IP-Unity Unified Messaging for residential and business subscribers.

MPM SOAP Mobile Presence Management





Novinum Navitas DNS/ENUM

Proprietary Command Channel Interface

Interface to DNS/ENUM

PoC-R RP-18 Interface to Push to talk over Cellular register (PoC-R).

VoIP MSS RMI Interface to Mobile Softswitching Server

Surpass hiE9200

CORBA Interface to media gateway via NetManager

Surpass hiQ4200

SOAP Interface to Voice over IP server for fixed networks.

Surpass hiQ4300

SOAP Interface to Business Subscribers server

Surpass hiQ8000

XML/SOAP Interface to Voice Over Cable server

Fixed hiE9200 TDM- and softswitch

CORBA Via NetManager.

EWSD TDM switch

CORBA Via NetManager.

Broadband hiX5300 CORBA Interface to DSLAM via ACI.

hiX5625/30/35 CORBA Interface to IP DSLAM via ACI-E.

Support for MSAN SIP subscribers.

Device Management

NTMS WSI Interface to Nokia Terminal Management Server

Swapcom DMC

http Interface to Swapcom Device Management

Short Message Service Centers

Jinny SMSC SMPP Interface to Jinny Short Message Service center

Multimedia Servers

Jatayu MMSC http/XML Interface to Jatayu Multimedia messaging server

Ericsson MMSC

CORBA Interface to Ericsson MMSC

PBX Trio VPBX CORBA Interface to Trio private exchange

Voice Mail Systems

Ferma VOMS JDBC Interface to Ferma VOMS

Tecnomen VMS

Socket Interface to Tecnomen Voice Mail System



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Tecnomen NGM

XML/SOAP Interface to Tecnomen Next Generation Messaging

Network Management

Systems

NetAct NE3S Interface to network management systems. This SNMP based interface is used for sending alarms to NetAct/NMS.




Appendix 2 – ArchitectureThe Serve atOnce Activation Manager cluster platform is based on J2EE, IBM WebSphere Application Server, and Oracle database. The platform operating system is Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS.

Operation Activator

HLR

Conn

HLR

OSS/J

Client

SAAM

Client Layer

Integration Layer

Provisioning Logic Layer

Network Access Layer

Network Layer

NPM DB

Service

Inventory

Service

Activation

Workflow

Engine

HLR

Connector

HSS

Connector

NPS

Connector

...

Connector

HSS NPS ...

SOAP

Clients

SOAP OSS/J

Figure 17. SAAM release 5.0 high-level software architecture

Serve atOnce Activation Manager has a layered software architecture which consists of a client layer, a communication layer, a business logic layer and a network integration layer.

The client layer contains the Serve atOnce Activation Manager user interfaces that are used for subscription management, configuration, operation and maintenance and the customisation of the Serve atOnce Activation Manager product.



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The communication layer provides interfaces for the client system - Serve atOnce Activation Manager integration. Single-point integration for provisioning clients towards any underlying network elements is provided through OSS/J Service Activation API. Alternatively, a SOAP interface is provided.

The business logic layer contains three services for BSS clients:

• business logic and workflows for provisioning and data manipulation on the basis of workflows that can be dynamically deployed and linked between service data and the Serve atOnce Activation Manager provisioning business logic

• business logic related to the service catalogue for providing services for the client system and for Serve atOnce Activation Manager interworking

• subscription and subscriber profile storage (subscription and service inventory) for advanced and subscriber-aware provisioning features

The network integration layer provides connectivity to the network including connectivity and connectors to element managers, network elements and registers, for carrying out provisioning operations (create, update, delete) and data read/query operations. Connectors encapsulate different types of network element interfaces and protocols, and thereby they free the operator and the BSS systems from doing any integration directly to the network elements for subscriber and service provisioning purposes.



serve atonce activation manager rel. 5.0 product description

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