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Moving into the next generation GIS
Tony Principe
Senior Project Manager, Bell Canada
Keith Trowbridge
Program Consultant, Intergraph Corporation
Tony Principe
Senior Project Manager, Bell Canada
Keith Trowbridge
Program Consultant, Intergraph Corporation
In the space of the last five years the traditional Telecommunications market place has been completely redefined. Virtually all-major markets throughout the world have been deregulated resulting in intense competition and an ever-expanding communications economy. The most significant market driver has been the phenomenal demand for the Internet services for both business and social communications.
Business response
In response to the challenges of the new market landscape many established service providers have developed new organizational, process and systems business models. These new models have broadened the focus of these businesses from POTS (Plain Old Telephone Services) to encompass PANS (Pretty Amazing New Stuff) and the Internet and multimedia markets. The intent of these business-streamlining initiatives has been to capture market leadership based on three key differentiators:
- Lower cost of service
- Maximization of the infrastructure/network investment
- Faster delivery of new services
- Excellent service assurance
Systems strategy
GRM tools are a fundamental component of the corporate vision to implement an open business systems framework that will support the automation of flow through processes. The new architecture can enable telco companies to continue to move from a forecast driven service to a demand driven paradigm.
Corporate systems framework and flow-through processes.
GRM projects such as G/COMMS-NetworkX will provide a geospatially enabled enterprise-wide network planning and engineering platform aimed at maximizing network utilization and streamlining network expansion. These sophisticated tools combine geobase and network data models that can be stored in an open corporate data vault. Seamless interfaces provide bi-directional views into other key business systems
Corporate systems framework and flow-through processes.
The GRM enabled environment will begin to eliminate activities that do not add value such as file management, data duplication and design conflict resolution. The user community will have the ability operate in desktop, mobile and web enabled environments. All aspects of the network will be represented in a seamless, time sensitive open geospatial model.
Geospatial Resource Management (GRM) Solution
The telephone industry is experiencing a tendency toward a natural grouping of applications. More and more telcos are replacing legacy systems with COTS solutions. These solutions are becoming increasingly popular as mergers and acquisitions create numerous incompatible systems within a single corporation.
Another natural grouping of Telco applications involves geospatial applications, which fall into a unique environment involving graphics, complex relationships, and functionality not found in alphanumeric business systems. Historically, legacy systems have excluded this group of applications, due to incompatibility of various databases proprietary or otherwise.
GRM applications such as G/Comms NetWorkX provide a solution for this complex engineering and operations-oriented group of systems by providing an open relational database and Application Programming Interfaces (API) to legacy systems.
Geospatial Resource Management Applications
A suite of products that communicate together will provide the coverage required for the tasks that the telco will need to perform. The following functions are seen as the critical components that the product suite will need to address:
- Network Analysis
- Mobile Computing
- Network Design and management
- Marketing and Sales support
- Operations and Maintenance support
Network analysis is defined as two key business areas. Network planning for network capacity, service expansion, and modernization programs is one of these areas. A second area is the Service Assurance arena; these functions ensure that the network continues to provide expected levels of service to all customers.
Network Planning
The GRM application will need to provide a sophisticated suite of tools to ensure that network capacity is available to meet customer demand. The following is a list of some of the more significant functionality that is provided to perform network analysis.
- An interface to the corporate assignment system.
- Trace (smart, step upstream, downstream, etc.).
- Search (for features either spatially or database query using simple tools).
- Report generation (published in WEB compatible format, paper, exportable, etc.).
- Enterprise Query.
- Loop make up.
- Utilization or Fills (equipment or cable).
- DB loss calculations support the service capability of the network including Inside Plant and Outside Plant.
The GRM application must support the test centers by providing enhanced analysis tools that are geospatially enabled to assist in finding the physical location of the trouble. It becomes a major tool in supporting the service restoration process. No doubt that customer expectation is to that service restoration–getting the service back online–as the most significant responsibility of the telephone company.
Enterprise Access View & Update
The access and distribution of data across the enterprise is an integral component of a geospatial resource management system. Decision-support tools require the timely and easy use of the geospatial data that can sustain a large user base. In order to meet the diverse enterprise access, view, and update requirements of the telco, the GRM suite must provide a number of view and report applications. An example of such a packaged products that will be implemented are planned for Bell Canada’s 3,000 users are described below:
- Analyst & Designer
- Mobile Viewer
- Net Viewer
Connected Mode
A connected version of an Analyst and Designer tool will provide full functionality while networked to the enterprise database. These products provide full-function engineering network management as described in more detail below.
Disconnected Mode
A disconnected version provides the same capabilities as the connected mode with the flexibility of portability. The limitation in disconnected mode is the amount of data that can be downloaded. A requirement of this tool is the need to synchronize changes made in the field to the enterprise database.
Mobile Viewer
A Mobile Viewer provides benefits to numerous operations such as the increased efficiency of service assurance technicians. With the analysis tools provided with a mobile Viewer, a technician can analyze and trace single pair troubles in any direction on the network. Furthermore, a mobile viewer allows a user the flexibility to take their work to the field without being confined to their office. Some of the functionality provided to the user is:
- Off line redlining.
- Field design
- Field checks
- Plant validation/ verification
- Preparing ‘what-if’ scenarios.
- Remote site access to corporate data.
- Network assignment.
- Network data.
- No waiting for service desk responses.
- No longer dependant on Assignment Centre.
- Not as dependant on Test Centre response.
- Portability.
- Re-synchronizing field data with the enterprise database.
- Extended absence from the office no longer an issue.
- Less time spent travelling between the office and work site.
Net Viewer provides a tool kit to develop local or customized tools for use in the operation teams. Net Viewer permits the use of Internet Explorer to extract and interact with live GIS data. It uses open data format to deliver “smart features” and can display the features as active or inactive.
Network Design & Management
GRM provides a standard model as the foundation for the Design and Work/Job Management component. A standard GRM such as Intergraph’s G/COMMS model should provide a pre-built and pre-integrated telephone GIS application. Including the data model, design and placement functions, interface to assignment software, map production functions, and network management and work order processing foundation. A telephone company can benefit immediately from our solution. The enabling GIS technology must support long-term transaction management, conflict resolution, seamless landbase and facilities model, spatial analysis functions, and a rulebase engine. It must also integrate with corporate computer applications, such as work management, trouble and outage management, materials management, customer information systems, real-time network management, and network analysis.
The GRM application must support the ability to perform “what-if” planning, design and analysis of the telephone network. In the end the most cost effective solution can then be chosen and a detailed design completed.
Operations & Maintenance
The mobile viewer increases the efficiency of service assurance technicians. With the analysis tools provided with a mobile viewer, the technician can analyze and trace single pair troubles in any direction on the network. Network data, combined with assignment data, allows the technician to prioritize service restoration on major cable cuts and restore those groups, which serve high visibility customers such as Hospitals, banks and financial institutions.
Service Assurance teams also require the capability to view and edit facilities data in the field. This capability is used to perform inspections, record changes, and feed information back to the engineering office. This capability is supported by a mobile viewer, which provides field access to the facilities model.
The mobile viewer should provide full access to GIS data on a corporate scale, have a small footprint, and have the ability to display all major CAD formats, including MicroStation and AutoCAD. The viewer must also provide the ability to perform redline functions that can be re-introduced into the corporate database.
Marketing and Sales
The “new construction” request is the demand to expand or modify the service delivery system. These requests can be as simple as adding a new service or may require extremely complex construction for new development or rerouting. Before deregulation, customers or developers within the service territory of the prevailing telephone company usually initiated these requests. Under the new business rules, marketing programs are now in place to pursue new development or competitor’s customers aggressively. These marketing programs are highly dependent on numerous geospatial models such as facilities, demographics, environmental, and many more. Today’s competitive environment is a driving force for implementing geospatial applications. Decision support and service analysis is supported today via spatial analysis tools. Market analysis, spatial query, spatial analysis, and the generation of maps and reports are the main functionality required by these users.
With an enterprise database and functionality available in a GRM application pre sales inquiries can be performed to determine whether equipment and facilities are available for the services cusotmers desire. On a strategic front the telco can focus on increased market penetration by using demographic data provided by external sources coupled with the GRM application features and data. Using this information the telco can target market segments to increase profitability.
GRM Benefits
The business of a telcommunications company is conceptually quite simple:
- Build an infrastructure so that communications services can be delivered to customers.
- Maintain the network, which means resolve any routine problems or repair major damage so that customers can continuously use the their communications devices at their homes or businesses. The essential work effort involves:
- Determining what work needs to be performed and in what priority while maximizing capital investment.
- Providing skilled people, the required materials, and the necessary equipment to build the next part of the network or to resolve a problem.
Eventually, computers were employed to take on more and more of the informationmanagement functions, and many of the redundant steps were eliminated from the daily operations. Now these systems are becoming integrated into packages, as evidenced by the popularity of ERP Solutions.
Many of the more technical engineering systems are still being implemented as standalone systems. Their true value to the enterprise will be felt only when all applications are fully integrated with other automation systems, including Web-based and mobile computing applications. The benefits of implementing a fully integrated GRM environment, with interfaces to the ERP and CIS systems, will provide a significant step toward the ultimate Information Management System where all data is instantly available and cross-related to all other data in the organization.
Interfaces between GRM and legacy applications
An integrated database resides at the heart of the GRM environment. This database contains tabular as well as graphical data. Extensive use of “triggers” and “stored procedures” are used to update tables automatically and move data or start other applications as a result of various processes that occur during normal operations.
“Island tables” are used to pass data between the major applications. This process has proven effective in maintaining a consistent interface between applications from multiple vendors. This isolates all data between applications at a common interface point allowing each vendor to make required changes to the applications as they evolve over time. This also minimizes the work required by other vendors to accommodate these changes.
Data conversion integrated with the GRM implementation
Many customers initially underestimate the cost and effort required to convert their data for a GIS project. The cost to convert the data into the GIS is estimated to be approx 30% of the project. Reducing these costs and ensuring that the correct data is populated into the GIS is a critical consideration for a successful GRM program.
One of the factors contributing to the conversion cost is that most telcos have existing source data in a variety of digital formats. The mapping of disparate and redundant data sources to the GIS database tables is perhaps the most challenging effort for any GRM program. This can be done most effectively if the GIS provider and the data conversion vendor work closely with the telco’s personnel who are familiar with the data sources. This team approach reduces errors early in the program, provides the levels of expertise at critical times, and reduces the risk of populating incomplete or inaccurate data into the GIS database.
Implementation services and ongoing support
Recognizing the need for efficiency in implementation services, a project team must be committed to providing highly trained support and service specialists. The team’s first step toward meeting the telco’s GRM requirement is to understand their overall business objectives, operational procedures, work force responsibilities, and equipment needs.