Convergence of IT for telecom and electricity

8/14/2019 Convergence of IT for telecom and electricity

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Convergence of IT systems used for Telecom,

Energy and Utility Industries A whitepaper

Authored by: Abhishek Mishra


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Convergence of IT systems for telecom, power & utility

www.incainformatics.com Page 2of 21

ContentsTABLE OF FIGURES .................................................................................... 31. Introduction ....................................................................................... 42. Requirements vis vis eTOM ............................................................. 53. Current Scenarios ............................................................................... 9

3.1 Smart meters ........................................................................................103.2 Without the usage of SCADA and Smart Grids .........................................113.3 With the usage of SCADA and Smart Grids ..............................................12

4. Future Full Convergence ................................................................. 135. Proposed architecture ....................................................................... 157. Benefits ........................................................................................... 188. Glossary ........................................................................................... 199. THE COMPANY.................................................................................. 20


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TABLE OF FIGURESFIGURE 1:KEY AREAS OF UTILITY INDUSTRY MAPPED WITH ETOM ........................................................... 5FIGURE 2:TYPICAL POWER TRANSMISSION SYSTEM............................................................................. 9

FIGURE 3:POWER TRANSMISSION GRID LAYOUT............................................................................... 10FIGURE 4:SMART ELECTRICITY METER............................................................................................ 11FIGURE 5:SMART GAS METER...................................................................................................... 11FIGURE 6:PROPOSED ARCHITECTURE FOR A CONVERGED PLATFORM...................................................... 15FIGURE 7:THE 6LAYER ARCHITECTURE........................................................................................... 16FIGURE 8:TMNMODEL FOR THE LOGICAL LAYERS BASED ARCHITECTURE................................................. 17


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1. IntroductionThe US Department of Energy defines smart grid as "the electricity delivery system from

point of generation to point of consumption integrated with communications and information

technology for enhanced grid operations, customer services, and environmental benefits."Situational awareness is the new buzzword which in reality is the requirement of

power and several other utility companies. Optimal utilization of electrical energy, gas and

water supply, etc. is dictating the need to deploy communication networks that would link the

utility networks also, intelligently.

This whitepaper is an attempt to highlight how the requirement of multiple industries

will converge with the help of technology, thus benefitting the end-users, as well as how the

smart grid management systems can contribute to a healthier and greener environment.


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2. Requirements vis vis eTOM

Figure 1: Key areas of utility industry mapped with eTOMNow with respect to the eTOM model which is the well accepted standard in the

telecommunications industry has a lot of relevance in the smart-grid and utility industry.

Consider the Operations block of the eTOM model where we have the 4 verticals of

Operational Support & Readiness, Fulfillment, Assurance & Billingand these domains

will have a more urgent requirement for the inter-networking and central control of the utility

applications and their usage. The other domains of the eTOM model can also be mapped with

the requirements of the utility industry in future, but for now, the focus should be on these

blocks as highlighted inFigure 1: Key areas of utility industry mapped with eTOM.

CRM support & readiness block: This will provide the necessary interface and support to all

the blocks under Fulfillment, Assurance & Billing blocks. The roles and responsibilities

under the purview of this block are (with respect to utility industry):

1. Customer interface management: Take care of all prospective customers as well asall current customers. Such interfaces can even be extended to the actual customers

over internet (customer portals) but it might not be very useful except for enabling

Enterprise Management

Stakeholder & External

Relations Management

Human Resources

Management

Financial & Asset

Management

Strategic &

Enterprise Planning

Knowledge & Research

Management

Enterprise

Effectiveness Management

Enterprise Risk

Management

Resource/service

problem, quality

trouble and

performancemanagement

Mediate

service a

resource usa

Track & manage

service &

resourceprovisioning

upport customer

nterface

management, order

andling and billayments &

eceivablesmanagement

Collect,

process,

distribute and

audit all

necessary

management

Manage the

workforce

responsible for

the activation &

maintenance ofutility services

Security, fraud

and revenue

assurancemanagementrequirements


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the customer to do a re-load of his account (pre-paid) or check his/her un-billed

usage. In the utility industry there are not so many products available for

customer offering unlike the telecommunications industry, so this might not have

much use for product/or service selling as such.

2. Order handling: Receiving the requests from new customers for providing the utilityservices at their premises and service modification/termination requests from theexisting customers. All requests received will be forwarded to the system involved in

service activation.

3. Problem handling: All complaints regarding services used by them will be receivedhere with a primary level of trouble-shooting offered if possible. Complaints will be

recorded in IT systems in the form of a Fault Ticket and forwarded to the

team/system responsible for the issue resolution under the Assurance vertical.

4. Bill invoice management: This block will be responsible for the management of allinvoices. The source of the service usage data and the actual generation of the

invoice is available under the service guiding & mediation block under the Billing

vertical.

5. Bill payments & receivables management: The responsibility for the tracking thepayments from all payment gateways, providing rebates or discounts, dunning etc.

With the advent of real-time communication between the smart meters and the

central operations managements systems, accurate and most up-to-date billing can

be done. In addition the customers can be provided the facility of forecasting their

usage and expenses based on the current usage patterns and tariff plans. Such

interfacing can be provided of customer-portals available over Internet.

6. Retention & loyalty: This block has the responsibility of ensuring that customers canbe retained as long as possible by understanding their requirements, problems,

risks, etc and developing retention schemes to ensure loyalty.

7. Marketing fulfillment: Issuance and distribution of requested services.8. Selling: Management of all prospects, qualifying an opportunity, cross/up selling,

acquisition of customer data, negotiate with potential customers Sales/Contract

9. Bill inquiry handling: Responding to queries from customers for finding theiroutstanding payments and other dues and discounts is the responsibility of this

block. The response that will be sent back to the customer can be more accurate

with the availability of smart-meters and their management systems. Such inquiries

and their respective responses can be done through the customer portals or even

through SMS if the CRM systems can be integrated with SMS gateways of all

incumbent telecom service providers.

Upon analyzing the business processes involved in the functionality blocks ofeTOM, we can appreciate that the Telco, Utility and Energy industries have somewhat

similar functional requirements. The similar functionalities can be grouped and classified as

below.

Workforce management: All the field-force involved in the installation, activation and

maintenance of the utility services and their smart-meters need to be managed under this

block. This would help in scheduling of the visit of the technicians, forecasting the


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requirements of technician visits or truck-roll, dynamic management of the field

technician as per the changing real-time requirements and their operational support.

Service configuration & activation: In the absence of centralized management systems

(analogous to the Network Management Systems) all configurations, activations have to be

done at the customers premises always. Nevertheless the responsibility of Service

configuration & activation is under this block.Resource provisioning: The deployment and setup of the resources required for

fulfilling all customer requirements have to be dealt with in this block. Laying out of

electrical infrastructure like power cables, transformers, sub-stations, connecting all

infrastructure nodes and preparing them to be used for providing service to the customers

over this infrastructure.

Service problem management: This process block is responsible for handling all

problems arising in the infrastructure (for each utility industry the type of infrastructure will

vary) which is directly related with the services being availed of, by the customers. Such

customer-effecting problems need to be immediately resolved. This needs elaborate plans

and processes (can be described up to Level 3 or Level 4 for the utility industry) for

diagnosing and resolving the problems.

Service quality management: This process block is responsible for regular (preferably in

real-time) monitoring of the services being used by the customers. The parameters or the

KPIs of the delivered services need to be monitored in order to ensure continuous and un-

interrupted service can be provided to the customers.

Resource problem management: The problems in the resources/infrastructure that are

observed and reported by the internal operations and maintenance teams are recorded in

some system in the form of Resource Trouble Ticket. Such tickets will contain all details and

descriptions of the problem. The processes under this block will take care of how the

resolutions of such problems are undertaken and by whom.

Resource quality management: This process block is responsible for handling allproblems arising in the infrastructure of the utility provider. Regular monitoring of the

resources health by means of keeping a constant check on the KPIs of the infrastructure

can help in resource problem management. This would enable the utility service providers

to proactively do resource as well as service problem management. Prediction of potential

problems in the infrastructure/resource can be a very powerful tool for managing the

services also.

Service guiding and mediation: The process involves collection, filtration, validation,

sorting, re-conciliation and collation of usage data records (UDR) for the services

used/consumed. This information can be for retail/domestic consumers or industrial users

also.Resource guiding and mediation: The process involves collection of all data which can

indicate how much the infrastructure has used. This information can be for retail/domestic

consumers or industrial users also.

Resource data collection and distribution: All the information regarding the resource

and service usage, resource and service problem management, resource and service

performance/quality management needs to be shared and utilized in other processes like

for the CRM systems need the billing and mediation information along with service data.


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Enterprise Risk Management: All the customer and infrastructure information

contained in the various IT applications has to be protected. The identified risks may be

physical or logical/virtual. Successful risk management ensures that the enterprise can

support its mission critical operations, processes, applications, communications in the face

of a serious incidents, from security threats/violations and fraud attempts.


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3. Current Scenarios

Figure 2: Typical power transmission system


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Figure 3: Power transmission grid layout3.1 Smart-meters

Smart meters which measure the usage of electricity, gas or water are connectedwith central servers which can receive the usage data from the customers premises in real

time. Apart from the usage data, the smart meters can also send faults or alarms indicating

a problem in the service being delivered at the customers premises.

These smart meters connect with the operations control center using some

interconnection technology or protocol which is reliable and secure. With the increasing

need for standardizing the above mentioned communications requirement, TCP/IP

protocol is being adopted as the standard. Usage of IP would allow a more flexible and

easily expandable communications network.


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Figure 4: Smart electricity meter

Figure 5: Smart gas meter

3.2 Without the usage of SCADA and Smart-GridsThe traditional method of power distribution, management of different component of a

power grid and usage data collection from customer premises involved a lot of manual work

requiring a lot of human interventions.

This had 2 major shortcomings first is that monitoring and troubleshooting had to be

done by visually checking the actual source of the problem and that too, after the problem

had already occurred and caused some inconvenience to the customers; the second short

coming was that customers often would not be aware of their usage patterns and their

current outstanding payments, etc.

The collection of the service usage data had to be done by sending a technician to the

customers premise to note down the meter readings and have the data sent to a billing

department. This approach (all these years) obviously involved more time and efforts. Also,

the other problem was that only when a customer would report a problem in his services,

then a technician would be dispatched to investigate the problem. The technician would

have to start his investigations manually, one by one checking the possibility of the problem

in the customers premises, then at the cabling leading outside, then the nearby

transformers, and so on. In short this was a completely reactive kind of Service Assurance

(Service Problem Managementas per the eTOM model).


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3.3 With the usage of SCADA and Smart-GridsSCADA systems are used to monitor and control a plant or equipment in industries such

as telecommunications, water and waste control, energy, oil and gas refining and

transportation. A SCADA system gathers information, such as where a leak on a pipeline hasoccurred, transfers the information back to a central site, alerting the home station that the

leak has occurred, carrying out necessary analysis and control, such as determining if the

leak is critical, and displaying the information in a logical and organized fashion. SCADA

systems can be relatively simple, such as one that monitors environmental conditions of a

small office building, or incredibly complex, such as a system that monitors all the activity in

a nuclear power plant or the activity of a municipal water system.


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4. Future Full ConvergenceIn the current scenario, there are similar functionalities being delivered by various COTS

products in the Utility (energy & water) and in Telco industries. If similar functional

requirements can be catered to by one or at least fewer systems/tools, it would provide ahigh level of benefits to the end customers eventually. Some of the easily identifiable

functionalities are:

1. Service activation: After the customer (retail or corporate) has applied for a givenservice or a set of bundled services, and the payments (or credit verification

processes) have been completed and the service provider has also internally

completed a feasibility assessment, then the service needs to be provisioned and

activated. The service will be actually activated in 2 placesat the customer premise

and at the infrastructure side (in the network, etc). This process can be manual or

automated. If automation is required, some IT System will be required. Such a

requirement (at least at a high level) will exist for Utility (energy & water) and in

Telco industries.

2. SLA, SLG and OLA management: Service level agreements and related guarantees,Operational Level Agreements are fundamentally business level or contractual level

concepts. At a high level they are not tied down to any industry as such.

3. Fault management: Any type of a problem, whether it occurs at a Service level,which is reported by a customer, or its a problem occurring in the infrastructure of

the Service Provider, needs to be put on record and has to be put through a pre-

defined business process for ensuring a timely rectification.

4. Work-force management: Management of the workforce (especially the field-force)requires a few fundamental things:

Work assignmentField-force scheduling

Work-progress tracking

Dispatching of field-force

Skill-set management

Above mentioned work-force management requirements exist for both Utility

(energy & water) and in Telco industries.

5. Line testing: Service assurance scenarios wherever any kind of testing andverification of the infrastructure (either at customer premise or at service providers

side), field technicians has to be sent to identify and resolve problems. Owing to the

advancement of IT technologies, several management systems now exist which cando a certain level of testing and verification remotely from a regional or a local

office. Integration and consolidation of such management systems is a need of

Utility (energy & water) and in Telco industries.

6. Performance monitoring: the health of the service providers infrastructure(telecom, utility or energy networks) need to be regularly monitored to ensure that

proactive service assurance can be employed and offered to the customers.


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Monitoring of pre-defined KPIs or KQIs will be the basis of performance monitoring.

Based on the statistical data collected SLAs can also be associated and managed.

7. Customer relationship management: Acquisition and retention of a customer andencouraging customer loyalty is the prime responsibility of a CRM system (or a

similar business process). CAF or the customer application forms are submitted to

the sales kiosks or similar points-of-sales. Then the customers request is keyed intoor recorded into an IT System which allows the flow of the data into downstream

systems. Also CRM systems need to fetch infrastructure related and billing related

information, as per customer and operational requirements.

8. Billing operations and revenue management: All services used or consumed by thecustomers need to be accounted for and accordingly invoiced. Very efficient and

accurate systems are required for this, in order to ensure minimum or no revenue

leakages.

9. Workflow management / Project management: In order to execute any business oroperational process, certain pre-definable set of tasks need to be executed in a

given sequential order, maintaining the ownership of the task and having a

managerial control on the overall time-bound progress. Such a requirement can be

fulfilled using a tool which can manage the entire business process and this system

should also allow system level integrations with other systems and tools.

10.Data-warehousing and business intelligence: Decision making requires availabilityof information in understandable formats, coming in from all IT Systems employed

by the Service Provider. Analysis of data gives an insight to the management teams

about various factors like service usage patterns, customer preferences, revenue

accrual patterns, assessment of efficiency of partners and suppliers, inventory

availability, etc. All the above mentioned IT Systems will churn out a huge amount of

data which can help in building a lot of information bases. A system which can dig

into this database and extract and represent this data in an intelligent format, will bea common requirement of Utility (energy & water) and in Telco industries.

11.E-Security: Security of all IT applications deployed by the service provider needs tobe completely secure and protected from intrusions, thefts and frauds. This is a very

important requirement of Utility (energy & water) and in Telco industries, for

protecting their IT assets and being prepared for all contingencies as a part of a

business continuity management process. Protection of data is of utmost

importance in these IT applications.


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5. Proposed architectureThe proposed architecture for a converged platform having Operations, Billing and CRM

functionalities of Telecom, Energy and Utility industries has a common set of IT applications.

Figure 6: Proposed architecture for a converged platform

The detailed system architecture can be simplified consolidated and represented using

the layered architecture.

The 6 layer architecture will have the following principle components:1. Business Intelligence2. OSS, BSS, GIS and CRM3. EAI4. Management systems5. Infrastructure6. Consumer device layer


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Figure 7: The 6 layer architecture

1. Business Intelligence (BI) layer: All the IT systems used for OSS, BSS, CRM, GIS will churna huge amount of data. This massive data-pool needs to be aggregated, sorted in a way

that it helps in analyzing information related with trends, patterns, inventories, etc. Data

will have to be adjusted or re-modeled in a data warehouse on the basis of time-based,

geography-based or infrastructure-based dimensions. Basically all the databases will

feed the data to a data warehouse which will be used for generating standardized

reports.

2. OSS/BSS, GIS and CRM layer: The systems which will be a part of this layer will be theones that will implement the functionalities of service activation, service assurance,

resource assurance, work-force management, line-testing, billing, crediting, rating,

charging, invoicing, dunning, etc. Also the GIS systems which will have geo-spatial

information database, which can be used to represent the infrastructure entities on the

geographical maps.3. EAI layer: Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), aka middleware, provides the

infrastructure to connect information sources, acting as a go-between for applications

and their business processes. By implementing EAI solutions, the Telco, Utility and

Energy companies will be able to realize various benefits,

4. Management layer: Systems or devices which can manage or have any kind ofsupervisory control on the Infrastructure layer are a part of the management layer.

BI

OSS, BSS, GIS

and CRM layer

EAI layer

Management Systems

Infrastructure layer

Consumer device layer


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5. Infrastructure layer: The components of each of the groups of Telecom, Utility, Energywhich carry the information or energy or utility service to the customers premises are a

part of the Infrastructure layer. Setup, deployment and maintenance of this layer is vital

to the entire business and its operations.

Telecom: network equipments like routers, switches, multiplexers, cables, etc

Utility devices: Gas supply pipelines, pumping centers, purifiers, etcElectricity: Transmission towers, cables and wires, transformers, sub-station

units, etc

6. Consumer device layer: The end user of all services offered by Telcos, Utility and Energycompanies. The consumer will have following possible sets of devices:

Telecom devices: POTS/EPABX, Broadband internet, IPLC, IPTV, WiMax, etc

Utility devices: Gas supply for heating and cooking, water supply, and its

metering systems, etc

Electricity: all fans, heaters, air-conditioners, incandescent and CFL lamps, etc.

and its metering systems

This 6 Layer architecture is similar to the TMN model for the logical layers based

architecture, which describes and recommends the alignment of IT systems and concepts with

the Enterprise and the Business.

Figure 8: TMN model for the logical layers based architecture


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7. BenefitsPotential benefits of having a common set of IT Systems managing and monitoring

Telco, Utility and Energy infrastructure and their consumers usage data records:

1.

Common GIS: An enterprise level GIS application, which can have the geo-spatialinformation of all infrastructural elements of electrical supply system, water and gas

supply systems, including telecom infrastructure elements. Within a specified

geography, presence of the infrastructure elements of one or more consumer services

systems (energy, telecom, etc.) is always a very strong likelihood. Also the chances are

always very high that within a common conduit or a shaft or a manhole, power cables,

water pipes and telecom optical fiber cables will be passing. All these elements can be

represented on a geo-spatial map as all of them will share the same co-ordinates, etc. As

an example, consider the incident management perspective of these service industries;

if during a planned-event in one area where an excavation around a man-hole is being

done for the repair of leaking water pipe, damage is done to a nearby optical fiber cable,

the ability to do a root cause analysis and the time taken to repair the damaged fiber

will be minimal if their inventory and GIS systems are common.

2. Common customer database: The OSS/BSS and CRM systems hold a huge databasecontaining details of a customer (name, address, services, billing account and sub-

accounts, etc). If the proposed converged system can successfully consolidate the

records of all customers into one common system it will potentially lead to higher level

of efficiency.

3. Reduced MTTP & MTTR: Consolidated inventory, GIS systems, and customer databaseswill provide a high level of visibility of all infrastructures in an area, its inter-

dependencies, etc. This will allow the operators or controllers in a common control

center to activate, monitor and repair the services.4. Greater visibility of usage patterns: The end-customers will have complete visibility of

how much of services are being consumed, the patterns and trends of usage, monthly

bills, etc. At the same time service providers will get an insight about the preferences of

a given set of their customers, accordingly the marketing campaigns can be modeled

and a higher ROI on any sales campaign can be achieved.

5. Single portal to access multiple service providers: Self-help portals offered by multipleservice providers often lead to a myriad of information for a consumer. This can be

simplified to a great extent after the convergence of the management systems of all

utility, energy and telecom service providers. Using such portals, the consumers can

monitor their usage of all services, service selection, activation, problem reporting etc of

multiple services can be done through one single portal after the convergence of

platforms.


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8. GlossaryAcronym Full Form

API Application Programming Interface

BI Business Intelligence

BSS Business Support System

CAF Customer Application Form

CRM Customer Relationship Management

EAI Enterprise Application Integration

GIS Geographic Information System

IT Information Technology

KPI Key Performance Indicator

KQI Key Quality Indicator

OLA Operational Level Agreement

OSS Operations Support System

SCADA Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition

SLA Service Level Agreement

SLG Service Level Guarantee

SMS Short Messaging Service

TMN Telecommunications Management Network

UDR Usage Data Records


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9. THE COMPANYINCA INFORMATICS is a privately held company specializing in solutions and services for

the telecom and utility industry. With over 40 customers including tier 1 telecom operators

across the globe, INCA is one of the few companies offering a suite of solution integration

services and customized operational support systems, based on the power of GeographicalInformation System (GIS) and Operations Support System (OSS) for the telecom and utility

sector. INCA executes projects - from conceptualization to realization, from software design to

system integration.

INCA is a world class Systems Integration House for Telecom service providers and a

niche player in Information Management for the Utilities sector. At INCA innovation is

combined with a deep-rooted commitment to bring value-added service to the clients and

helps them enable enterprise wide business transformation. This is achieved by using state-of-

the-art technology to create cost effective solutions to solve real-world problems.

INCA provides service providers and vendors with unique software tools to simplify

complex network management issues vastly reducing operating costs and improving

profitability. The service delivery model of INCA comprises of an optimum combination of on-

site and offshore services designed to achieve both efficiency and effectiveness. In order to

provide clients with a complete pre-integrated management solution, INCA has forged strategic

alliances with global partners to deliver powerful end-to-end solutions.


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Convergence of IT for telecom and electricity