Specification and Instance in SID

SID uses extensively the concepts of “Specification” and “Instance”. The Specification provides the definition of the concept, whether it be a Product Offering, Resource or even Customer Facing Service (CFS), whilst the Instance allows as the name indicates allows individual instances of the specification be identified and linked, where appropriate to a particular Customer Account.

The Specification is easy to understand if you think of your car; every component in the car has a part number. The part number for, say the silencer (muffler), is the same for every car of the same year, model and manufacturer as your car. This allows you to go to the car parts shop and buy a new one. The silencer you buy will also have a serial number on it which is unique to that particular silencer, no other silencer with that part number will have the same serial number. So the part number identifies the Specification and the serial number identifies the Instance.

It is fairly easy to see how this model extends to customer equipment like a SIM card or handset. For example, each handset has a unique serial number (in the case of GSM handsets, the IMEI) and is identified by a part number, or name such as Motorola Raza or Nokia 6300. However this notion extends to Product Offering which is a specification of the Offering and Product Subscription which is the instance of a Customer’s use of the Product Offering and down to Installed Customer Facing Service which is the instantiation of the CFS (which is a specification too).

When defining a specification for a piece of equipment like a handset there are a set of properties that all handsets have, like

• Weight
• Talk time
• Size
• Colour
• Frequency band

as well as the capabilities of the handset, such as Bluetooth, camera, tones, MP3 player etc etc. So we can define a set of parameters relevant to the Resource Specification and then for a particular model define a set of Parameter Values (e.g. 100 grams, 4 hours, 10x5x1 cm, silver, 1800 MHz) that define the model.

We can then extend this idea to CFS where we can, for example, for “Voice Mail” (a CFS) we can define a set of parameters like

• Language
• Personalised greeting
• Message capacity
• Message latency, etc

that are relevant to Voice Mail and then when a Customer (or more correctly End User) personalises his Voice Mail we can define the particular values he/she has chosen against the Installed CFS.

This is a very powerful way of defining both the capabilities of services, products and hardware and recording the particular parametrisation relevant to individual customer's usage of them.

Introducing SID - Part One

The Telemanagement Forum’s Shared Information Data Model (TMF SID) is part of the NGOSS (Next Generation Operational Support System) and has been in the public domain for several years now.

The SID offers the first truly Open Enterprise Data Model for the Telecommunications industry.

There have been proprietary Telecommunications Enterprise Data Models in the market place. The author has hands on experience with Oracle’s Telecoms Enterprise Model and Teradata’s Communications Logical Data Model (cLDM). Both of these models have a great deal of strength and robustness but each is only a single organisation’s view of the information within a Telcoms business. The TMF SID however is not based on any particular software or hardware. It defines the information within a Telecoms business in such a way that it can be used to describe all products, everything from POTS to IP Telephony in a simple unified manner.

There are other things that make the SID powerful in its data modelling approach (such as the use of Party Roles and the subtle use of Logical and Physical Resources), but in this article I will be focusing of the definition of Products.

The SID does not describe the Telecoms products and services in a subscriber or MSISDN centric manner but in a very subtle integrated two-layer approach that allows all offerings to be described in a way that is understandable to the Customer (aiding billing and customer care) at one level and implementable in the network and as reusable components at another.

Lets examine the SID’s Product concepts

• Product Offering – the thing that is marketed and sold. This is best thought of as the box that everything is put in. Just as when you buy cornflakes it is the flakes of corn you want inside the box, but it is the box with its logo, brand name, and barcode that you actually purchase.

• Customer Facing Service – the things that you use in the Product Offering, or more subtly the things that the customer thinks he is using, which on the network may be supported by multiple services

• Resource Specifications – the definition of the resources needed to implement the Customer Facing Services (CFS). Note this is the specification of the resources, not the resource instances. When defining a POTS product the resources required would be a line and a phone number, not a specific line running from 34 Acacia Avenue and not a specific phone number 01252794888. Plainly when a Product Offering is sold its Resource Specifications are instantiated as specific Resources that are allocated to a particular customer for as long as that Product Offering is used (or subscribed to) by the customer

• Price Plan – the definition of the charges associated with the Product Offering. These will include the One Off Charges (such as the price of the Product Offering), the recurring charges – for the use of the Customer Facing Services and the One Off Charges (penalty charges for example). Note the Price Plan is a component of the Product Offering not the Offering itself. The practice of telecoms companies thinking they sell price plans comes from the manufactures of billing systems and confuses the heck out of the business and, more importantly, the customers

And that is all, at this level at least; there is no need to think about how the Product (Offering) is to be implemented or provisioned in the network (at this level).