New report highlights benefits of semantic-led approach to Service Management for Telecoms Service Providers   London, April 21, 2009 – Today, Ontology Systems, the company behind the ground breaking OSS/CAD service management application, announce a custom publication, which examines a semantics and ontology-led approach to deliver a unified service model that solves the problem of service provider’s siloed OSS/BSS infrastructure data.   In light of the current economic challenges, communications service providers (CSPs) are reducing their capex budgets to align with lower revenue growth expectations.

With expensive transformation exercises currently on hold, CSPs and managed service providers are looking for an alternative low-risk incremental path toward a unified service model and the service management and OPEX cost reduction activities that it enables.   In the custom report, entitled ‘Use semantics to deliver flexible Service Management and avoid the risks within OSS/BSS Transformations’*, Yankee Group looks at CSPs’ current operational issues, takes a deep dive on a unique alternate semantic-based approach toward achieving a unified virtual service model, and investigates how such an approach can enable customer-centricity by solving the problem of siloed infrastructure data.   In the report, Arindam Banerjee, Yankee Group vice president commented: “Not surprisingly, the inability to have a common view of customers, lack of tailored service delivery and business process inconsistency are the top reasons that hamper service providers from rolling out innovative services.”   The report highlights key challenges faced by CSPs trying to achieve the related goals of data integration, a unified service model and end-to-end service management. The report goes on to define the advantages of the semantic-based approach used within Ontology’s OSS/CAD service management application to meet these challenges. These advantages include:  
·         Agile control of OSS/BSS systems
·         Improved data integrity and correct alignment of siloed systems
·         Cost and revenue-based service impact analysis and job prioritization
·         Improved management of the customer experience
·         Provides revenue assurance
·         Credible alternative to BSS/OSS systems replacement and large transformation projects
·         Defers capex via extension of legacy system life cycle
·         Provides a single view of services enabling service transparency.  

Benedict Enweani, Ontology Systems’ CEO, commented: “The report backs our experience over the past year with fixed line, mobile and next generation carriers who have used OSS/CAD to build and deliver OSS Service Management applications.”   The report concludes, “Service providers can combine semantics with domain-specific knowledge to interpret the validity, usability and integrity of data across their OSS and BSS infrastructure. OSS/CAD gives service providers an incremental, practical way to avoid development costs associated with OSS transformation projects by providing a radically different way to interpret and query their data. Ontology’s unique approach will help CSPs by providing them seamless service modeling and service management capability in an agile, cost-effective manner.”   The full report is available for download from Ontology’s website atwww.ontology.com