OSS/BSS Integration

 Customers can realize the full value of GE's Smallworld Network Inventory™ when it is fully integrated into critical business and operational processes. These processes will be using a variety of other systems including CRM, ERP and Operational Support Systems. These systems cannot respond to customer requests, fault events or undertake provisioning activities without knowledge of the existing or planned state of the network. This information is held within the Smallworld Network Inventory.

Smallworld Network Inventory is an open system designed to integrate with these business and operational support systems. Our technology supports both mission critical point-to-point interfaces using standards such as CORBA, and EAI/messaging and data sharing technologies such as IBM MQSeries, Vitria, Tibco, SeeBeyond, Java Messaging and XML.

GE has a proven track record for integration. Smallworld Network Inventory has been integrated at various customer sites with business and operational systems such as SAP, PeopleSoft, Siebel, Micromuse Netcool, Agilent Netexpert, Alcatel Regional Network Manager and others, including a number of in-house systems.

Three areas worthy of further note include:
  • Service Provisioning -- Smallworld Network Inventory supports the complete planning and engineering life-cycle that ensures that the network infrastructure is available and "service ready" for applications such as Logical Network Inventory to design and assign new customer services.
  • Service Assurance -- Smallworld Network Inventory plays two key roles within the service assurance process:
      • — Fault location - network faults can be located quickly and accurately to ensure minimum network        downtime and efficient repairs and maintenance.
      — Service impact analysis - provide information on the services running on the network where a fault        has been identified.
Asset Management - It is vital that the Smallworld application shares information with asset management systems to provide a consistent data repository of network resources. This includes synchronizing network asset records in both systems through shared operational codes and cost information, with Smallworld Network Inventory holding more detailed asset information such as geographical location.

GE has considerable experience of integrating with such systems. For instance, SAP is the market leading ERP system, with strong capabilities in asset management including financial data, and asset depreciation. Smallworld Network Inventory contains information on physical assets and their locations and connectivity.

GE provides a solution enabling integration between SAP and Smallworld systems. This integration provides a seamless operational environment enforcing data consistency between the two systems and supports streamlined business processes and greater access to data in each system.

For integrating specifically with SAP, the Smallworld Business Integrator™ for mySAP.com® is used. This seamlessly enables key business processes and their information to flow between Smallworld and SAP environments. Based upon open, mainstream technology standards, the Smallworld Business Integrator™ for mySAP.com® is a highly extensible solution that supports all integration strategies, whether based on middleware and EAI products or standalone.

SAP is a registered trademark of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries.
Siebel is a trademark of Siebel Systems, Inc., which is owned by Oracle Corporation.
Oracle and PeopleSoft are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates.
JDBC, Java and SeeBeyond are trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Netcool is claimed as a registered trademark by Micromuse USA Inc.
NetExpert® is claimed as a registered trademark by Objective Systems Integrators, Inc.
Alcatel Regional Network Manager is a trademark of Compagnie Financière Alcatel, Paris, France.
Vitria is a registered trademark of Vitria Technology Inc.
Tibco is a registered trademark of Tibco Software, Inc.
MQSeries is a registered trademark of IBM Corporation.
CORBA is a registered trademark of Object Management Group, Inc.