SERVICE MANAGEMENT CENTER

Network Operation center vs Service Operation Center.

SERVICE MANAGEMENT CENTRE.

By J. Bassoko Tshikala

IntroductionAs the level of maturity increases in the Telecommunication /Mobile communication operators, the focus should now be more on improving the quality of infrastructures and services. This requires skilled personnel to handle such day to day operations. In the next slide I’m going to talk about Network Operations Center and Service Operation Center which form parts of business with a primary focus/responsibility of providing best services to clients/End users.

What is NOC (Network Operation Center) ? Is one or more locations from which network monitoring

and control, or network management, is exercised over a computer, telecommunication or satellite network.

Network Operations Centre (NOCs) are responsible for the operational monitoring of infrastructure and services. Their function is to identify, investigate, prioritise and escalate/resolve issues that could, or do, effect to performance or availability (KPI targets).

Standard Structure of Network Operations Center

Monitoring Network Elements and Services.

NE NE NE NE

Network elements/Alarms overview using various OSS tools

NOC benefits:A single point of contact for client or

interdepartmental to report network malfunction

Monitoring faults and events, track the performance of the network and troubleshoot the problems at the first hand (first line support)

Use of ticketing system such as Remedy, Heat, ICCM which enables you to keep records of all open faults, according to their severity and/or priority and provide prompt feedback (SLA-oriented)

What’s SOC (Service operations center) ?Service Operation Center or SOC is an

organizational “department” that monitors the quality of the overall service and take the necessary actions in the case of service degradations and outages. The main data source for the SOC screens will be the SQM. The operators in the SOC will continuously monitor SQM and coordinate with other departments to decrease the MTTR of the service outage

SOC benefits:Because a network service provider’s main

product is “network”, up to now, NOCs were sufficient to achieve overall assurance activities. But, as the services get more diverse and complex, SOC concept became much more logical.

As SOC deals with cross-functional teams by pro-actively managing service quality per service, per business unit and per customer in real time.

Service Quality Analysis and optimization request

Performance management in the NOC environment consists of measuring, modelling, planning, and optimizing networks to ensure that they carry traffic with the speed, reliability, and capacity that is appropriate for the nature of the application required.

Performance management in the SOC consists of monitoring, analysing and report on the end- to-end service performance assuring that all services are functioning correctly (KPI Target, SLA).

Performance management

Network and Service report :Daily report - Open/Outstanding call status - Fault description

- Next action required/resolutionMonthly report - Open/Outstanding call

status - Fault description - Resolution (MTTR, Root cause) - Network Availability - Circuit utilization

NOC to SOC transition :In today’s complex environment, they are so many

devices, Network components that are required for to ensure an end-to-end quality customer experience. To assure this level of customer experience, service providers need to take a proactive approach based on business intelligence derived from their networks. These tools need to be able to collect, extrapolate and correlate the key data. This data will guide cross organizational teams into being more productive, by arming them with the right data about their customers’ experience.

In other words, because so many components comprise the service, we are no longer NOC-centric, we are SOC now (Service Operation Center).

EndQuestions and answers