HarvardNET gets smart - HarvardNET implement DSL system, services - Company Operations

Communications News, Nov, 1999 by Kara Freeman

Bringing automation to provisioning and other business processes requires careful planning and active involvement of stakeholders.

Without a doubt, one of the hotest segments of the telecomunications market is the growing demand for high-speed, "always on" digital subscriber line (DSL) Internet access for small and midsized businesses and remote workers of larger enterprises. In fact, the worldwide rate of DSL line installations should grow from 540,000 in 1998 to 3.7 million in 2003, according to Electronic Trends Publications' June 1998 data.

At HarvardNet, we are in the center of this vigorous growth. Using our own IP-based backbone, we offer high-speed DSL access across the Northeast and mid-Atlantic U.S., as well as leased-line connectivity, Web hosting, e-commerce, and broadband virtual private network (VPN) solutions.

High growth, of course, means that it's fairly easy to quickly outstrip the capacity of internally developed software systems-systems that can be vital to the ongoing growth and viability of the business. When HarvardNet was founded in 1992, we created a home-grown application service-provision system based on MicrosoftAccess on a Windows 3.1 platform. This system served us well in our early years; but, as we plan for the coming wave of broad DSL adoption, we recognized we needed something more.

GROUNDWORK FOR THE FUTURE

Today, we're replacing that provisioning system with a comprehensive operational support system (OSS) to lay the groundwork for our future growth. Our main objective in implementing an OSS was to improve our complete provisioning process. By supporting the design and management of circuits, the network, and our workflow processes, an OSS would allow us to continue to pursue our customer-centric business model. It would also enable us to better understand and manage our network capacity while scaling to support a growing customer base.

The commercial-grade system we've elected to deploy is MetaSolv's Telecom Business Solution (TBS). It encompasses a set of subsystems integrated by a common repository of business data and processes. Each subsystem supports a critical aspect of a telecom business--from order management and customer care to service provisioning, network design, and trouble management.

Conceptually, we liked the idea that a commercial-grade product would force us to adopt and adhere to certain workflow processes as part of our provisioning activities. We felt that this enforced structure would create greater efficiency.

We're also happy to be able to offload the application maintenance to software professionals. Our Access-based system was continuously changing, which was a drain on our IT resources. By adopting TBS, HarvardNet is essentially outsourcing the continuous development and maintenance of a business-critical system to OSS experts. TBS will also feature very good integration with the Saville Systems' Convergent Billing Platform, which we have also implemented to upgrade our customer-care and billing functions.

BUILDING MODELS WITH MULTIDISCIPLINE PARTICIPATION

Perhaps the most challenging--but ultimately the most rewarding--aspect of implementing an OSS is to construct the right models of our network and physical telecom resources, processes, and products. We couldn't think of starting this work without the active participation from stakeholders throughout our company: provisioning, installation, engineering, field technicians, marketing, finance, and customer care. Before we began, representatives from each of our stakeholder departments attended a one-week training kick-off at MetaSolv's Dallas facility.

We wanted--and needed--to involve these representatives fully in implementing the OSS because they bring domain expertise that no IT person alone can provide. For example, we have numerous remote switching locations where we inventory large amounts of network equipment. It's critical that we describe (model) these facilities properly: by shelf/ rack, device, card, port, and circuit.

For most of eight weeks, our internal IT people have been working with each stakeholder group to ensure that the database model that we're building is accurately describing our network and physical assets. They've also been collaborating to ensure that we have implemented the proper processes for change control to that network infrastructure. Otherwise, our OSS will be obsolete the day after we deploy it.

In addition, we've been working closely with experts from MetaSolv to create a product catalog that reflects the complete set of permutations and combinations of our services --about 200 separate entries.

The challenge is to manage the interrelationships among these activities, because the way that you describe your products has a direct bearing on what the workflow will be. The objective is to describe and model products to create the optimal workflow. Consider the simple example of a customer ordering a new DSL line. The workflow might look like this:

1. Order the circuit: HarvardNet contacts the local phone company and orders a DSL circuit for the customer.