Interview with Oliver Birnbaum, Head of Network & Service Assurance Systems Engineering, Vodafone Germany. Comarch-based Next Generation Service Assurance Solution allowed Vodafone to consolidate the Fault & Service Management systems of three countries and is now shared by Vodafone Germany, Netherlands and Czech Republic. Download the full article from Comarch technology Review to learn more about NGSA possibilities and key features!

1. Today’s market conditions are more and more demanding: a multitude of new technologies and partners need to be
managed; increased competition requires new operational models, and so on. How do large Communication Service Providers
such as Vodafone cope with these challenges? What is the role of OSS in this competition? What kinds of OSS capabilities are
expected for the future?
An interview with Oliver Birnbaum, Head of Network & Service Assurance Systems Engineering, Vodafone Germany.
Comarch: The telecommunication market is under enormous pressure. Customers expect more and more, which drives
investment needs especially for data services. Yet revenue figures have stopped growing due to increased competition, market
regulation, and the economic downturn in many parts of Europe.
OSS & BSS are seen as key enablers to help Communication Service Providers to cope with the above factors. Mr. Birnbaum,
what are the key challenges facing you? What are the expectations for Network & Service Assurance systems and your team?
Oliver Birnbaum: Cost reduction and continuously increasing operational efficiency are musts. We therefore need to
replace existing legacy tools with scalable and open OSS solutions that offer a rich set of capabilities to automate operational
processes and can be shared across different technologies and organizations.
Comarch: What does “shared across different organizations” mean?
OB: Increased operational efficiency is a key expectation for OSS. But reducing maintenance costs and investment needs is of
equal importance. Simple consolidation of tools is not enough. We are looking for OSS solutions that can be used by multiple
organizations even across country borders. The implementation of our Comarch-based Next Generation Service Assurance
Solution is a good example for this. The system has been used to consolidate the Fault & Service Management systems of
three countries and is shared by Vodafone Germany, Netherlands and Czech Republic.
How large CSPs like Vodafone
utilize Comarch OSS to cope
with todays challenges

2. We are looking for OSS solutions
that can be used by multiple
organizations even across country
borders. The implementation
of our Comarch-based Next
Generation Service Assurance
Solution is a good example
for this. The system has been
used to consolidate the Fault &
Service Management systems of
three countries and is shared by
Vodafone Germany, Netherlands
and Czech Republic.
___________________
Oliver Birnbaum,
Head of Network & Service Assurance Systems Engineering,
Vodafone Germany

3. Comarch: But how can you support process deviations and individual market characteristics of different countries with
a common Service Assurance solution? Don’t you lose flexibility and slow time to market due to dependencies and high
coordination needs between the different projects?
OB: Initially, our internal customers had these concerns as well. In reality, though, we were even able to shorten time to
market for new services due to the simplified OSS architecture and the modular, CMDB-based solution approach that has
been implemented with the new Service Assurance framework. A good example for a quick and cost efficient adaptation of the
solution was the migration of the Network Monitoring for Vodafone Netherlands from their former Fault Management system
to Next Generation Service Assurance. This was completed in just three months.
Comarch: Oliver, you mentioned a “CMDB-based solution approach” that was applied when implementing the solution. Could
you expand on that just a bit?
OB: Efficient management of converged service offerings became a real challenge for operations over the last years. Service
delivery chains were getting more and more complex. It is quite common that you have multiple internal and external parties
involved in these service delivery chains.
IT
Mgmt.
GE
CZ
RO
NL
NGSA KEDB/Correlation/
Impact/RootCause Analysis
NGSA Mediation
User RO
User CZ
SA DE
GUI Server
BMC Remedy
Site Access DB
BMC Atrium
IT
Mgmt.
BMC Atrium
User GE
User NL
IT
Mgmt.CRAMER
(mobile
network)
CRAMER
(fixed netw.)
Change
Management
Site Access
Management
Customer Care Tools
Corporate Customer
Info Management
Service Mgmt.
BMC Remedy
Alarms
Alarms
Site
Server
IT
Mgmt
BMC Remedy
Vodafone
Czech
Vendor specific
Element Mgmt.
Systems
Vodafone
Netherland
Vendor specific
Element Mgmt.
Systems
GUI
Out
age
Events
Enterprise Service Bus
IP Network
Management
Systems
CMDB
200-350 parallel sessions
NOC Dashboard
Network
Element
Management
Systems
IT Mgmt
Systems
Inventory Data
Sources
Trouble
Ticketing
Change Mgmt.
Data SourcesAlarm Clients
SQM
PDRs
NGSA
Inventor
y &
Service
Model
Cache
TT
Comarch
NGSA & SQM
Central
Vodafone NOC
in Romania,
Local Markets
Vodafone
Germany
Vendor specific
Element
Mgmt. Systems
Vodafone
Germany
PM Data Sources
Active Probing
Passive Probing
Customer Experience
Management

4. Let me give you an example. A corporate customer uses fixed network IP VPN services provided by Vodafone to connect
its branches to a central data center that provides all needed IT applications. The customer’s sales force uses 3G/4G based
mobile data services to access order management tools and other IT systems.
Without capabilities to perform automated, service model driven impact propagation, nobody in the NMC or SMC would be
able to manually predict the potential impact of equipment outages in the fixed or mobile network for this or other corporate
customers. Thanks to the CMDB-based approach that has been introduced with the implementation of the Next Generation
Service Assurance framework, we are now able to proactively notify our corporate customers about outages or potential
service degradations that may impact their business.
Comarch: Your example is a corporate customer-related use case. Not all Telecommunication Service Providers focus on
corporate customers as much as Vodafone does. Is there another business benefit you could realize based on the service
model driven assurance approach?
OB: Increased competition requires a strong focus on customer satisfaction, which is directly linked to the perception of
Network & Service Quality we leave with our customers. Automated root cause analyses and impact propagation minimize
time to repair and time back to service. This is a general advantage of our solution approach, independent of customer
segments.
Of course, top customer satisfaction cannot be achieved with purely reactive measures. Proactive monitoring of network and
service quality therefore plays an important role in our service assurance philosophy. The Next Generation Service Assurance
Solution provided by Comarch supports this aspect in an ideal way because embedded Service Quality Management
capabilities enable a continuous monitoring of KPI’s & KQI’s associated to our customer service offerings.

5. Comarch: What kind of data source do you use to monitor network and service quality? Do you have a dedicated quality
management team that does this monitoring?
OB: We use all kind performance data sources to feed SQM. These range from network KPI’s based on NE counters, which
are collected and processed by our umbrella performance management system, up to event based data records provided by
active and passive probing and customer experience management systems. Depending on the measured object, the incoming
data is automatically converted into KPI’s and KQI’s that are linked to the monitored resource and customer facing services.
And to answer your second question: There is no need for dedicated service quality teams for online monitoring, as SQM
provides capabilities to perform a continuous threshold monitoring that automatically creates SQM events. These are
presented to the NMC/SMC teams as any other type of network or service alarm. Of course, SQM alarms may require different
follow up activities, but these are typically carried out by second level functions or a specific Service Quality Team, which are
triggered by the first level after initial analysis.
Comarch: Oliver, that sounds pretty impressive. So what level of automation do you think can be realistically achieved? How
would you describe a typical operational scenario at Vodafone in 2016?
OB: From a functional perspective, the OSS capabilities needed for 2016 are not that far away from what I have described. The
main focus of our most recent OSS initiatives is to further increase the level of automation. This is achievable to a large extent
by improved utilization of the OSS capabilities we already have.
Let me illustrate this with an example. Today we may automatically suppress, filter, and correlate 60% of the incoming network
alarms. However, the majority of the remaining 40% of alarms are still handled manually by operators, even though in principle
we have capabilities to automatically process them. The devil is in the details. Automatic service impact propagation and
creation of trouble tickets is no longer considered fancy, from a technological perspective. The master question is how we can
get and maintain the needed knowledge in the systems. How to efficiently maintain service models needed for automated
service and customer impact analysis? How to capture the expert knowledge that is needed to automatically initiate the right
recovery activities?
In 2016, the majority of alarms will be processed 100% automatically. Manual operator intervention will only be applied
for unknown types of events or specific alarm scenarios that require more thorough analysis. For all other types of events,
collection of additional information needed for recovery purposes, as well as execution of basic recovery measures, will be
executed automatically. And this of course includes the automated creation of trouble tickets to second level or third party
functions, such as field service teams if needed. Only in cases where these activities fail or in cases of alarms that require
manual user interaction operators will be involved.
Comarch: Thank you very much Mr. Birnbaum.
Oliver Birnbaum
Vodafone Germany,
Head of Network & Service Assurance Systems Engineering

6. Why Comarch
Next Generation Service Assurance (NGSA) improves corporate customer
satisfaction in Vodafone. Decreasing revenue due to increasing competition
and additional EU regulatory measures puts huge pressure on operational
costs and process efficiency. At the same time Vodafone’s strategy to increase
its corporate and enterprise customer market share places even more
strain on operational teams, who must already face the strong demands
of enterprise customers, including individual SLAs and customer specific
monitoring.
telecom.comarch.com
More information: telecom.comarch.com
Comarch Headquarters
Al. Jana Pawla II 39 a
31-864 Krakow
Poland
phone: +48 12 646 1000
fax: +48 12 646 1100
e-mail: info@comarch.com
About Comarch
Comarch is a global supplier of IT products and services for the telecommunications industry and has been
present on the market since 1993. Comarch provides solutions in the areas of BSS/OSS, M2M and Cloud Service
platforms, as well as a range of Managed Services. Comarch’s uniqueness lies not only in the compliance of its
products with industry standards, but also in the flexibility and high competences of its engineers. Having comple-
ted projects for over 50 telecom operators, Comarch has accumulated vast experience in the fields of designing,
implementing, and integrating IT solutions. Current customers include Vodafone, T-Mobile, O2, E-Plus, MTS or KPN.