Agilent Technologies announces wireless telecom industry's first real-time Customer-Centric Service Management solution

EDP Weekly's IT Monitor, May 24, 2004

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:A) has announced the Agilent OSS Customer-Centric Service Manager (CCSM), the first management solution to monitor real-time service and network quality from the perspective of an individual, a group of VIPs or an entire corporation. Managing the quality of service (QoS) experience of specified customers, CCSM enables telecommunication providers to gain and retain lucrative corporate customers by providing objective measures for service level agreements (SLA) and ensuring SLA compliance.

CCSM monitors wireless communications in real time to alert telecom providers to network or service problems that affect QoS. It collects signaling and data records from links in the network and presents measurements relating to customer experience in a console view of the customers, the network and the services. Based on problem severity, affected customers and effect on revenue, problem-resolution priority is also shown in the CCSM display.

Telecom providers can use CCSM QoS metrics to document SLAs. The system's real-time functions help to ensure maximum SLA compliance. Service providers can set quality thresholds that, if violated, alert network operations or repair personnel to fix problems before SLAs are breached. Service providers can also use the information to proactively notify affected customers of repair status. Accurately measuring and managing high-value customers' actual experiences ensures greater profit, customer satisfaction and long-term loyalty.

"Our field experience shows an unacceptable number of customer problems are not detected by traditional network management systems," said Giorgio Dina, Agilent OSS vice president and general manager. "Because Agilent's CCSM tracks and analyzes every call transaction in real time, service providers can now know the actual QoS experienced by a particular customer and prove the delivered QoS based on verifiable SLAs."

CCSM is integrated with Agilent's broad portfolio of wireless troubleshooting applications, enabling telecom providers to rapidly determine the root cause of customer problems. With this seamless link between customer experience monitoring tools and network problem troubleshooting solutions, telecom providers can immediately see the most prevalent errors in user sessions and determine the underlying cause. This lowers the mean time to discover, diagnose and repair customer-affecting problems.