THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO

BRM Upgrade Strategy

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The Ultimate Guide to 'The BRM Upgrade Strategy'

Introduction: Key to BRM Upgrade Success

Not every Oracle Billing and Revenue Management (BRM) upgrade is a success, at least not initially. These often are complicated

upgrades with various customizations to deal with. Although many service providers promise to assist with the Oracle BRM upgrade

you need to be careful who you partner with. The key is to check that they have the proven BRM experience your upgrade needs.

Specifically, do they:

· Take charge of the project and manage it to a successful finish on time and at budget

· Have the ability to analyze current BRM down to code level

· Have the ability to assess the impact on your customizations

· Have the skills and tools to remediate where necessary

· Test and deliver the BRM upgrade ready to deploy

And most organizations don't want to turn over the upgrade to Oracle unless, maybe, your technology infrastructure and business

billing and revenue management processes are completely vanilla. For example, Oracle offers upgrade scripts out of the box for the

newer releases and upgrade versions, but if you have made any customizations to your current version, these scripts need to be

assessed and modified to preserve your customizations. Similarly, if you rely on a complex business process these packaged scripts

are unlikely to work. You initially customized Oracle BRM for a good reason. You will want to preserve those changes with the new

upgrade.

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Oracle BRM Upgrade Risk

Your choice of a BRM implementation partner is crucial because critical revenue stream is involved. That automatically makes

upgrading BRM a high risk undertaking since the entire revenue of the operator depends on BRM running smoothly. Adding to the risk is

the complicated nature of the upgrade, entailing various customizations and schema changes that need to be identified and assessed

as part of the upgrade process.

Given the risk involved, Project Management can become a challenge involving the need to monitor, coordinate, and orchestrate the

various people from different business units and with diverse skills required to handle what can be tricky customizations and

modifications and do it end-to-end with consistency and authority. As a result, you need a respected partner that recognizes the risk

from the outset and brings the skills to mitigate the various risks and see the project managed from start to finish, thereby ensure

billing and revenue continuity.

The Ultimate Guide to 'The BRM Upgrade Strategy' Page 2 of 7

In-house Versus Outside BRM Experts

A company's initial inclination usually is to turn the BRM upgrade

over to its in-house staff. It seems to be cheaper, the in-house

group represents a known quantity, and it has been running the

system all along. Given that the in-house choice seems right.

Or, is it? How much expertise does the in-house staff really have

in Oracle and in BRM? Consider who made the customizations,

which made the database schema changes, and who is best

positioned to perform a thorough and informed risk assessment

and analysis of the upgrade across organizational silos? Then

consider who can handle project management start to finish or

understands data quality and data migration. Also consider how

deep is the in-house team's relationship with Oracle or how well

they know the BRM internals. Finally, consider that if the in-

house team has to augment staff with any outsiders for expertise

or experience they lack, you lose whatever cost advantage the

in-house team might have had.

An outside team like Tarshan, on the other hand, with proven

BRM expertise and experience as well as a deep relationship with

Oracle—deep enough to bring insights of BRM's internals—will

likely be able to deliver the project faster, with much lower risk,

and even at a lower cost when all factors, including risk, are

accounted. And, with such an outside team you will still retain

complete control of the project and ensure a predictable ROI on

the upgrade since you are the team's sole client and focus, which

is more than you can say about Oracle.

For example, a client was upgrading to Oracle BRM 7.4 and

switching operating systems from Solaris to Linux. Tarshan

analysis revealed the upgrade would enable the company to drop

what had now become several unnecessary customizations by

taking advantage of new capabilities in v7.4. Tarshan applied its

expertise in operating systems, Oracle, and BRM to handle the

upgrade and successfully handled end-to-end project

management.

The Ultimate Guide to 'The BRM Upgrade Strategy' Page 3 of 7

Proven Tarshan Expertbased BRM Upgrade Approach

Tarshan, a global IT services provider, has spent XX years

working with Oracle BRM on behalf of over ## Oracle clients. It

recognizes Oracle BRM as a multi-faceted product that is used

differently by every organization. It also understands the

complexity and inherent risk surrounding every Oracle BRM

upgrade.

As a result, Tarshan assembles diverse team of BRM experts for

each upgrade engagement, many of whom previously worked

for Oracle and have been involved in multiple BRM projects. The

work covers a broad spectrum of activities: analysis,

assessment, coding, scripting, testing, and project

management. In some cases, an upgrade may touch on obscure

BRM internals for which Tarshan has knowledgeable experts

ready. In short, the Tarshan approach is aware of the criticality of

your BRM upgrade and brings the appropriate BRM expert team

to the project.

Tarshan BRM Upgrade Process Applied

Specifically, Tarshan delivers upgrade analysis, assessment,

coding, scripting, testing, and management.

Organizations will benefit from the Tarshan expertise in the

following areas:

· Early assessment with a focus on impact analysis

· Understanding of custom hooks into Oracle code to

support specific logic

· Identifying and addressing problematic database

schema

· Upgrading complicated or customized reports

· Analysis of the pricing catalog to conform with the

upgrade

· Expert scripting to facilitate the BRM upgrade process

The Ultimate Guide to 'The BRM Upgrade Strategy' Page 4 of 7

In addition, Tarshan experts will work along the organization's internal team to assist the

internal QA group in ensuring that performance testing, acceptance testing, and

integration testing are successful. Tarshan also will fully document the upgrade process,

leaving the organization with an effective map to maintain the system. Finally, Tarshan

will oversee end-to-end project management, working closely with the organization's

own PMO to ensure efficient delivery of the upgrade on time and at budget. In addition,

Tarshan provides optional services such as finding and correcting memory leaks, often a

cause of upgrade crashes and unexpected glitches, and develop automated scripts.

One of the largest telcos in Australia, for instance, upgraded BRM from 7.0 to 7.4, a big

leap that included customizations, changing from Solaris to Linux, porting the

applications to the new OS, and testing the application. Further complicating the

upgrade was the high volume of data and a pipeline design that impacted pricing,

modifications, customizations and configuration of the applications. Tarshan designed

upgrade scripts to automate the handling large volume of data as well as the

reconfiguration of the database racks. Tarshan also handled the installation and the

configuration of the new multi-schema implementation.

Another company faced an extremely complex BRM upgrade to Oracle BRM v 7.5. It

turned to Tarshan because the BRM upgrade also included fixing databases that had

been causing performance issues. The timeline was extremely tight but Tarshan,

drawing on its expertise in BRM and databases, was able to handle both the BRM

upgrade while also re-configure the databases to eliminate the performance issues. The

entire project was completed in less than 6 months.

Build the business case for the

upgrade

End-to-end project management

Assess customization impact

Understand patches

Upgrade the database and

schema changes as needed

Bring all the customization to the

new code

Apply scripts and tools

Perform QA and acceptance testing

Fully document the upgrade process

Tarshan BRM Expert Strategy in a Nutshell

The Ultimate Guide to 'The BRM Upgrade Strategy' Page 5 of 7

Most likely problems Areas

Custom reports : an organization's unique business processes may

require custom reports that are not part of Oracle's packaged BRM

reports

Combined real-time and batch processing : complex BRM

processes may require both real-time and batch processing, which

can complicate the BRM upgrade if not handled correctly.

Testing : BRM processes can be quite complex and require extensive

testing to ensure they are working correctly and delivering accurate

results.

Pricing : the value of BRM comes through its ability to handle

complicated pricing structures. Tarshan assesses pricing models to

ensure they are accurately reflected in Oracle BRM and deliver correct

results.

The fact is BRM upgrades are too important and too risky with your

revenue stream at stake to not bring in proven expert help.

Customization : adds unique value to your BRM process but

can complicate the Oracle upgrade process. Tarshan identifies

and assesses customizations from the outset of the upgrade

process.

Schema changes : organizations often make schema changes

to reflect their unique BRM processes. Tarshan assesses the

schema changes and can make appropriate corrections as

necessary.

Memory leaks : are a frequent source of crashes and glitches.

Tarshan experts can find and fix memory leaks as needed.

Project management : the company's internal organizational

structure often hinders the necessary end-to-end project

management required for an effective BRM upgrade. Tarshan

can provide seamless end-to-end project management across

organizational silos.

*

The Ultimate Guide to 'The BRM Upgrade Strategy' Page 6 of 7

Conclusion

Tarshan—A Proven Oracle BRM Upgrade Expert Resource

An Oracle BRM upgrade is too important and risky to handle

without the assistance of proven Oracle BRM expertise. At the

least, you need knowledgeable experts like Tarshan who can

analyze and mitigate the impact on any customization during

upgrades and will bring insider knowledge of BRM code and

unpublished internals. Tarshan also brings scripting, testing, and

project management experience to your upgrade.

Tarshan LLC

5201 Great America Parkway, Suite 320

Santa Clara, California, 95054 USA

Worldwide enquiries:

Phone: +1. 408. 421.7776

www.tarshan.com

About Tarshan

Tarshan is a Software Services company and an

Oracle Communications Implementation Expert

exclusively focusing on Telecom BSS/OSS market

and providing high quality consulting services for

the Oracle Communications Suite of products.

With operations in the US and in India, Tarshan is

able to provide highly cost effective services using

a combined on-site/off-shore model. With an

extremely competent team of professionals,

Tarshan has made a name for itself in delivering

very high quality services in their projects,

especially Oracle BRM.

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