Hello All,
This thread is a very interesting read and there is a great deal to unpack here.
Without getting into the various TMF Specs I will just recount some experience I had which might bring some of this into focus.
I am not sure this discussion is really about B2B versus B2C but it is certainly about complexity.
My background included consumer fixed broadband. In fulfilling an order for FTTC based consumer service, there was a great deal of decomposition and orchestration arising from a product order before you got to configuring individual network elements. What is more, all of this was seen as an OSS responsibility to manage relatively naked network elements. At the core of it was something which could take a service order and orchestrate the placing of orders with third party suppliers (for both ADSL modems and third party fixed access) as well as configuring VLANs and RADIUS servers and the like. So there was the CRM platform, the order orchestration platform and the individual domain based configuration and activation platforms involved. Moreover the orchestration platform had to monitor events over several days to complete an order.
Then in latter years I got involved in consumer 3g,4g,and 5g mobile. Relating my previous experience to the mobile OSS architects their response was
"Well Derrick, we let the CRM layer deal with allocating the msisdn, sourcing the SIM and ordering the hand set. Provisioning the service then just involves taking the identities and policies from the CRM sourced order and updating three databases (HSS, Service Profile and VMS platform) over the course of a couple of minutes the "network" takes care of the rest itself."
When you looked at the key information coming from CRM (as the platform raising the service order) there really wasn't any abstraction or much in the way of orchestration to deal with.
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Derrick Evans
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Original Message:
Sent: Jul 25, 2022 18:59
From: Kinshuk Kulshreshtha
Subject: Alignment across IG1228 and IG1224 from Activation perspective.
Hi Roland,
Thanks a lot for your confirmation.
Tagging @Ludovic Robert @Johanne Mayer @Jonathan Goldberg @Vance Shipley @Derrick Evans @Dave Milham @Kamal Maghsoudlou @Koen Peeters @Stephane AH-KO to get their inputs as well. I think this discussion is related to the other discussion that has initiated in this thread. I am sure other folks would also be having similar doubts. So, having a clear recommendations from TMF perspective would be good and that can be added to IG1228 as well.
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Kinshuk Kulshreshtha
Oracle Corporation
My views posted on this forum are personal, and do not reflect the position of my employer or TM Forum.
Original Message:
Sent: Jul 25, 2022 04:43
From: Roland Leners
Subject: Alignment across IG1228 and IG1224 from Activation perspective.
Hi Kinshuk,
I agree with what you write.
I believe that one of the key aspects concerns the management of the catalog. For a deep integration between the order management and the network, you need a deep catalog and deep exposure thereof. In e.g. a NaaS approach, the domain manager or service orchestrator embeds a catalog, but will not expose the full depth. You could replace some catalog layers by workflow configurations. From the outside you would not know because it is a black box.
Best regards,
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Roland Leners
alvatross by SATEC
Original Message:
Sent: Jul 23, 2022 10:24
From: Kinshuk Kulshreshtha
Subject: Alignment across IG1228 and IG1224 from Activation perspective.
Hi Roland,
Thanks for your inputs and clarifications. I think we need to come up with some guidance and recommendations on API usage perspective so that folks implementing the API have some clear pointers to decide. Let me summaries what you are saying and add my thoughts also to drive a discussion on it
- TMF640 Service Activation APIs will be used in the cases where the Activation Systems receive a higher level Service Construct and break it into a lower level Resource Constructs to identify what all resources needs to be activated for this service. We typically see this behaviour in the activation of complex B2B services like NaaS, where we interact with WAN Controllers, Domain Controllers, SDN Controllers etc that are responsible for configuring multiple devices in their domain for the activation of a given Service.
- TMF702 Resource Activation API will be used when the Service Order Management System identifies what all resources needs to be activated for a given service and decompose the Service Order into smaller constructs and handover the responsibility to a Resource Order Management System that orchestrates the Resource Order into individual Resource Activation Requests to the Activation System. We see this behaviour in services like Mobile, Broadband etc. where for a given Broadband Order, the Service Management System works with Service Inventory to identify which ADSL Port needs to be activated on which DSLAM and handover that request to Activation System. We have a similar case for HSS, VMS and PCRF Profile Activations for Mobile.
- There can be cases where the Activation System for B2B Connectivity Service like VPN does not have the intelligence to operate at a domain level, rather it operates at the resource level. In such cases, it expects the Service Order Management and Service Inventory to identify all the PE Routers, I-NNI, ENNI and CPEs to be configured for the activation of the VPN Service. In such cases, we may need to use TMF702 Resource Activation API for complex B2B services like L2 VPN as well.
Please let me know if you agree with the summary above. I am copying @Ludovic Robert @Johanne Mayer @Jonathan Goldberg for their inputs as well.
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Kinshuk Kulshreshtha
Oracle Corporation
My views posted on this forum are personal, and do not reflect the position of my employer or TM Forum.
Original Message:
Sent: Jul 23, 2022 02:08
From: Roland Leners
Subject: Alignment across IG1228 and IG1224 from Activation perspective.
Hi Kinshuk,
I am not sure that there clear guidelines, but here is the way the discussions have evolved on our side. From a networking perspective, the service concept provides a higher level of abstraction. Activating a service with TMF640 requires the providing component to orchestrate the activation of the underlying resources. I understand that this is e.g. a key characteristic of NaaS. If such capability is not present, the orchestration needs to be done by a resource order management component (e.g. catalog driven) which would integrate with resource activation via TMF702. So in my opinion, it is not a matter of the type of service, but an architectural choice which is a.o. driven by the capabilities of the existing stack (you are rarely in a greenfield situations with such projects).
In the IG1228 use case that my company worked upon, we chose using TMF702. But this is illustrative and it was not our intention to imply that activation of mass market B2C mobile services would necessarily use this API.
Best regards,
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Roland Leners
alvatross by SATEC
Original Message:
Sent: Jul 21, 2022 12:01
From: Kinshuk Kulshreshtha
Subject: Alignment across IG1228 and IG1224 from Activation perspective.
I am coming back to this thread again to see if we have a clear guidelines on when to use TMF640 Vs TMF702 for Activation. Based on the current work, I am seeing that it is TMF640 for complex B2B SaaS type services and TMF702 for mass market B2C services like Mobile. Just want to check if Is it the pattern that gets extended to other services also eg: Should we use TMF640 to activate a VPN service and TMF 702 for broadband, TV etc?
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Kinshuk Kulshreshtha
Oracle Corporation
My views posted on this forum are personal, and do not reflect the position of my employer or TM Forum.
Original Message:
Sent: Oct 08, 2021 04:29
From: Roland Leners
Subject: Alignment across IG1228 and IG1224 from Activation perspective.
Hi Kinshuk,
Referring to the IG1228 use case that you mention, we will consider introducing (as part of current Sprint-6) a component in charge of activation that is separate from order management. That component will be the provider of the activation and configuration APIs. We will initially focus on the resource activation API though (TMF702 in beta).
So far we have tried to not press too far ahead of the technical architecture team that defines the components. That is why activation is currently subsumed in the order management component and why Open API compliant activation calls are not explicitly shown (see also the first note below figure 13 of v1 of the use case). However there are some indications that the technical architecture team is also considering separate activation components, which prompts us to have a look at this as part of the current Sprint-6.
Best regards,
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Roland Leners
SATEC GROUP
Original Message:
Sent: Oct 07, 2021 14:56
From: Kinshuk Kulshreshtha
Subject: Alignment across IG1228 and IG1224 from Activation perspective.
Hi All,
I am going through the Mobile Use Case in IG1228 and I noticed that we don't use TMF640 Activation and Configuration API in the sequence diagrams. I see that the Resource Order Management System receives the TMF652 Resource Order and directly calls the HSS, PCRF and VMS APIs. Are we recommending that the Activation Systems should expose a TMF652 Resource Order API in an ODA Architecture and not TMF640 Activation and Configuration API?
In IG1224 NaaS Service Fulfillment Guidelines, we see a bigger role of TMF640 Service Activation and Configuration API where it is used to activate the Service in the Network. Do we have a different recommendations for B2B and B2C services in ODA where for Residential Services it is the TMF652 Resource Order API that is recommended and for complex connectivity services, it is recommended to expose TMF640 Service Activation and Configuration API for Activation?
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Kinshuk Kulshreshtha
Oracle Corporation
My views posted on this forum are personal, and do not reflect the position of my employer or TM Forum.
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