“It would be so nice if something made sense for a change.” ― Lewis Carroll
I finally get to publish this post since eternity, and at the risk of repeating the known. This post, based on my brief experience with telecom, is my interpretation of concepts and operations framework within the telecom industry that can be applied to (or is already being applied to) Cloud computing. Perhaps my 'oversimplified' way of putting cloud computing in perspective.
FAB-BOSS
I finally get to publish this post since eternity, and at the risk of repeating the known. This post, based on my brief experience with telecom, is my interpretation of concepts and operations framework within the telecom industry that can be applied to (or is already being applied to) Cloud computing. Perhaps my 'oversimplified' way of putting cloud computing in perspective.
FAB-BOSS
If you had a brush with the telecom industry, you are most likely familiar with FAB. For the rest, FAB is an acronym for Fulfillment, Assurance and Billing. It simplifies and provides an operational process framework for a telecom provider. Without having to dive deep, an ‘oversimplified’ way to look at FAB is “order-to-cash” and everything in between (or behind that process which isn’t visible to consumers). Although in reality, it isn’t as simple as it sounds. In addition, there are the key BSS (Business Support Systems) and OSS (Operations Support Systems) systems, which I like to call as BOSS (BSS+OSS=BOSS; Refer figure above), that enable or help realize the FAB process framework. BOSS comprises of systems that address four areas broadly grouped into Customer Relationship Management, Service Management & Operations, Resource Management and Operations, and Partner/Supplier Relationship Management. Each of them plays a key role in the fulfillment, assurance and billing cycle of a telecom provider. A great source to understand this in depth is the Tele Management Forum (http://www.tmforum.org/) and their Telecom Operations Map.
To simplify and put things in perspective, 'Fulfillment' deals with 'provisioning' of a service purchased by a customer. Ex: Broadband or Mobile services. It deals with activation and configuration of capacity by the service provider and creation of the customer profile. Once services are provisioned, 'Assurance' deals with availability and performance of the services, with the objective of minimizing downtime and compliance to contractual service levels – think in terms of service coverage and availability of service (both voice & data) on your phone. Assurance is built on the foundation of Quality of Service (QoS) along with service monitoring, management, remediation and restoration. It is perhaps where customer satisfaction begins. 'Billing' deals with invoicing and collections for usage of services at a fixed interval, monthly as we know it in the case of retail consumers. Assurance and Billing can be viewed as two sides of the same coin, the former deals with 'service assurance' leading to the latter 'revenue assurance'.
As telecom consumers, most of us have been through and continue to go through the above cycle. Consumers, both retail and business, are abstracted from the complex infrastructure and technologies at play in a TSP (telecom service provider). What they are presented is the customer interaction layer, through the TSPs CRM systems and processes (order management, verification, activation, self-service portals for billing & online payments, customer service centers, etc.), while the orchestration and management of the infrastructure itself is abstracted from the consumer. If we can imagine a TSP as a monolith of network capacity, both voice & data, then as consumers we simply rent a slice of that capacity and pay for it based on our usage and the rate plans we’ve signed up, and we can even switch rate plans to better reflect our usage pattern and optimize monthly rentals. If we take a simplistic view, this network capacity is built by TSPs based on their business plan, targeting a subscriber base or market share, is scalable depending on growth, allows to on-board new consumers and also manage customer churn.
Looking through the clouds
If you followed all the mumbo-jumbo up to this point, then it must be fairly easy to imagine where this is headed. Applying the concepts of FAB-BOSS provides a simple operational framework for cloud computing or CSPs (Cloud Service Providers). It is easier to visualize how it can be extended in the context of cloud computing – private, public or hybrid – to deliver provisioning, elasticity or scalability of resources, pay-as-you-go pricing, usage metering, billing, service assurance, etc.
Like in telecom, Fulfillment in the context of cloud computing deals with the ability to ‘provision’ computing resources with no manual intervention, often referred to as ‘self-provisioning’ and ‘automation’ in cloudspeak. Its aim is to empower cloud consumers with the ability to ‘order’ and ‘assemble’ compute resources through self-service portals, workflows and automation that abstract the consumer from the complexities of having to actually build and make that resource operationally ready. Assurance deals with providing guaranteed availability and performance through proactive service management and operations. Once again, the tools and resources required to deliver assurance remain abstracted from the consumer. And finally Billing deals with invoicing the customer based on agreed billing rates through monitoring or ‘metering’ resource/service usage.
As mentioned in the beginning this is just an oversimplified view to draw a parallel between cloud and telecom service providers. The demands and needs of enterprise IT are not to be underestimated. While simple in concept, the BOSS (BSS+OSS) ecosystem required to achieve the basic tenets of cloud computing and its implementation and management is fairly complex. It requires an ecosystem of multiple product vendors, just like in telecom, and their integration to realize this operational framework. As the cloud provider market matures and evolves, the ecosystem of BOSS vendors will also influence and set the pace through development and maturity of their own offerings.
It also isn’t difficult to imagine the consumerization of enterprise IT in the future. It is tempting to imagine cloud service providers compete on tariff plans and build product offerings and bundles much like in telecom. Think of your data plan that has unlimited data usage or 10GB of free data usage per month, with a fractional cost being charged to you beyond that limit. In a similar way, Storage could potentially be offered for free up to a limit, say 3-5TB, bundled and sold with certain compute capacity of Windows TM servers. It remains to be seen how data security and privacy concerns will be put to rest and when inter-operability and data portability between cloud service providers will garner more attention.
It is also being said that cloud computing can alter the contours of traditional outsourcing and even push it to the brink. It will be an interesting evolution to watch indeed.
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Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries.
As telecom consumers, most of us have been through and continue to go through the above cycle. Consumers, both retail and business, are abstracted from the complex infrastructure and technologies at play in a TSP (telecom service provider). What they are presented is the customer interaction layer, through the TSPs CRM systems and processes (order management, verification, activation, self-service portals for billing & online payments, customer service centers, etc.), while the orchestration and management of the infrastructure itself is abstracted from the consumer. If we can imagine a TSP as a monolith of network capacity, both voice & data, then as consumers we simply rent a slice of that capacity and pay for it based on our usage and the rate plans we’ve signed up, and we can even switch rate plans to better reflect our usage pattern and optimize monthly rentals. If we take a simplistic view, this network capacity is built by TSPs based on their business plan, targeting a subscriber base or market share, is scalable depending on growth, allows to on-board new consumers and also manage customer churn.
Looking through the clouds
If you followed all the mumbo-jumbo up to this point, then it must be fairly easy to imagine where this is headed. Applying the concepts of FAB-BOSS provides a simple operational framework for cloud computing or CSPs (Cloud Service Providers). It is easier to visualize how it can be extended in the context of cloud computing – private, public or hybrid – to deliver provisioning, elasticity or scalability of resources, pay-as-you-go pricing, usage metering, billing, service assurance, etc.
Like in telecom, Fulfillment in the context of cloud computing deals with the ability to ‘provision’ computing resources with no manual intervention, often referred to as ‘self-provisioning’ and ‘automation’ in cloudspeak. Its aim is to empower cloud consumers with the ability to ‘order’ and ‘assemble’ compute resources through self-service portals, workflows and automation that abstract the consumer from the complexities of having to actually build and make that resource operationally ready. Assurance deals with providing guaranteed availability and performance through proactive service management and operations. Once again, the tools and resources required to deliver assurance remain abstracted from the consumer. And finally Billing deals with invoicing the customer based on agreed billing rates through monitoring or ‘metering’ resource/service usage.
As mentioned in the beginning this is just an oversimplified view to draw a parallel between cloud and telecom service providers. The demands and needs of enterprise IT are not to be underestimated. While simple in concept, the BOSS (BSS+OSS) ecosystem required to achieve the basic tenets of cloud computing and its implementation and management is fairly complex. It requires an ecosystem of multiple product vendors, just like in telecom, and their integration to realize this operational framework. As the cloud provider market matures and evolves, the ecosystem of BOSS vendors will also influence and set the pace through development and maturity of their own offerings.
It also isn’t difficult to imagine the consumerization of enterprise IT in the future. It is tempting to imagine cloud service providers compete on tariff plans and build product offerings and bundles much like in telecom. Think of your data plan that has unlimited data usage or 10GB of free data usage per month, with a fractional cost being charged to you beyond that limit. In a similar way, Storage could potentially be offered for free up to a limit, say 3-5TB, bundled and sold with certain compute capacity of Windows TM servers. It remains to be seen how data security and privacy concerns will be put to rest and when inter-operability and data portability between cloud service providers will garner more attention.
It is also being said that cloud computing can alter the contours of traditional outsourcing and even push it to the brink. It will be an interesting evolution to watch indeed.
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Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries.
Great Stuff... Have you being seeing the TATA DOCOMO campaign "Pay only for what you use" , looks like the telecom industry is already using some cloud concepts . On a serious note, the BOSS concept seems to fit very well with what cloud computing is all about, but when you talk about enterprise IT , I think the level setting needs to first start with identifying what applications you can put on the cloud, so consulting is as important as "Fulfillment". Secondly , Enterprise Cloud service providers are constantly being challenged on the Assurance part, there are still a lot of gaps around Disaster Recovery and conformity to Industry regulations (HIPPA, ITAR etc.). So I see the focus in coming years will be on the Assurance aspect primarily, for Enterprise Cloud to consumerize Enterprise IT.
ReplyDelete@Rahul: Can't agree with you more. I deliberately avoided the consulting and service assurance aspects that you allude to. In fact, there is a pillar before Fulfillment, that refers to 'Strategy & Operations Readiness' where the consulting and readiness aspects can be addressed along with Product & Offer design and marketing. It will indeed be interesting to watch how Service Assurance evolves and gets delivered.
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