Service Blueprinting for Group Telcos - Wipro

www.wipro.com

SERVICE BLUEPRINTING FOR GROUP TELCOS

Anindya Roy, Senior Architect

Arjit Mazumdar, Lead SOA Architect

Avik Kumar Si, Business Analyst & Business Development Professional

Preface

Telecom operators across the world are undergoing an exciting phase in

their business. On one hand, in developed countries, the service area is

changing from voice to data as people are opting for Internet hungry smart

devices, while on the other hand, in developing countries, the ‘other’ 2/3rds

Table of Contents

03....................................................................................................................................... Abstract

03....................................................................................................................................... Preface

04....................................................................................................................................... Problem

04....................................................................................................................................... Service Blueprinting

06....................................................................................................................................... Preliminary Phase

06....................................................................................................................................... Template Implementation Phase

06....................................................................................................................................... Steady State Implementation Phase

06....................................................................................................................................... Elastic Scaling Infrastructure and Flexible Operation

08....................................................................................................................................... Major Challenges and Mitigation

08....................................................................................................................................... Summary

09....................................................................................................................................... About the Author

09....................................................................................................................................... About Wipro Ltd

of the population are connecting with each other using mobile devices. But

in both these worlds, the demand for a robust communication platform is

prominent, providing state-of-the-art service delivery, thereby allowing

subscribers to obtain services quickly and uniformly across multiple channels.

ProblemIt has been observed that most of the prominent group telecom companies

have independent operating units that run operations specific to a country

or smaller geographical boundary. These operators need to reduce

operation expenditure and introduce mechanisms that bring in new

lucrative services to the market and support these through a scalable

platform. The group operator needs to have a set of ‘tested and proven’

optimized application and business processes. But varied subscriber

demographics, buying pattern, and a heterogeneous IT application asset

gathered by mergers and acquisitions are clear deterrents to implement

uniform business processes across operating units, thereby requiring local

optimization of these business processes. The problem intensifies when

these operations are smaller in size and hence cannot fund sufficient IT

budgets to implement and support industry best-of-breed processes.

These factors lead to the requirement for a platform, as well as a delivery

methodology to enable an integration architecture that can host tested and

proven services on an Internet scale platform. The subsequent sections will

explain how this can be achieved by using the Service Blueprint

methodology for service implementation, and elastic scaling infrastructure,

and flexible operation. A similar transformation of application consolidation

can be performed parallelly, to reduce the complexity in implementing new

business processes, as well as running current business processes to its best.

Application landscape consolidation is out of scope in this paper.

Service BlueprintingService Blueprinting is a methodology used to host reusable and scalable

services for internal and/or external clients. The methodology has been

implemented using Oracle Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Suite and

Oracle Application Integration Architecture (AIA). The goal of this

methodology is to define global business processes isolated from

localization, identify localization modules, build them in a loosely coupled

methodology, and finally orchestrate local and global modules together to

provide best-of-breed solution. The Oracle AIA and Oracle SOA Suite help

to implement this seamlessly. Oracle SOA Suite comes with a set of

technical adapters that reduces the inherent risks of integration with other

applications, leading to reduced time-to-market. Oracle AIA brings along

with the Application Business Connector Services (ABCS), components

that encapsulate the application specific logics. These ABCS components

then exchange the data with the business processes in the Enterprise

Business Messages (EBM) format. EBM are business data models that

implement industry best practices and comply with industry standard data

models such as eTOM SID. Canonical based design patterns help in the

implementation of business processes governed by only business data

models and not by applications. Along with this, Oracle SOA Suite provides

Business Activity Monitoring, which equips the business user with a realtime

dashboard depicting performances of the business processes through

tabular and graphical representation of KPI(s) and probable bottlenecks.

The diagram above depicts an illustrative business process which

communicates with various applications (e.g. CRM, Billing System and

Provisioning) to fulfill the processes end-to-end using EBS like Customer

Party EBS and Fulfillment Order EBS. As the EBS components deals only

with business data and not any application specific data, these can be

considered as part of the global process components. The CRM ABCS and

Billing ABCS and the Provisioning adapter encapsulates the application level

details for CRM, Billing System and Provisioning applications respectively.

The Technical Adapter is to allow the Provisioning system to communicate

with the Provisioning ABCS. All these components will be considered

as localization.

The Service Blueprint methodology can essentially be divided into different

phases as mentioned below. The phases and its salient activities are:

1. Preliminary Phase

2. Template Implementation Phase

3. Steady State Implementation Phase

Preliminary Phase

This can be described as the preparatory phase. The primary activities

include onboarding of key business and technical stakeholders, defining the

reference architecture, but most importantly, identifying the operating

company which will be the first instance where the template will be

validated and implemented. The crucial criterion for this is the right size and

complexity of business processes globally represented, and which covers

most of the processes in other operating units. The success of the template

or the foundation framework depends on how comprehensive a set of

global processes are derived from the first operating unit. Similarly, it should

cater to a considerable subscriber base so that stabilizing the production

environment for this operation should provide confidence to the senior

management before initiating transformation to a bigger operation.

The initial governance policies and different compliance metrics are also set

up through a global repository using the Oracle Enterprise Repository

(OER). The single global repository is utilized as a single source of truth, and

to drive and control the overall service blueprinting methodology. Finally,

this repository will show the extent of reuse of global business processes,

thereby translating into the success of the transformation.

TemplateImplementation Phase

The foremost objective of this phase is to document all processes of the

operating unit and identify those processes that can be promoted to the

global template. Enough scrutiny needs to be performed while deriving the

global and local components to ensure that no application level logic seeps

into the global component. The components should be designed as loosely

coupled as possible and business rule needs to be derived to route the

message across appropriate localization components catering to this

operating unit. The global business process components in the global SOA

infrastructure installation will be termed as the foundation template, while

local customization in local SOA infrastructure will be termed as local

custom module. The target should be to ensure minimum changes take

place in the subsequent rollouts of the foundation template, and only the

localization of custom modules is carried out. This will reduce the

time-to-market and hence, the costs. The global and local components,

including their processes and services are captured in a single global

repository using Oracle Enterprise Repository (OER).

One of the most important artifacts includes the documentation of the

lessons learnt that will be used in the implementation of future operating

units. Needless to say, once this environment is operational and stable it will

start catering to future demands of that operating unit.

Steady StateImplementation Phase

Once the foundation is established through implementation in the first

operating unit, the blueprints and the lessons learnt can be effectively used

in the implementation of other operating units. The operating unit’s specific

processes and deviation is captured and analyzed. Impact and gap analysis is

carried out through global repository to identify customization and local

needs. Here, possible optimization of global processes may occur while

implementing the lessons learnt previously in the current operating unit.

The base foundation template might see regular augmentation through

induction of new processes or services if there is a global change in the

business processes. An example of this can be the implementation of

service delivery platforms or the change in customer registration processes.

A change in global processes and the resulting foundation template update

can be rolled out across operating units with effective control and

versioning through OER. For roll-outs in a fresh operating unit a 30 - 40%

reduction of production deployment time has been observed compared to

the time taken for roll-outs in the first template operating unit.

Elastic Scaling Infrastructure and Flexible Operation

One of the salient reasons to implement the platform is to install global

business processes in a central location and provide localizations within an

individual operating unit’s location. The local SOA infrastructure will be

used to integrate with the local applications and deploy localization required

by a particular operating unit. The local SOA infrastructure will be used as

temporary storage for in-flight orders if the connectivity to global SOA

infrastructure is lost. The global processes running from a central SOA

infrastructure will host global services supporting multiple operations

spanning different time zones. It will also provide necessary governance and

monitoring of the processes though OER and Oracle Enterprise

Management (OEM), and make changes to the global business processes

easy. Additionally, this will build the foundation for a possible application

consolidation. A single infrastructure catering to multiple operations needs

to handle multiple peak usage spikes every day, wherein the peak usage for

an operation may possibly be compensated by lean usage by another.

Nevertheless, this all leads to an Internet scale, that’s reliable, and highly

available in a global SOA environment that can scale up or down rapidly.

Oracle JRockit JVM, Oracle Weblogic application server, Oracle Coherence

Data Grid, and Oracle’s Enterprise Manager Cloud control running in

Oracle’s Engineered Systems such as, Oracle Exadata and Oracle Exalogic

can make the above mentioned demands feasible.

Oracle Engineered Systems provides the tuned hardware to bring out

the best performance from the application (Oracle Exalogic Elastic

Cloud) and database (Oracle Exadata)

The Oracle JRockit JVM is the industry's highest performing Java Virtual

Machine that provides a foundation to run Weblogic application servers

Oracle Weblogic will act as J2EE container to host the services

Weblogic clustering will provide high availability of the platform as well

as act as the messaging engine to communicate between applications

Oracle Coherence data grid will provide a fast yet reliable mechanism

session data replication in the web layer, and create an application data

caching layer to reduce disk input or output, hence reducing the service

response time

Finally, Oracle’s Enterprise Manager Cloud controls not only the

monitoring of IT assets (hardware and SOA platform) providing valuable

inputs for closed-loop governance, but also enables the SOA

environment to rapidly scale up or down

The demand for human support is equally important to ensure that the

show runs in a flawless manner. A distributed support team across different

time zones is better suited to support the global infrastructure. Wipro’s flex

methodology is leveraged to obtain a reduced Total Cost of Ownership

(TCO) to maintain a smooth running operation.

Major Challenges and Mitigation

1. The most critical challenges can arise from poor unstable connectivity

between global and local SOA infrastructures. The absence of a global

SOA infrastructure can cause a major business impact. If such a scenario

is evident, the following measures should be considered:

a. Local DR Strategy: Failover of the global infrastructure will be done

on a miniature local version of the global SOA infrastructure in order

to continue with business critical processes. This also means proper

planning is required for the synchronization of data.

b. Reliable messaging: Messaging communication should be reliable.

The practice of Weblogic Store-and-forward mechanisms should be

used to push and pull JMS messages.

c. Adherence to asynchronous mode of communication and the

possible usage of localized cached data can also be adopted judiciously

to reduce performance degrades caused by high network latency.

2. Local regulation may bar the transferring of sensitive data (such as CDR

or customer demographic details) outside the country to the global

infrastructure. This is a major issue for operations that participate in

global business process infrastructures. In this case a single SOA

infrastructure needs to be created within local infrastructure, wherein

global and local components can be deployed.

Summary

Service blueprinting based on Oracle’s SOA Suite and Oracle AIA is a

proven methodology for implementing global business processes across

multiple operations of group telecommunication operators. Oracle’s

Weblogic platform supported by Wipro’s Flex operation can deliver

Internet scaling with a rapid elastic SOA infrastructure on Oracle’s

Engineered Systems. The combination of these twin pillars will help any

telecom operator to manage their current operations, acquire a new

customer base with the launch of new products and even assimilate new

entities through mergers or acquisitions that’s cost effective, with a quick

turnaround time. Currently, this has been envisaged and is being

implemented for a large telecom services operator in the EMEA region. The

solution can be seamlessly implemented in any large organization and in

other industries as well.

Reference

1. http://www.oracle.com/us/products/middleware/soa/overview/index.html

2. http://www.oracle.com/in/products/applications/application-integration

-architecture/overview/index.html

3. http://www.oracle.com/in/products/engineered-systems/index.html

4. http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/jrockit/overview/index.html

5. http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/oem/enterprise-manager/overview/

index.html

6. http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/weblogic/overview/

index.html

7. http://www.tmforum.org/InformationFramework/1684/home.htm

3

Preface





Group telecom service providers need to churn out new products faster to beat competition, and

increase their market share. Standardization of business processes across operating companies helps

achieve this goal. However, one needs strong localization to meet the demands of local regulations. To

resolve this contradiction one requires business agility. Further, the exploding growth of devices

demands elastic scaling infrastructure. This paper therefore, discusses how SOA with closed-loop

governance can help realize agility in a standardized yet divergent manner in a rapidly scalable

environment, using Oracle Fusion Middleware (OFMW). It also focuses on the role that Oracle

Engineered Systems plays in providing elastic and accelerated Internet-level scaling.

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CRM BILLING PROVISIONING

CUSTOMER PARTY_TO_FULFILMENTORDER_EBF

ADAPTER

EBS / EBF

CRM ABCS BILLING ABCS PROVISIONING ABCS

PROVISIONING ADAPTER



























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FULFILLMENT ORDER EBSCUSTOMER PARTY EBS

ABCS

5

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as localization.






Preliminary Phase TemplateImplementation Phase


Governance Body Setup

Reference Architecture

Business and Technology

Stakeholders Identification

Target Business Process

Identification

Template Opco

Identification

Document Target Business

Processes

Global Process vs. Local

Optimization

Foundation Template

Identification and Implementation

Global Process Implementation

Opco Specific Customization

Service Stabilization

Lesson Learnt Gathering

Serial or Parallel

Implementation and Roll out in

each Opco

Global Process Implementation

Optimization and Augmentation

of Global Template

Opco Specific Customization

Service Stabilization

Lesson Learnt Gathering

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JMS

InfinbandJRockit JVM

Coherence

Oracle SOA Suite + AIA

Weblogic

Exadata Exalogic

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9

About the AuthorAnindya Roy

[email protected]

Anindya Roy is a Senior Architect at Wipro. He is an expert in enterprise integration area involving SOA, both in-premise and cloud based integration with

specialization in Oracle Fusion Middleware. He has an overall experience of 17+ years in various open technologies spanning across all stages of software

lifecycle, with special emphasis on architecture and design.

Arjit Mazumdar

[email protected]

Arijit Mazumdar is a lead SOA Architect at Wipro. He has worked on many large SOA implementation projects in Banking and Telecom domain in the

capacity of SOA Architect. His other areas of interest are Oracle Engineered System, Complex Event Processing. He is OPN certified in Oracle Service

Oriented Architecture, Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud X2-2, Oracle WebLogic Server 12c, etc.

Avik Kumar Si

[email protected]

Avik Kumar Si is a Business Analyst and business development professional at Wipro. He has been involved in the SOA implementation at a major Telecom

player in EMEA. His interests include exploring the influence of technology in transforming society and business and helping organizations exploit IT to win in

changing business ecosystems.

About Wipro Ltd.

Wipro Ltd. (NYSE:WIT) is a leading Information Technology, Consulting and Outsourcing company that delivers solutions to enable its clients do business

better. Wipro delivers winning business outcomes through its deep industry experience and a 360 degree view of "Business through Technology" - helping

clients create successful and adaptive businesses. A company recognized globally for its comprehensive portfolio of services, a practitioner's approach to

delivering innovation and an organization wide commitment to sustainability, Wipro has a workforce of 140,000 serving clients across 57 countries. For more

information, please visit www.wipro.com.

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IND/BRD/AUG 2013-OCT 2014

IND/BRD/NOV 2013-JAN 2015

WIPRO LTD. 2013

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Service Blueprinting for Group Telcos - Wipro