Strategic changes and frameworks affecting future OSS/BSS in the telecommunications industry

This paper highlights the changes taking place in BT’s OSS/BSS space as the company moves away from legacy IT systems towards a transformational architecture. Increasingly telecommunications system estate is very complex supporting many systems. This leads to a high cost overhead, which is at variance with new technologies, such as VoIP, which will result in diminishing basic call revenues. Equally there are requirements for increased responsiveness to change, i.e. agility, which calls for a reduction in complexity and a maximisation of reuse. Frameworks are examined such as BT’s matrix architecture, the TMF eTOM, and the value chain, together with data repositories such as SALSA which provide the underpinning required to understand and manage the challenge of reducing IT complexity.