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Driving Analytics in a Telco

Originally posted on 21Sep17 to IBM Developerworks (11,101 views)

An ex-colleague of mine (Violet Le – now the Marketing Director at Imageware) asked me about the drivers for Analytics in Telcos. I’ll admit that it’s a subject that I haven’t really given a lot of thought to – all the projects that I’ve worked on in the past that have included Analytics have had a larger business case that I was trying to solve… Marketing, Future Planning, Sales etc I’ve never worked on an Analytics project for the sake of analytics, nor have I designed a solution that was just (or mainly) analytics.

There is a definite value in analytics in providing an insight into how the business is running – to enable business to plan for the future and to manage how they run in the present. Both Strategic and Tactical cases for analytics would seem to me to be of value to any business. An analytics system that delivers insight into the business (customer behaviour, sales effectiveness, capacity usage and predictions etc) is great, but at the end of the day, a Telco needs to do something about that information/insight to actually deliver business benefits.

As I’m no analytics specialist, I wont’ try to describe how to define or build those systems. What I will try to do is to describe the bits around the analytics systems that make use of that insight to deliver real value for the CSP.

What are the business cases that I’ve seen?

  1. Sales & Marketing 
    • Driving promotions to to positively affect subscriber retention or acquisition… I did a project with Globe Telecom in the Philippines which was primarily aimed at driving SMS based outbound marketing promotions that are targeting based on subscriber behaviour. An example might be if a subscriber had a pre-paid balance less than (say) 5 pesos, and the subscriber topped up more than 20 pesos and less than 50 pesos, then send a promo encouraging the subscriber to top up by more than 100 pesos… all the interaction is via SMS (via a ParlayX SMS API)
    • Back in 2013, I did an Ignite presentation at the IBM Impact Conference in Las Vegas – Here is the presentation (Smarter Marketing for Telecom – Impact 2013)
  • Social networking analysis to determining who should be targeted. IBM’s Research group was pushing for years a Social Networking Analysis capability that looked at Social Networking connection to determine which subscribers are followers, which are community leaders and influencers and based on that assessment.
  1. ​Networks
  • Ensuring utilisation of the network is optimised for the load requirements. I worked with a telco in Hong Kong that wanted to dynamically adjust the quality of service level to be delivered to a specific user based on their location (in real time) and a historical analysis of the traffic on the network.  For example, if a subscriber was entering the MTR (subway) station and the analytics showed that particular station typically got very high numbers of subscribers all watching youtube clips at that time of day on that day of the week, then lower the QoS setting for that subscriber UNLESS they were a premium or post-paid customer in which case, keep the QoS settings the same. The rating as a premium subscriber could be derived from their past behaviour and spend – from a traditional analytics engine. 
  • Long term planning on network (SDN/NFV will allow Networks to be more agile which will reduce the need for traditional offline analytics to drive network planning and make the real time view more relevant as networks adapt to real time loads dynamically … as traffic increases in particular sections of the network, real time analytics and predictions will drive the SDN to scale up that part of the network on demand. This is where new next gen AI’s may be useful in predicting where the load will be int he network and then using SDN to increase capacity BEFORE the load is detected…  read Watson from IBM and similar….

A few years ago, a number of ex colleagues (from IBM) formed a company on the back of real time marketing use case for Telcos and since then, they’ve gone ahead in leaps and bounds. (Check them out if you’re interested, the company name is Knowesis)

Do you have significant use cases for analytics in a CSP? I’m sure they are and I’m not claiming this is an exhaustive list – merely the cases that I’ve seen multiple times in my time as a solution architect focused on the telecommunications industry.

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Progress on the miss-match between the TMF SID and TMF API Data model

Originally posted on 4Sep17 to IBM Developerworks (10,430 Views)

I wouldn’t normally just post a link to someone else’s work here, but in this case Frank Wong – a colleague of mine at my new company (DGIT Systems) has done some terrific work in helping to eliminate the miss-match between the data model used by the TMF’s REST based APIs and the TMF’s Information Model (SID). I know this was an issue that IBM were also looking to resolve.  In the effort to encourage the use of a simple REST interface, the data model used in the TMF’s APIs has been greatly simplified from the comprehensive (some might say complex) data model that is the TMF’s Information Model (SID). This meant that a CSP who is using the SID internally to connect internal systems needed to map to the simplified API data model to expose those APIs externally – there was no easy one-to-one mapping for that mapping which meant that the one could not simply create a API for an existing business service (eTOM or otherwise) – a lot more custom data modelling work would be required.

This interview with Frank by the TMF illustrates some of the latest work to resolve that miss-match – read it at https://inform.tmforum.org/open-apis/2017/08/apis-need-good-parents-catalog-success/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTm1aa1pUVXhOR001TkRFMSIsInQiOiJXbEpaajNHRmR1Rm9meTZzQlMzMnJRODJDNlllUjdsdFk2RUxNMDVRS25HMEdlOTZzK3NDNkx5YkZXSjlyQW42eDkrQW5lT0pkRVFpdm5lNXJIdW9STGpaYWV5aHZiald0b1JBenhlSTFRV2FUMVhFNXBLUlRkZ05MV2ZZK1JSViJ9

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Are MicroServices the future INSIDE a CSP?

Originally posted on 30Aug17 to IBM Developerworks (11,517 Views)

Across many industries, including the Telecommunications sector, there seems to be a strong movement towards a MicroServices Architecture and (somewhat) away from Service Oriented Architecture. I’ve seen this move in a CSP here in Australia. The TeleManagement Forum have a significant project that is trying to standardise the REST APIs that a CSP might publish.

The TMF state:

“TM Forum’s Open API program is a global initiative to enable end to end seamless connectivity, interoperability and portability across complex ecosystem based services. The program is creating an Open API suite which is a set of standard REST based APIs enabling rapid, repeatable, and flexible integration among operations and management systems, making it easier to create, build and operate complex innovative services. TM Forum REST based APIs are technology agnostic and can be used in any digital service scenario, including B2B value fabrics, Internet of Things, Smart Health, Smart Grid, Big Data, NFV, Next Generation OSS/BSS and much more.”

“TM Forum is bringing different stakeholders from across industries to work together and build key partnerships to create the APIs and connections. The reference architecture and APIs we are co-creating are critical enablers of our API program and open innovation approach for building innovative new digital services in a number of key areas, including IoT applications, smart cities, mobile banking and more.”

Laurent Leboucher, Vice President of APIs & Ecosystems, Orange

I’ve been a part of a number of projects where these REST APIs have been exposed primarily to a CSPs trading partners – my very first Service Delivery Platform exposed APIs to external developers. Back then, it was Parlay X Web services (REST didn’t really exist and certainly there to external developers.were no Telco standards in place for REST based interfaces) that exposed the functionality of network elements to 3rd party developers. With many of the APIs that the TMF have defined, they seem to be more focused on OSS/BSS functions instead.  Now that the TMF have quite a number of Open APIs defined, there are some network focused APIs that are coming onto the list – for instance, a Location API would have typically be exposed using the ParlayX Web Services or ParlayREST REST interfaces to the network’s Location Based Server (LBS).  As a result, there does seem to be a small amount of crossover between the new TMF APIs and the older ParlayREST APIs.

Does this mean that the new TMF OpenAPIs are of no use? Not at all.  There are certainly advantages to exposing functions that a CSP has to external developers and REST based OpenAPIs make the consumption of those functions easier than the ParlayX web services or Parlay CORBA services have been in the past.  Ease of consumption is not to be underestimated.  An API that is easy to include in an application and provides a real capability that would have been otherwise difficult to provide stands a much greater chance of wide usage.

Sure, there is a place for externalising the OSS/BSS functions of a CSP. Trading partners could place orders against a CSP, they could bill to a subscriber’s post or pre-paid accounts, they could update the subscriber profile held by the CSP. All relevant use cases for externalising the TMF Open APIs.

The big question in my mind is will REST APIs be of use internally?

REST based APIs being easier to integrate internally will drive some value.  But in CSPs that have significant investments in a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), I’m struggling to see the business value in abandoning that in favour of a MicroServices Architecture where there is no common integration tool, no common orchestration capability, rather lots and lots of point to point integrations through REST APIs.

For those of us that have been around a while, you will have seen point to point integrations and the headaches they cause – complex dependencies in mesh architectures make maintenance hard and expensive.  Changing a (say) billing system that is integrated through multiple point to point connections is a nightmare – even if they have a standardised API describing those interfaces. The plane truth of the matter is that not all of those interfaces will be adequately described by the TMF’s Open APIs, so custom specifications APIs will arise and make swapping out the billing system expensive. Additionally, not all of a CSPs internal systems will have TMF Open API compliant interfaces – many won’t even support REST interfaces natively.  Changing all of a CSP’s systems to ensure they have a REST interface is a non-trivial task.

A Hybrid environment may be needed.

I’d suggest that a Hybrid approach is needed – existing Enterprise Service Busses may be able to interface with REST APIs – certainly IBM’s Integration Bus and the (now superseded) WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus could connect to REST APIs just as easily as they could connect to Web Services, Files and other connectivity options.  The protocol transformation capabilities of a ESB are able to provide REST APIs to systems that would have otherwise not supported such modern interfaces. Similarly, where a function is not provided by a single system, a traditional orchestration (BPM) capability can coordinate multiple systems to provide a single interface to that capability even if (behind the scenes) there are multiple end point systems involved in providing the functionality of that transaction/interface. The diagram below shows my thinking of what should be in place….

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What’s all the fuss about Orchestration for NFV?

Originally posted on 6Jun17 to IBM Developerworks (11,950 Views)

Think about it – orchestration is everywhere in a Telco – the Order to Cash process, The Ticket to Resolution process, the service and resource  fulfilment process and even the NFV MANO processes.  Orchestration is everywhere…

There is a hierarchy to processes in a Telco – just as the TMF recognises that there is a hierarchy in business services (within the eTOM Process Framework). At the highest level, the Order to Cash process might look like this:

Each task in this swimlane diagram will have multiple sub-processes. If we delve down into the provision resources task for instance, a CSP will need processes that will interrogate the resource catalog and network inventory to determine where in the network that resource can be put and what characteristics need to be set, then tell the resource manager to provision that resource. If it’s a physical resource, that may involve allocating a technician to install the physical resource. If it’s a virtual resource such as a Virtual Network Function (VNF) then the Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) orchestration engine will need to be told to provision that VNF.  If we go one level deeper, the NFV Orchestration engine will need to tell the NFV Manager to provision that VNF and then update the network inventory.

Perhaps the diagram below will help you to understand what i mean:

This diagram is a very simplified hierarchical process model designed to show the layers of process. As you can see, there are many layers of orchestration required in a CSP and as long as the orchestration engine is flexible enough and can handle the integration points with the many systems it needs to interact with, there is no real reason why the same orchestration engine couldn’t be used by all levels of process.

Over the past couple of years as NFV has risen significantly in popularity and interest, I’ve seen many players in the market talk about orchestration engines that just handle NFV orchestration and nothing else.  To me, that seems like a waste. Why put in an orchestration engine that is just used for NFV when you also still need orchestration engines for the higher process layers as well? I’d suggest that a common orchestration and common integration capability makes the most sense delivering:

  • High levels of reuse
  • Maximising utilisation of software capabilities
  • Common Admin and Development skills for all levels of process (be they business focussed or service or resource focussed)
  • Common tooling
  • Common Integration patterns (enabling developers and management staff to work across all layers of the business)
  • Greater Business Agility – able to react to changing business and technical conditions faster

There are a number of Integration platforms – typically marketed as Enterprise Service Buses (ESB) that can handle integration through Web Services, XML/HTTP, File, CORBA/IIOP  even Socket/RPC connections for those legacy systems that many telcos still have hanging around.  An ESB can work well in a MicroServices environment too – so don’t think that just because you have a ESB, you’re fighting against MicroServices – you are not.  MicroServices can make use of the ESB for connectivity to conventional Web Services (SOA) as well as legacy systems.

A common Orchestration layer would drive consistency in processes at all layers of a Telco – and there are a number of Business Process Management orchestration engines out there that have the flexibility to work with the Integration layer to orchestrate processes from the lowest level (such as within a Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) environment) all the way up to the highest levels of business process – the orchestrations should be defined in an standard language such as Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) or Business Process Model Notation (BPMN).

To me, it makes no sense to re-invent the wheel and have orchestration engines just for the NFV environment, different orchestration engines for the Service Order Management, the Resource Order Management, the Customer Order Management, the Service Assurance, the Billing, the Partner/Supplier management etc etc – all of these orchestration requirements could be handled by a single orchestration engine. Additionally, this would make disaster recovery simpler and faster and cheaper as well (fewer software components to be restored in a disaster situation).

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Blockchain and BPM – follow up

Originally posted on 31May17 to IBM Developerworks (12,500 Views)

A link to this blog entry (link now broken) popped up in my LinkedIn feed today which in turn linked to a Developerworks article – Combine business process management and blockchain (link now broken) which steps you though a use case and allows you to build your own basic BPM & Blockchain demo. Complex processes could save and get data to/from Blockchain ensuring that every process in any organisation (within the same company and across company boundaries) are using the most up to date data.

I thought it would be appropriate to paste in a link given my previous post on Blockchain in Telcos. As I think about this topic more, I can see a few more use cases in Telecom. I’ll explore them in subsequent posts, but for now, I think it’s important that we be pragmatic about this. Re-engineering processes to make good use of blockchain is non-trivial and therefore will have a cost associated with it.  Will the advantages in transparency and resilience be worth the cost of making the changes? Speaking about resilience, don’t forget the damage that a failure can cause.  British Airways IT system failure (which I believe is outsourced but I cannot be sure) was down for the better part of three days – failures like that have the potential to bring down a business.  We don’t know yet what will happen to BA in the long term, but you certainly don’t want the same sort of failure happening to your business.

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TeleManagement Forum Africa Summit 2012

Originally posted on 29Sep12 to IBM Developerworks (13,053 Views)

Last week, I was at the TeleManagement Forum’s (TMF) Africa Summit event in Johannesburg, South Africa. The main reason for me attending was to finish of my TMF certifications (I am level 3 currently) in the process framework (eTOM) – if I have passed the exam, I will be Level 4 certified. It was a really tough exam (75% pass mark) so I don’t know if I did enough to get over the line’.   Regardless, the event was well attended with 200-230 attendees for the two days of the conference. It was interesting to hear the presenter’s thoughts on telco usage within Africa into the future. Many seemed to think that video would drive future traffic for telcos. I am not so sure. I n other markets around the world, video was also projected to drive 3G network adoption, yet this has not happened anywhere. Why do all these people think that Africa will be different?  I see similar usage patterns in parts of Asia, yet Video has not take off there. Skype carries many more voice only calls than video calls. Apple’s Facetime video chat hasn’t taken off like Apple predicted. 3G video calls makes a tiny proportion of all calls made. Personally, I think that voice (despite it’s declining popularity relatively speaking in the developed world) will remain the key application, especially voice over LTE for the foreseeable future in Africa. I also think that social networking (be it Facebook, freindster, MySpace or some other African specific tool) will drive consumer data (LTE) traffic. Humans are social animals, and I think these sorts of social interactions will apply just as much in the African scenario as it has in others.

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This Is Not a Test: The Emergency Alert System Is Worthless Without Social Networks

Originally posted on 17Nov11 to IBM Developerworks (11,306 Views)

This makes for an interesting comparison to the National Emergency Warning System (NEWS) that was implemented in Australia last year as a result of the Black Saturday  bushfires.
Here is the URL for this bookmark: gizmodo.com/5857897/this-is-not-a-test-the-emergency-alert-system-is-worthless-without-social-networks
This makes for an interesting comparison to the National Emergency Warning System (NEWS) that was implemented in Australia last year as a result of the Black Saturday  bushfires.  Of particular interest is that the USA have avoided the SMS channel when in Australia, that has been the primary channel – alternates like TV and Radio are seen as not as pervasive and thus a lower priority.  I don’t think that NEWS here in Oz is connected to twitter, facebook, foursquare or any other social networking site either, but that could be an extension to NEWS – the problem is getting everyone to “friend” the NEWS system so that they see updates and warnings!

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TeleManagement World 2011

Originally posted on 25May11 to IBM Developerworks (12,766 Views)

 I am in Dublin at the moment for TeleManagement World 2011  which has changed locations from Nice, France last year. it looks to be a very interesting conference.  I’ve already done two days of 

training and now, we’re beginning the sessions. the keynote  session has the Irish Minister for Communications, Mr Rabitte who is talking about the challenges that CSPs face all the world around.  He is also talking about an innovation programme that the Irish Government have started called ‘Examplar‘ which is part of their NGN Trial network. i’ll see if I can get some more info over the next few days… 

Steven Shurrock, CEO at O2  Ireland

Steven Shurrock, the new CEO at O2  Ireland  who has been in the role for just six months is very bullish about the opportunities in Ireland for data services. After Steven, we saw a host of Keynote speakers who have been focused on a number of themes, but many common presenters included:

  • Standards compliance – including certification against standards.  Particularly with the TMF Frameworx standards
  • Horizontal platforms and moving away from silos is their IT strategy
  • SOA is the basis for all of the new IT initiatives

I have recorded a number of keynote speakers as video, but for the time being, those files are very large.  Once I have had a chance to transcode them to a smaller size, I’ll add them to the blog as well – while not particularly technical, they’re very interesting for a Telecom perspective.

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New Zealand’s National Broadband Project – progressing

Originally posted on 5Jul10 to IBM Developerworks (10,547 Views)

Since I last posted about New Zealand’s National Broadband project which seemed to me to be much more focused on the subscribers and the products they would have available to them (and the retailers that sold them) than the high speed backbone network.  My impressions may have been tainted by the work I was doing with the Telecom New Zealand Undertaking In Progress (UIP) project that I was involved with – the rather public forced split of Telecom New Zealand’s Retail, Wholesale and Network departments to ensure equivalency of input for all retail and wholesale partners for (only) broadband services.

My understanding of the situation has developed somewhat since then and we can see that the situation in New Zealand Government also involves a similar structure to what is happening in Australia with the Communications Alliance and the NBN Company.  In New Zealand, the companies are a little different.  Certainly, we have the NZ Government Ministry of Economic Development (MED) as one participant, then we have Crown Fibre Holdings (not much of a web site there!) -set up by the Government to manage the process of selecting the companies to build the National Broadband Network and manage the government’s investment in the NBN.  Together with the companies that are bidding for the deal Crown Fibre holdings will form Local Fibre Companies (LFC) which (combined) will match the government’s contribution to the NBN.  That will mean the total project will cost NZ$3 Billion** with the LFCs kicking in NZ$1.5B and the NZ government contributing NZ$1.5B.  I dont have the full schedule, but from a couple of sources, I have compiled an overview of the progress to date:

  • 21 October 2009 – Communications and Information Technology Minister Steven Joyce announced the government’s process for selecting private sector co-investment partners.
  • 13 November 2009 – Intention to respond due. 
  • 9 December 2009 – The Ministry and Crown Fibre Holdings release a clarifications and amendments
  • 14 January 2009 – The Ministry and Crown Fibre Holdings released additional clarification and amendments with respect to the Invitation to Participate.
  • 29 January 2010 – Proposals must be lodged
  • 4 February 2010 –  Crown Fibre Holdings notify respondents of handover of responsibility for the partner selection process
  • August 2010 – Refined Proposals to be re-submitted to the government (See http://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?C=0&ID=456818 )
  • October 2010 – Successful respondents announced/notified.

What I find a bit interesting is that the government are only looking to cover 75% of the population by 2019.  For a small country (compared to Australia at least), that seems to me to be a very low target to aim for.  If we compare that with Australia’s NBN project, their target is 90% coverage at greater than 100Mbps and 10% greater than 12Mbps (that’s 100% coverage!) by 2017.  Admittedly, the Australian project has about a year’s head start, but it’s also a MUCH bigger country with a population nearly five times larger.  Lets have a quick look at the comparisons:


 AustraliaNew Zealand Ratio
(AU to NZ)
Population22.4M4.3M5.2
Area7,617,930 km2268,021 km228.4
Population Density2.833/km216.1/km20.17
Planned NBN Completion year20182019–
NBN Coverage22.4M (100%*)3M (70%)7.5
NBN Cost**AU$40B = US$33BNZ$3B = US$216.5
NBN Cost per person (US$/person)US$1473US$6662.2
NBN Cost per area (US$/km2)US$4331US$74620.6

* 100% coverage is split between greater than 100Mbps (90%) and greater than 12Mbps (10%)
** One Billion is using the short scale definition = 109 = 1,000,000,000

What do I take from this quick comparison?  Lets take a quick look at the numbers.  Obviously, Australia is a much bigger country (28.4 times larger) and has a much larger population (5.2 time larger), so it is reasonable (in my opinion) that the cost per potential NBN customer should be higher for Australia (and it is at 2.2 times higher) but the thing that makes me ponder is the cost per square kilometre:  New Zealand is nearly twice that of Australia.  When the New Zealand target is only 70% of the population and thus enables them to avoid areas that are physically difficult to provide coverage to (I’m no NZ geologist, but I would imagine lots of the South Island’s most mountainous areas would pose significant problems for cablers) I find myself wondering why the NZ network is going to be so expensive.  I guess it could be a matter of scale – but I thought the biggest cost was actually laying the cables rather than the back end systems which every broadband network will need (routers, switches, administration and management systems).  Maybe I am missing something – does anyone have any ideas?

edit:  I’ve just found this quote in Wikipedia which (I think) is truly revealing when you consider New Zealand’s 70% coverage target:

“New Zealand is a predominantly urban country, with 72% of the population living in 16 main urban areas and 53% living in the four largest cities of Auckland, Christchurch, Wellington, and Hamilton“

source: wikipedia.com

By only extending the NBN to those 16 main urban areas and nowhere else – they’ve achieved their target!  You wouldn’t want to live in country New Zealand and be dependent on a fast network!

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ICE at TeleManagement World 2010 – a great example of real benefits from TMF Frameworx

Oroiginally posted on 29May10 to IBM Developerworks (23,580 Views)

Yes, I should have posted this a week ago during the TeleManagement World conference – I’ve been busy since then and the wireless network at the conference was not available in most of the session rooms – at least that is my excuse.

Ricardo Mata, Sub-Director, VertICE (OSS) Project from ICE

At Impact 2010 in Las Vegas we heard from the IBM Business Partner (GBM) on the ICE project.  At TMW 2010, it was ICE themselves presenting on ICE and their journey down the TeleManagement Forum Frameworx path.  Ricardo Mata, Sub-Director, VertICE (OSS) Project from ICE presented (see his picture to the right) presented on ICE’s projects to move Costa Rica’s legacy carrier to a position that will allow them to remain competitive when the government opens up the market to international competitors such as Telefonica who are champing at the bit to get in there.  ICE used IBM’s middleware to integrate components from a range of vendors and align them to the TeleManagement Forum’s Frameworx (the new name for eTOM, TAM and SID).  In terms of what ICE wanted to achieve with this project (they call it PESSO) this diagram shows it really well.

I wish I could share with you the entire slide pack, but I think I might incur the wrath of the TeleManagement Forum if I were to do that.  If you want to see these great presentations from Telcos from all around the world, you will just have to stump up the cash and get yourself to Nice next year.  Finally, I want to illustrate the integration architecture that ICE used – this diagram is similar to the one form Impact, but I think importantly shows ICE’s view of the architecture rather than IBM’s or GMB’s.

For the benefit of those that don’t understand some of the acronyms in the architecture diagram above, let me explain them a bit:

  • ESB – Enterprise Services Bus
  • TOCP – Telecom Operations Content Pack (the old name for WebSphere Telecom Content Pack) – IBM’s product to help Telcos get in line with the TMF Frameworx)
  • NGOSS – Next Generation Operations Support Systems (the old name to TMF Frameworx)
  • TAM – Telecom Applications Map
  • SID – Shared Information / Data model