Application Enablement Feature Editorial

The Evolution of Network Maintenance

By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor

Next-generation technologies are a key focus for telecom service providers throughout the world as they try to embrace the new demands of the mobile, data hungry consumer base. At the same time, investment protection of the legacy network is necessary through ongoing maintenance and operations, while still maintaining customer satisfaction. 

As the cost of  maintaining networks continues to climb, service providers are facing increased pressure to make this maintenance a more financially manageable process. Multi-vendor Maintenance is a model gaining considerable traction in this space, offering an alternative to maintenance support that leverages a single point of contact to enable the service provider to streamline its legacy network support, while also brining costs under control.

This overwhelming process is brought down to manageable levels in a new Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert) white paper, A New Look at Network Maintenance. Supporting both next-generation and legacy networks demands careful planning and business analysis on the part of the service providers as both represent significant roles within the overall infrastructure. To leverage true investment protection, service providers must be able to leverage the most value from their current asset investments, while also keeping capital expenses (CapEx) to a minimum. 

Even with this goal in mind, service providers are still struggling as maintaining networks is a complex task and existing support models tend to require multiple processes, service-level agreements (SLAs) and communication with multiple providers and vendors. Add to this complexity the challenge of identifying which provider’s equipment is associated with the specific operational problem. 

With Multi-vendor Maintenance, service providers can drive significant economies of scale in vendor management and maintenance delivery to ensure ultimate investment protection and cost management. When all maintenance can be channeled through one supplier, problem resolution is streamlined and operational expenses are reduced by as much as 25 percent. Actual savings do depend upon the number and mix of SLAs, OEMs, ticket volume, types of products and types of problems, yet are readily measurable. 

Internal savings can also be realized through the consolidation of processes and resources. When transferring spare management to the Multi-vendor Maintenance provider, their logistics and warehousing infrastructure is leveraged, enabling the service providers to cut back on critical spares, while also relying on the MVM provider to furnish the dependable part the next day. 

To consolidate and converge through the Multi-vendor Maintenance model, service providers seeking investment protection and a single point of contact must first assess the network and the services provided, set specific targets and then select the right MVM provider. 

The MVM solution offered by Alcatel-Lucent launches a new approach to network support through a single point of contact to streamline and integrate traditional OEM maintenance-related activities and end-to-end processes. MVM ensures faster trouble resolution that is delivered in a way that ensures the service providers can enjoy a healthy bottom line.

Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Peter Bernstein