Case Study drill down content from diagram
1.End User / Customer Management Centre Portal - Vodafone / Verizon
Vodafone working with Verizon required a portal to manage submission of MIDlets developed by third party suppliers for verification and certification over their European network.
Minuco developed a secure portal where third party developers could submit new MIDlet files to Vodafone Europe. The files are uploaded onto the Portal then automatically checked against Vodafone's standard APIs and certified with a Verizon certificate (if all specified checks are satisfied). The signed MIDlet then needs to be authorised by a Vodafone team member before being release back to the third party developer for commercial use on the Vodafone European network.
2.Wholesale B2B Interface - Cable & Wireless
Cable & Wireless required a webservice B2B interface to be developed for the wholesale platform,
selling a full range of Voice, Data and Mobile Products.
Minuco developed a full range of web service calls allowing Cable & Wireless' wholesale customers (and internal Portal) to access a rich layer of provisioning, availability checking and diagnostic functionality,
allowing customers to order and manage SMPF, MPF, SDSL, IP Stream and FMC type products through a single robust secure interface. The team at Minuco worked with Cable & Wireless to develop clear and concise API
documentation as well as designing a scalable solution which would be able to manage almost any type of product in the future.
3.Fulfilment Platform - Cable & Wireless
Cable & Wireless required a fulfilment platform to communicate with its customers (via a B2B interface), its internal systems like inventory, activation and billing (via webservices) and its supply partners (via supplier defined interfaces).
Minuco developed a robust enterprise platform capable of managing a range of fulfilment processes dependent of the product ordered and the type of order (new, change, cease etc). The platform interfaces with a number of supplier and internal systems (billing, inventory, Openreach EMP etc) via a range of standards including XML, webservices and FTP. The platform stores every message iteration for all communication processes in a viewable format,
so full process auditing and logging can be performed against a single truth database. The platform also defined the delta between service changes allowing billing and inventory modules to managed modifications more easily.
4.Assurance Platform - BT Wholesale
BT Wholesale had developed a new assurance system for their IPStream and DataStream product sets using ebXML rather than standard batch XML. They required a service provider to develop an assurance platform against the new system in order to fully test their new service,
but were unable to find a current service provider willing to invest their time and money in developing an assurance platform against this technology.
Minuco developed a full assurance platform with a full range of web interfaces to enable the BT team to have their own tame service provider in order to test and expand their system. The platform managed all the assurance processes from standard questions, line testing to appointing as if it was a real service provider and enables the BT team to iron out all the final bugs in their new system
(which was used as the model for the later Openreach EMP systems).
5.Product Catalogue - Cable & Wireless
Cable & Wireless required a facility to hold and manage an ever increasing range of wholesale products. A key requirement was that the products sold by the wholesale system could be anything from a piece of hardware to a bundle of services and hardware with fixed, recurring, installation, modify and cease costs.
In conjunction with the Cable & Wireless design team Minuco developed a product catalogue that satisfied all the key requirements as well as holding vital product 'processing' rules to drive their own partners order portals. The catalogue uses an innovative nested structure to hold several layers of product / package, attributes values and rules. The catalogue can be updated via a simple user management
screen as well as dropping in a fully formed XML for rapid deployment. If the billing system has been set up with the product and attribute codes a product can be designed and release to market in under half a day.
6.Inventory Management - Pipex / Tiscali
Pipex required an inventory management system to hold and handle their LLU network information, managing such data as Multiplexer cards, ports, tie cables and pairs as well as kernel and end point type information.
Minuco developed an inventory system which enables Pipex to automatically provision their LLU services using the inventory information above. The inventory had simple user management screens enabling user to review, update and update inventory data keeping their inventory in line with their suppliers inventory using standard APIs into external systems like Openreach’s EMP system.
7.Billing Interface - Pipex / Tiscali/
Pipex required their automated provisioning system to integrate seamlessly with their Navision Billing Implementation.
Minuco developed a provision system for Pipex which updated their Navision billing platform implementation at key point of the provisioning process, from ignition order to go live, through the lifecycle of a service (modifications) all the way to a service cessation and the relevant updates required to perform a billing cease.
8.Management & Configuration Dashboards - Cable & Wireless
Cable & Wireless required a system where their internal operations team could access a range of data about their services.
Minuco provided a management dashboard where the internal Cable & Wireless users area able to search for orders, services and end users, review all internal electronic messages relating to the order or service, review the product or service, billing codes etc. The users can also set up new products or modify existing ones,
set system configurations (lead times and testing modes), upload and manage other service data like number porting ranges etc.
9.Multiplexer Switch Activation - Pipex / Tiscali
Pipex required full automation on their LLU network and thus needed to automate multiplexer activation.
Minuco developed a package that activated / modified the Multiplexer using a CORBA interface behind a web service (allowing the functionality to be accessed by other internal systems). This enabled the provisioning process to activate ports, modify port settings or disable ports according to the particular Eriksson license in place against the kernel and hardware.
10.Openreach EMP Integration - Cable & Wireless
Cable & Wireless required full automation with their supplier BT Openreach. Openreach provide an ebXML platform for the management and provisioning of a number of their products including LLU services.
Minuco developed and implementes a system which integrates directly with the BT Openreach EMP platform. This platform has the facility to implement all provisioning processes, including a full range of dialogue services (availability checking, appointing, address matching), and managing automated assurance for all products held on the EMP system MPF, SMPF and WLR. The development enabled seamless integration with Openreach allowing Cable & Wireless to roll out their wholesales platform.
11.BT Wholesale IPStream DataStream Integration - CPW / Onetel
Onetel (now part of Carphone Warehouses Talk Talk brand) had a requirement to automate the provisioning of broadband services they were buying from BT Wholesale. As Onetel already had an internal platform (Onesys); an additional requirement was not to impact the current platform with the automation project.
Minuco implemented a standalone module to manage all provisioning and reporting communications with BT Wholesale. This module translated the orders, responses and reports into a format that could be easily generated or consumed by the Onesys platform allowing Onetel to plug in the automation with minimal impact to their operational support system.
12.BTW Geographical Number Portability (GNP) Integration - Bulldog
Bulldog was one of the pioneers of full MPF (metallic path facility) – essentially voice and data passed across the same unbundled last mile. This required the provider to provide a new telephone number or port the 'old' number to Bulldog's voice switch. As Bulldog wanted new customers to have the facility to keep their existing numbers,
they required an automated way of porting numbers in and out of their systems.
Minuco developed a stand alone automated module which managed the transfer of number to and from other operators using the industry standard flat file formats over FTP, this module received request from the Bulldog operational support system and furnished the OSS with updates and requests from the Geographical Number Portability (GNP) system.
13.BTW Directory Enquiries (DQ, LORS, OSIS) Integration - Cable & Wireless
Cable & Wireless offer fully unbundled 'double play' -services to their customers, which basically means they provide voice and data services. The Voice service is just like any other voice telephony service and has related services like directory enquiry and emergency services. There are two ways of updating the central ‘directory enquiry’ database, manually and automatically through an electronic business to business interface. Due to the volume of voice services being supplied by Cable & Wireless they needed to automate the updating of the directory enquiry information.
Minuco developed additional functionality on the Cable & Wireless wholesale platform to allow their voice services to be automatically provisioned, modified and removed from the UK directory enquiry database. The technology used in this process adopted
flat files over an automated FTP interface. The application can batch up orders, executing these against the BTW LORS system and receiving updates and other unsolicited data from BTW to keep their services up to date.
14.C&W 999 (COSAR / EDIS) Integration - Bulldog
Bulldog offered fully unbundled 'double play' services to their customers, providing voice and data services. The Voice service was just like any other voice telephony service and had related services like directory enquiry and emergency services (a legal requirement where the address and contact details need to be provided to the emergency services) . There are two ways of updating the central 'emergency' database, manually and automatically through an electronic business to business interface. Due to the volume of voice services Bulldog were providing they needed to automate the updating of the emergency service information.
Minuco developed stand-alone functionality allowing their voice services to be automatically provisioned, modified and removed from the Cable & Wireless emergency service database (there are two emergency service databases in the UK – one operated by Cable & Wireless and the other operated by BT). The technology used in this process used flat files over an automated secure FTP interface. The application batched up orders, executing them against the CW COSAR (now called EDIS) system and receiving updates and other unsolicited data from Cable & Wireless to keep the services up to date.
15.Tiscali Wholesale SMPF Integration - Tiscali
Pipex started to resell Tiscali wholesale products prior to being purchased by Tiscali.
In order to do this the Pipex provisioning platform needed to be integrated with the Tiscali wholesale platform.
Minuco extended the Pipex platform already developed by Minuco to be able to provision Tiscali SMPF services as well as BTW, and Pipex LLU services. The platform used least cost routing principals to chose the supplier to be provisioned, prioritising their own LLU process over Tiscali and BTW, and prioritising Tiscali or BTW on commercial agreements depending on the exact product or service required. This extension involved integration with the Tiscali platform.
16.Customer Premises Equipment Netlynk Integration - BT Wholesale
BT wholesale’s managed broadband platform required automated provisioning of CPE (customer premises equipment) to enable end users to receive their modems just before their services went live. The modems needed to be set up with the correct username and password as well as being despatched so that they would reach the end user just before their service went live.
Minuco developed an interface with the modem supplier (Netlynk) using batch XML to enable Netlynk to set up, pack and despatch various modem packages to the end user a set number of days before the service went live. The modem orders were directly linked to the status updates provided by the network supplier (BTW at that time), ensuring that no modems were sent out unnecessarily or late.