ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with a diagnostic tour around a typical carrier’s Information Technology (IT) infrastructure, and its attempts to move forwards. The boxes are IT systems. To avoid any confidentiality issues, IT system identifying information has been removed and affine transforms applied. The Next-Generation Network will be the catalyst for a wave of consolidation leading to healthier businesses able to charge premium prices and capable of investing in IT renewal. The real answer is that an E-business architecture turns the existing carrier waterfall-type IT architecture inside out. In the web services model, applications are like “objects” with public interfaces—“methods”—that can be invoked to execute a business or network function. Operations Support Systems is much more tightly focused to telecoms, including the element and network level management systems that configure the boxes, acquire and aggregate status information, and manage faults. SOAP is normally carried across networks using HTTP, just like HTML messages between browsers and Web sites.
