An approach to build information system of telecommunication company based on models

U ovom radu se definiše metodološki pristup za izgradnju informacionog sistema telekomunikacione kompanije zasnovan na modelima objedinjavanjem opštih pristupa razvoja IS i specifične inicijative u oblasti telekomunikacija: MDA (Model Driven Architecture), pristup razvoju softvera koji je kao standard utvrdila i promoviše OMG (Object Management Group). EA (Enterprise Architecture), pristup za razvoj arhitekture preduzeća, razvoj poslovanja i IT-a istovremeno. TOGAF (The Open Group Architectural Framework) je opšti najpoznatiji arhitekturalni okvir i metod za razvoj arhitekture preduzeća. NGOSS (The New Generation Operations Systems and Software) program koji razvija Telemanagement Forum i koji predstavlja okvir za razvoj i primenu „Operation and Business Support Systems – OSS/BSS“ u telekomunikacionoj industriji. SPL (Software Product Line), razvoj IS preko Softverskih proizvodnih linija, predstavlja savremeni pristup za automatizaciju razvoja softvera koji je zasnovan na domenskim, specifičnim modelima gde se kroz domensko inženjerstvo razvija familija softverskih proizvoda a ne pojedinačni softverski proizvod. Osnovu metodološkog pristupa čini specifična softverska proizvodna linija za telekomunikacioni domen koja je zasnovana na NGOSS okvirima i modelima i omogućava efikasnu izgradnju IS telekomunikacione kompanije kroz tri posebna procesa: Opšti domenski inženjering telekomunikacionog domena, Domenski inženjering telekomunikacionog domena za tip servisa, Aplikacioni inženjering...This work gives definition of a methodological approach to build information system of telecommunication company based on models, through consolidation of general approaches of IS development and a specific initiative within telecommunication area: MDA (Model Driven Architecture), an approach to software development that was set as a standard and promoted by OMG (Object Management Group). EA (Enterprise Architecture), an approach to simultaneous development of Business and IT Architecture of a company. TOGAF (The Open Group Architectural Framework) is the most common and best known architecture framework and method for enterprise architecture development. NGOSS (New Generation Operations Systems and Software), a program being developed by Telemanagement Forum that represents a framework for development and implementation of „Operation and Business Support Systems – OSS/BSS” within telecommunication industry. SPL (Software Product Line), a development of IS over Software Product Lines, represents a modern approach to automation of domain-specific model-driven software development, where a software product family, and not a single software product, is developed through domain engineering. The methodological approach is based on a software product line specific to telecommunication domain which is based on NGOSS frameworks and models and which allows efficient building of Telecommunication Company IS through the following three distinct processes: General domain engineering for telecommunication domain, Domain engineering for telecommunication domain type of service, Application engineering..

A practical approach to the operation of telecommunication services driven by the TMF eTOM Framework

Nowadays, the gap between data communications and telecommunications disappears rapidly, which leads to augment of the complexity and size of supporting networks. This calls for the software developers to embrace a new way of developing management software. This is the impetus for the TM Forum’s New Generation Operations Systems and Software (NGOSS) initiative. It aims to deliver a framework for rapid and flexible integration of Operation and Business Support Systems in telecommunications and throughout the wider communications industry. The enhanced Telecom Operations Map (eTOM) is a key part of NGOSS. It plays an important role as a guidebook built on TM Forum Telecom Operations Map (TOM). The eTOM model describes the full scope of business processes required by a service provider and defines key elements and how they interact

Reference Process Flows for Telecommunication Companies - An Extension of the eTOM Model

The telecommunication market is experiencing substantial changes. New business models, innovative services, and technologies require reengineering, transformation, and process standardization. Enterprise Architecture Frameworks support the transformation by specifying methods, procedures, and reference models. With the Enhanced Telecom Operation Map (eTOM), the TM Forum offers an international de facto reference process framework, based on specific features and requirements of the telecommunication industry. However, this reference framework only offers a hierarchical collection of processes on different levels of abstraction; a control view in terms of a sequential ordering of tasks and hence a real process flow as well as an end-to-end view on the customer are missing. In this paper, we extend the eTOM reference model by reference process flows, in which we abstract and generalize the knowledge about processes in telecommunication companies. With reference process flows, we aim to assist companies in achieving a structured and transparent re-structuring and re-design of their processes. We demonstrate the applicability and usefulness of our reference process flows in two case studies, and evaluate them by means of criteria for reference model evaluation. Our reference process flows have been accepted as a standard by the TM Forum and published as part of eTOM version 9. We further elaborate on those components of our approach which can be applied outside the telecommunication industry

Looking for efective ways of achieving and sustaining Business-IT Alignment

Aligning Business and Information Technologies strategies has been a subject studied for a long time. Despite all the efforts, achieving and sustaining Business-IT alignment remains a challenge requiring even more agility nowadays to keep up with the competition in a turbulent organizational environment. Past contributions are uncovered in this paper calling particular attention to the development of Enterprise Architecture as a way of addressing this challenge. However, this should be a process to be carried out in the most effective ways looking especially at time and costs. Having proposed frameworks as a point of departure to reflect on the ways they may or may not work in practice, a dialogical action research is proposed for this work involving a close interaction with consultant companies. The resulting improved expertise both from the researcher and practitioners involved should allow for the identification of the most effective ways of achieving and sustaining Business-IT alignment.(undefined

Transformation in Telecommunication – Analyse und Clustering von Real-life Projekten

Die Veränderungen des Telekommunikationsmarktes haben in der Praxis zu einer Vielzahl von Transformationsprojekten geführt. Was gehört aber zu einem “Transformationsprojekt”, welche Prozesse und Systeme werden verändert? Zur Beantwortung dieser Frage haben wir 184 Berichte zu Projekten analysiert, die als "Transformationsprojekte" bezeichnet waren. Für die Analyse haben wir einen Kodierungsrahmen konzipiert und anhand dessen die Berichte mit einem hierarchischen Clustering-Verfahren in Themen gruppiert. Die Ergebnisse liefern Hinweise über die in der Praxis gesetzten Schwerpunkte und Prioritäten. Sie können somit als Unterstützung für Unternehmen dienen, die ein Transformationsprojekt planen. Sie weisen zudem darauf hin, in welchen Bereichen eines Unternehmens Unterstützung durch wissenschaftlich erprobte Werkzeuge und Modelle nötig ist

A national cybersecurity management framework for developing countries

Abstract : Please refer to full text to view abstract.D.Phil. (Computer Science

Eine Methode zur Spezifikation der IT-Service-Managementprozesse Verketteter Dienste

Die steigende Komplexität von IT-Diensten führt zu neuen Herausforderungen im IT-Service-Management(ITSM). Aufgrund von neuartigen SourcingModellen, Trends wie eBusiness oder auch regulatorischen Vorgaben wächst zunehmend die Notwendigkeit, aber auch die Gelegenheit für eine partnerschaftliche Kollaboration zwischen IT Providern. Jenseits des hierarchischen Modells in der Zusammenarbeit von IT Providern, bei dem ein fokaler Provider eine Reihe von weiteren Dienstleistern mit der Erbringung von Basisdiensten beauftragt, gewinnen alternative Formen der Kooperation an Bedeutung. Die Gewährleistung einer definierten Ende-zu-Ende Dienstqualität ist dabei eine der wichtigsten Herausforderungen. Die Zusammenarbeit von IT Providern erfordert die Spezifikation von interorganisationalen Betriebsprozessen. Die etablierten ITSM Frameworks adressieren jedoch alternative Formen der Diensterbringung nicht; so bleiben kooperierende IT Provider bei der Definition von interorganisationalen ITSMProzessen als Basis ihrer Zusammenarbeit weitgehend auf sich alleine gestellt. Um auf die spezifischen Herausforderungen von Szenarien eingehen zu können, die von den etablierten ITSM Frameworks nicht abgedeckt werden, fokussiert diese Arbeit auf die Dienstklasse der Verketteten Dienste, das sind providerübergreifende, horizontale Dienstketten auf der gleichen funktionalen Schicht. Im Unterschied zu klassischen Szenarien der kooperativen Erbringung von ITDiensten, wie z.B. IP Peering im Internet, wird für Verkettete Dienste eine definierte Dienstqualität und ein serviceorientiertes Management gefordert. Der erste Teil der Arbeit leistet auf der Basis einer Untersuchung realer Szenarien eine eingehende Analyse der ManagementHerausforderungen und der spezifischen Anforderungen für die Prozessdefinition Verketteter Dienste. Zur Kategorisierung der vielfältigen Formen der Zusammenarbeit von Providern wird ein Raster von Koordinationsmustern definiert. Die Betrachtung des Status Quo zeigt, dass, obwohl eine Reihe von Vorarbeiten in den Disziplinen des IT-Service-Managements sowie der Informations- und Prozessmodellierung vorliegt, die Anwendung von universellen Modellierungssprachen auf interorganisationale ITSMProzesse derzeit kaum abgedeckt wird. Im Hauptteil der Arbeit wird dazu die neue Methode ITSMCooP (ITSM Processes for Cooperating Providers) eingeführt. Aufbauend auf der Prozessmodellierungssprache BPMN und dem Shared Information/Data Model (SDI) des TeleManagement-Forums, besteht die Methode aus einer Sammlung von Modellierungskonventionen und Empfehlungen, die alle relevanten Aspekte der Modellierung von interorganisationalen Prozessen abdecken. Die Erstellung von Informations- und Prozessmodellen wird geleitet von einer Vorgehensweise zur Prozessdefinition, die sowohl Referenzprozesse der ITSM Frameworks als auch die spezifischen Koordinationsmuster Verketteter Dienste berücksichtigt. Die Arbeit wird abgerundet durch die Anwendung der Methode ITSMCooP auf ein reales, komplexes Szenario.The growing complexity of IT services poses new challenges to IT Service Management (ITSM). The issue of end-to-endservice quality challenges service providers, as most services are no longer realized standalone by a single provider but composed of multiple building blocks supplied by several providers. In the past, relationships between service providers were organised according to a hierarchical model: a service provider offers services to his customers and relies on a set of underpinning services delivered by subproviders to realize these services. In their current releases, both the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and the Enhanced Telecom Operations Map (eTOM) stress that due to new sourcing strategies, market trends like ebusiness or regulatory policies new necessities and also opportunities for collaboration between service providers arise. Beyond the hierarchical model, alternative forms of provider cooperation gain importance, where multiple providers aim to coprovide services jointly and have to coordinate their activities on an equal footing. The specification of interorganisational processes is a precondition for delivering advanced services in a cooperation of IT service providers. However, the existing ITSM frameworks fail to provide reference processes for scenarios beyond hierarchy. IT providers are left in the lurch with the nontrivial task of defining concise, yet unambigious specifications of interorganisational ITSM processes as a basis for their cooperation. In order to be able to concentrate on the challenges of interorganizational ITSM scenarios not covered by existing frameworks, this thesis is focused on the so-called class of Concatenated Services, i.e. services provided as a sequence of partial services at the same technical layer by a set of independent providers. In contrast to wellknown scenarios, like IP Peering and Transit between Autonomous Systems in the Internet, Concatenated Services are offered with tight end-to-end service quality guarantees and managed according to the best practices of service orientation. In the first part of the thesis, a thorough analysis of management challenges based on real scenarios is given and specific requirements for the definition of ITSM processes for Concatenated Services are derived which are used for a review of related work. The concept of Coordination Patterns is introduced as a means of categorisation of the numerous types of provider cooperation. Even though quite a lot of research has been performed in the areas of ITSM on the one hand and on information and process modelling languages on the other hand, the application of general-purpose languages on the definition of interorganisational ITSM processes is barely covered. To address this issue, the new method ITSMCooP (ITSM Processes for Cooperating Providers) is presented in the main part. Based on the process modelling language BPMN and the Shared Information/Data Model (SID), the method consists of a collection of modeling conventions and recommendations, covering all relevant aspects in the the specfication of interorganisational processes. A top-down modeling procedure guides the utilisation of ITSMCooP, considering the incorporation of both reference processes from ITSM frameworks and Coordination Patterns. The thesis concludes with an application of ITSMCooP to a complex scenario

Telecommunications Networks

This book guides readers through the basics of rapidly emerging networks to more advanced concepts and future expectations of Telecommunications Networks. It identifies and examines the most pressing research issues in Telecommunications and it contains chapters written by leading researchers, academics and industry professionals. Telecommunications Networks - Current Status and Future Trends covers surveys of recent publications that investigate key areas of interest such as: IMS, eTOM, 3G/4G, optimization problems, modeling, simulation, quality of service, etc. This book, that is suitable for both PhD and master students, is organized into six sections: New Generation Networks, Quality of Services, Sensor Networks, Telecommunications, Traffic Engineering and Routing

ICE-B 2010:proceedings of the International Conference on e-Business

The International Conference on e-Business, ICE-B 2010, aims at bringing together researchers and practitioners who are interested in e-Business technology and its current applications. The mentioned technology relates not only to more low-level technological issues, such as technology platforms and web services, but also to some higher-level issues, such as context awareness and enterprise models, and also the peculiarities of different possible applications of such technology. These are all areas of theoretical and practical importance within the broad scope of e-Business, whose growing importance can be seen from the increasing interest of the IT research community. The areas of the current conference are: (i) e-Business applications; (ii) Enterprise engineering; (iii) Mobility; (iv) Business collaboration and e-Services; (v) Technology platforms. Contributions vary from research-driven to being more practical oriented, reflecting innovative results in the mentioned areas. ICE-B 2010 received 66 submissions, of which 9% were accepted as full papers. Additionally, 27% were presented as short papers and 17% as posters. All papers presented at the conference venue were included in the SciTePress Digital Library. Revised best papers are published by Springer-Verlag in a CCIS Series book