All fixed and mobile
telecommunications service providers have physical equipment with embedded
software that enable them to offer services. Beyond this embedded network software, there are two other kinds of
software that are critical to a service provider's day-to-day
business: business support systems and operations
support systems.
BSS
(Business Support System) software applications are
used by operations, customer care, and other functional groups to manage
business operations focusing on external business such as billing,
rating, sales management, customer-service management and customer databases.
OSS
(Operations Support System) software applications allow
operations and IT personnel to administer the operational processes focusing
on the network and services, including service quality monitoring, network and
server performance, logical and physical resources management (also referred to
as element and network management), and provisioning.
OSS
and BSS are the foundation of a service provider's business. They
enable telecom service providers to manage their networks, their business and
their customer relations. Furthermore, they are a key part of the Service
Delivery Environment (SDE), enabling service providers to deploy advanced IMS,
IPTV, Web or "blended" services to their customers.
