Billing

Sigma Systems, which designs, develops and deploys OSS service management solutions, has announced its participation in launching the availability of the OSS/J Order Management API Specification. This participation is in the form of its contribution in an expert group at the TeleManagement Forum (News - Alert) (TMF).

Founded in 2000, the OSS/J initiative was established to develop a set of J2EE, open, interface standards for the telecommunications industry, including integration of BSS and OSS.

In May of last year, the OSS/J initiative partnered with the TMF to better address the concerns of NGOSS implementation stakeholders by providing open standards APIs on the NGOSS framework.

This new Order Management API standardizes how an order capture system, either billing or CRM, communicates with an OSS service management system, such as Sigma System’s SMP 4.0, when handling produce orders, service orders, or work orders to be provisioned across a CSP’s (News - Alert) service delivery network.

As one of the leading authors of this API, Sigma Systems was also the selected OSS vendor who provided the API’s reference implementation.

“The newest release of OSS/J APIs are a significant step towards accelerating convergence in the communications industry,” says Martin Creaner, president of the TMForum, in a statement. “It is a key milestone in our goal to make it easier for the industry to put the NGOSS framework into practice.”

“Until now, there has not been an established standard for service order management API integration to BSS systems,” adds Brian Cappellani, chief technology officer, Sigma Systems. “To date, almost everything about BSS-OSS integration has been proprietary, and service providers were forced to engage in time-consuming integration to automate BSS-OSS order capture and management. We are proud to have taken leadership in working with others in the industry on this important initiative that promotes open and defined integration between BSS and OSS vendors.”

The OSS/J Order Management API is designed to enable service providers to effectively integrate OSS service management and BSS systems. As a result, new revenue generating services will rapidly emerge and promote robust order management tracking and reporting as part of end-to-end requirements for automation.

OSS/J APIs are developed under the Java Community Process. The Specifications, References Implementations and Technology Compatibility Kits are freely available for download from the TMForum site at http://tmforum.org/ossj.

The development of these new standards will help to promote better deployment for service providers as the demand for converged services continues to rise. These service providers will be better positioned to compete in the industry and provide consumers the services they demand.