Service Provisioning and DESSERT

Project DESSERT has applied emerging software technologies to the development of decision support systems for service management. In doing so the project has proposed a definition for the service provisioning process and the related processes of service creation and service customisation.

Service provisioning is a process that begins with a customer request and is complete when a service is available for use by the customer. It can be best understood by making a distinction between a service instance, a service template and a service usage instance.

A service instance is a group of functions that an organisation has made available for use by a user.
A service template is a description of how to build a service instance of a particular type. The template provides a means of re-use which can be used to build many service instances.
A service usage instance is created whenever a service instance is used by a user.Service provisioning is the process of creating a service instance from a service template within a provider's service portfolio. It begins with a demand for service and results in service instances available for use.

A telecommunication service can be seen within three lifecycles : Service Template Lifecycle, Service Instance Lifecycle and Service Usage Instance Lifecycle. The lifecycles help in understanding the relationship between service provisioning and other phases of the service lifecycles, such as service creation and service customisation.

Figure Three Service Lifecycles

The Service Template Lifecycle consists of those management activities involved in the construction, modification and withdrawal of a service template.
The Service Instance Lifecycle involves those activities necessary to create and delete an instance of a service for use by a particular customer.
The Service Usage Instance Lifecycle involves those activities required to support a customer's use of a service which is part of the behaviour of that service. Such behaviour may include the ability to set-up and release calls and it may include the ability to customise the service to suit its users.
There are nine component management functions each addressing a particular aspect of the service provisioning process. These are described in the RACE common functional specification H414.

Figure: Functional Decomposition of Service Provisioning

Three main factors of change within the telecommunications environment influence service provisioning.

Market Structure - Changes in market structure lead to changes in the relationship between the many players in the provisioning process
Customer Needs - Customer demand for quick response lead to a greatly reduced timescale for provisioning. Additionally, customer demand for personalised service will change the relationship between lifecycles.
Technology Changes - Increased automation of management allows faster provisioning of more complex services. Developments in network technology change provisioning from a process of resource and capacity allocation to one of access allocation

Service providers will need to understand the provisioning process and how it will change if they are to succeed. Changes in the market-place are already leading to more complex organisational relationships during provisioning. These will need to be well understood by regulators trying to create and control the communication service market and by providers trying to ensure the integrity of their networks and services.

All these factors point to a pressing need for increased automation and decision support during service provisioning. Project DESSERT has proposed a set of consistent definitions for service creation, service provisioning and service customisation and demonstrated how decision support systems and leading edge technologies can be used in the automation of service provisioning.

Service Provisioning and DESSERT

Further Reading