Service Complexity Improvements

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Most traditional TI networks provide services that are complex, expensive to maintain, cumbersome to learn, mostly outdated, and not user-friendly. CM is capable of improving services of a network by identifying root causes of their complexities, performing situation analysis of each complexity, and recommending remedies. Service complexity improvements of a network consist of the following four step-by-step procedures (Temme & Beroggi, 2000; Whitman & Townsend, 1999):

1. Service procedure; ranks vendors' preferred status based on their customer satisfaction records and preferred status. When vendors have to service complex and highly technical network components and equipments, they must be licensed and willing to guarantee their work. Most voice- and data-related services are very specialized and require continuous maintenance and care. The procedure keeps track of these activities and updates them regularly (Chong & Chow, 1999; Yamamura, 1997).

   When a new service is introduced, vendor selection becomes more critical because it may involve upgrades, manual development, user training, and other preliminary efforts. The new network services must be bridged with the existing ones and capable of interfacing with its hardware and software (Gee-Hyun & Aspinwall, 1999; Hunter, 2001).

2. Partitioning; divides a network's systems into manageable and functional components. It is used for the distributed process environment (DPE) when components are categorized into identifiable interfaces by decoupling the service layers from the transport layers and providing mix-and-match and open application programming interface (API) of the components. Partitioning utilizes off-the-shelf hardware and software, and interface equipments and tools. Furthermore, it relies on open APIs at the various point processing and switching levels and activates IN programming applications for higher levels. Partitioning a network's systems into functioning components is one of the most effective methods of interfacing the components with new systems and the legacy systems and converging them with voice and data service platforms (Sherif, 2001; Wade & Muldowney, 1999).

3. Upgrading; employs most up-to-date hardware and software, properly maintaining equipments, increasing component capabilities, eliminating functional overlaps and redundancies, computing mean time before failure (MTBF) of the parts, tracking spare parts, improving consistency, and standardizing the parts. It also includes upgrading and tracking vendor identification and maintenance agreements, contingency plans for unforeseen circumstances, and sensitivity analysis of the network operational components (Wade & Lewis, 1999; Whitman & Townsend, 1999).

4. Management; provides continuous control, coordination, synchronization, monitoring, benchmarking, and quality control of the components. It requires extensive training and work specialization of: operations support systems (OSSs), management information systems (MIS), computer sciences (CS), and related fields. It supports operations, administration, maintenance, and provisioning (OAM & P) of the components. It also helps integration of the interdependent operations and their outputs into components with common objectives to handle multiple equipments, layers, and functions (Garg & Ness-Cohn, 1998).

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