In
today’s complex network environments, effective Service Assurance is essential
to maintain availability and minimize revenue loss due to Service Level
Agreement violations. The time taken to identify and resolve service-impacting
network problems are key indicators of the efficiency of the Service Assurance
process.
Accurate and
efficient network event correlation offers the potential to accelerate the
whole Service Assurance process, since:
- - The time taken initially to
identify network problems and their consequent service impact is significantly
reduced;
- The time taken subsequently to
resolve network problems is on average reduced because accurate problem
analysis has the major benefit of reducing ‘bad truck rolls’.
Event
correlation is available in many forms, for example reducing the volume of
events presented to operators so they may see the ‘wood from the trees’.
Typical event reductions of 75-80% are practically achievable using tools
commonly available today. More interesting, is the potential to combine
knowledge of the physical, logical and service structures in a network to
identify network problems and service impacts using automated root cause
analysis, so-called topology correlation.
The results of
the application of topology correlation at MTN, one of the largest Mobile
network infrastructures in the African continent, demonstrates the inherent
flexibility of the approach as it utilizes pre-packaged and tested correlation
knowledge and operates over interdependent network sub-domains.
Of particular
interest to MTN is the combination of business data with the correlation process
to drive unique service oriented dashboard displays that provides rapid
indications of network problems and consequent customer impacts in a
user-friendly way. When used by
executives, product managers and customer service managers it also reports the
potential cost of delays in problem resolution thereby facilitating a
revenue-driven approach to resolving ongoing network issues.
Meet NetBoss
Technologies at their exhibition stand P15, at Africacom 12-14 November 2013:
CTICC Cape Town, South Africa and find out more about customer focused
service assurance.
