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Enhancing Geodata Display for the Enterprise
Maurice Wildgen
Byers Engineering Company SpatialAge Solutions Divisions
6285 Barfield Road Atlanta, GA 30328
Maurice Wildgen
Byers Engineering Company SpatialAge Solutions Divisions
6285 Barfield Road Atlanta, GA 30328
Abstract
Benefits of spatial views of network assets are not restricted to engineering users. As enterprise data repositories become spatially enabled, the need arises for more robust geodata display capability allowing sales and marketing, customer service, installation and repair, provisioning, one-call, as well as engineering personnel to more effectively participate in service fulfillment and assurance processes. In the not too distant future, broadband content will lead all revenue sources enabled by communications networks. Operational Support System (OSS) product vendors and service providers understand next-generation OSSs must enable the creation of new business products, while network infrastructure plays a supporting role. Good marketing to spur demand, is only successful if it can deliver what it promises. Knowledge of network infrastructure and corresponding customer connectivity is the basis for effective service fulfillment and assurance in a competitive environment.
With enhanced geodata display capability, users can select, display, report, and subsequently analyze aspects of their facilities infrastructure by combining it with data from external sources. Sharing facility data can allow views superimposed on image data, demographics, customer location, street network, and boundary data thereby supporting efficient management of customer connectivity contributing to low cost, high quality of service.
Overview
This paper presents a description of a geodata viewing and reporting product (GeoData Display) that is intended to provide utility industry users read-only access to spatial and tabular facilities data in a spatially enabled database. In general, the purpose of a such a geo-display product is to provide a variety of methods, techniques, and approaches for the user to explore and analyze their geo-referenced data.
Users can select, display, report, and subsequently analyze aspects of their facilities infrastructure by combining it with external data sources. For example, views of facilities superimposed on image data, demographics, customer location, street network, and boundary data can support trouble management, dispatching, maintenance & repair, Continuing Property Reporting (CPR), and CBUD (Call Before You Dig) activities. The full featured GeoData Display tool would support external data combined with spatially enabled facility data by accessing other data sources over the enterprise information bus. In this manner operational data, customer records, trouble reports, utilization data, and demographic data can be merged allowing unprecedented views of the current (or historical) state of the business (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Geodata Display Product
The term "spatial analysis" encompasses a wide range of techniques for analyzing, visualizing, simplifying, and theorizing about spatially-enabled data. Methods of spatial analysis can be as simple as taking measurements from a map or as sophisticated as the most abstract forms of mathematical statistics. Our ability to extract meaning from, and make useful decisions in a timely manner has not kept pace with ever increasing amounts of data. By summarizing, generalizing, and abstracting large volumes of data, we can create more effective visualizations of data in order to find patterns for testing theories and hypotheses, and for making critical business decisions. The solution shown in Figure 1 can help solve both the internal and the external management issues around Operational Support System (OSS) interconnection. It can bridge the gap between legacy to legacy connectivity, as well as the additional mix of vendor and homegrown proprietary solutions. Core business drivers are the vital forces behind the deployment of such an implementation.
These drivers include:
- The need to make the service provider network more reliable and reactive improving quality of service.
- Providing customers with services faster than their previous capabilities and their competitors.
- Enabling the delivery of new and innovative services and service bundles.
- Finding and repairing faults faster ensuring higher reliability of the network.
- Selectively providing wholesale information to Competitive Local Exchange Companies (CLECs), protecting successful business processes.
Business Opportunity
Although the business opportunity for the GeoData Display product is discussed here in term of the telecom industry, there are similar benefits for other utility customers such as electric and gas distribution companies.
A full featured version of the GeoData Display tool would provide benefits to large number of users both internal and external to the company. Various types of external data sources can be supported but in an environment where the heterogeneous aspects are mediated via an information bus middleware environment. This will minimize the level of expertise needed to compose the desired views.
The product would provide API "adapters" that perform data mapping and semantic translation for inbound data items so that the registration, conflation, coordinate transformation, scaling, symbology, and feature definition functions can happen with much less user intervention than the intermediate release.
Benefits
Background
Telecommunications today is an industry of dramatically opposing forces struggling to find a balance. Drastic changes including "re-regulation", business models, and technology are hampering the ability of service providers to effectively provide products and services to their customers. Current management systems were created in an era where uniformity of technology and services was pervasive. Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) was the primary service provided. Network element provisioning was essentially a manual process. The elements carried little to no intelligence and did not have the capability of delivering complex services or the capability to understand their environment. Craft people were dispatched to the elements and performed mechanical manipulation of the equipment for the purpose of provisioning and the isolation and repair of faults. The element management systems provided surveillance and database inventory functions. Connectivity between managers was not always automated, and if automated, connection management was proprietary.
Following the divestiture of AT&T in 1984, the Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) further complicated this disjointed approach by adding new and proprietary products to manage the new advanced network elements. The legacy systems had no capability to provide operations, administration, maintenance, and provisioning (OAM&P) services for the new elements, thus requiring the new vendor to design a proprietary or "homegrown" management systems to be put into place.
An end-to-end view of the network was virtually impossible. Vendor specific managers became islands of mechanization throughout the network. Additionally, the Telecom Reform Act of 1996 (TA96) broke down the barriers to preventing new service providers (e.g., competitive local exchange carriers - CLECs) from gaining entry into the marketplace and enabled incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) to enter new geographic markets by complying with the TA96's mandates. Considering the lack of connectivity within and between the current ILEC network and service management infrastructure, the TA96's mandates for allowing CLEC’s to wholesale purchase segments of the ILEC network (including OSS OAM&P information) is not easily or economically attainable.
Moreover, complex combinations of POTS services with new data and video overlay networks will add significantly to the complexity of the OSS dilemma. These new and advanced services will require a whole new domain of network management protocols and tools, coupled with new- non-traditional network elements. Routers, bridges and switches for the new data services will be added to the network. Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) will become more ubiquitous, enabling the mix of voice, data and video services to be effectively delivered to end-users. The difficulty of creating an end-to-end view of the network is increasing. The GeoData Display tool can help solve both the internal and the external management issues around OSS interconnection. This tool in its ultimate implementation can bridge the gap between legacy to legacy connectivity, as well as the additional mix of vendor and homegrown proprietary solutions.
End-to-End Views of the Network
Since the divestiture of AT&T in 1984, the telephone network has been continuously evolving technically and in the business arena. As operational issues dictate, new technologies are repeatedly introduced to resolve operational issues and to be more cost effective. New services were not necessarily required as part of the technology improvement. For instance, when asynchronous copper-based trunk usage was being exhausted, fiber based Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) technology was introduced to relieve the bandwidth shortage. There was little pressure to innovate and create. Network management was not end-to-end. To mitigate this problem the GeoData Display tool can:
- Provide spatial end-to-end views of the network and views of relationships between physical network elements.
- Provide views of both physical and logical resources of the network.
- Support real-time network wide alarm correlation, fault management, network provisioning, and new service bundles.
- Support One Call or CBUD operations.
De-regulation and liberalization of the global telecommunications industry has created an enormous paradigm shift with respect to competition. In North America, the and associated FCC mandates have changed the competitive environment. Local service competition has become a reality.
ILEC and CLEC network management integration, requires innovation to provide market advantages. Access and utilization of databases tied to physical resources will need to be dynamically connected to logical resources. The GeoData Display tool can support the integration effort in the following ways:
- Bundled services that cross technology boundaries with spatial relationships can be viewed and analyzed.
- The connection of cellular, paging, home, and business access by one number (Number portability) can be visualized.
- Operations, administration, maintenance, and provisioning (OAM&P) operational support systems (OSS) data can be accessed, along with the related network elements for switching, transmission and access in both wired and wireless domains.
- Locations of physical and logical resources can be viewed. As dynamic changes occur, they can be made available and visible to network managers.
- Routing tables that provide information about logical connections between network elements can be spatially represented in dynamic views of the network.
- If a fiber is cut, the new route can be easily displayed through this process by combining logical connections, data and physical resources in a single network view.
- In addition to the physical and logical resources that need to be tracked dynamically, human resources (location, technical skill sets) can be recognized and understood by linking to a work force management system.
- Locations of parts, and their details (e.g., version and functions) can also be acknowledged by linking to materials system.
- All elements (physical, logical, and spatial) can be viewed in order to be targeted for maintenance and repair of the network.
ILECs are required to open their local resources--spatial, physical, and logical--as well as the relational data contained within all of their OSS that provide OAM&P functionality. CLECs can purchase the ILEC unbundled network element (UNE) resources at wholesale rates and package them with their own local services. New tools and applications to support the management and sharing of infrastructure between the ILECs and CLEC’s are desperately needed. The GeoData
Display tool can support the following:
- ILECs providing certain required information to the CLEC.
- Protection of ILECs' sensitive OSS data from CLEC scrutiny.
- Management and visibility of resources--physical, spatial and logical--that need to be tightly coupled.
- Migration from traditional monolithic, centralized legacy OSS infrastructure to a more distributed application environment.
- CLECs quickly and efficiently utilizing the purchased ILEC information to model their new network and related services to provide superior product and services to the end user.
- CLECs utilizing spatial solutions with dynamic views of the network.
- ILECs and CLECs being proactive thereby improving reliability of advanced voice, data, and video products.
- Operations and maintenance functions flowing through spatial based network management system views, enabling the viewing of network elements (wholesaled and CLEC installed), logical connections, performance statistics, fault.
The ILECs will have numerous challenges to integrate new technologies into the local loop. Local loop qualification with legacy equipment is just one challenge for the ILEC. Locations of bridge taps and determination of Customer Service Address (CSA) loop lengths will need to be predetermined before new copper overlay technology enhancements (e.g., ADSL) are introduced.
In many cases craft people will need to travel to the outside plant resources to remove impediments for the deployments of these services. Amplifiers and bridge taps will need to be removed or relocated to enable the deployment of these services. Other resources such as digital loop carrier remote terminals will need to be identified in an attempt to counter wholesaling of dry copper rather than the wholesaling bandwidth.
ILECs would prefer to provide 64 kbps services at wholesale prices to CLECs than home-run dry copper. If a CLEC is provided with the dry copper, they have the ability to overlay premium broadband services at wholesale POTS costs. With location information ILECs can strategically place digital loop carrier equipment into their local loops to prevent this wholesale give-away. A CLEC who has an effective spatial based network management system can accurately review ILEC resources and equate them to local planning board approvals. In certain cases they could potentially wholesale dry copper for "dollars" a month and overlay DSL services, while charging business customers hundreds of dollars a month for the broadband service.
CLECs will need to effectively survey the ILEC properties and combine service capable resources with marketing information to select their initial customer targets. With an spatial based network management system the CLEC will be able to input ILEC wholesaled facilities information and combine that with marketing demographics and planned municipal expansions to lower risk factors for market entry. A CLEC could target upscale residential neighborhoods or business parks containing small businesses for the deployment of broadband overlay networks. Broadband service delivery would provide a stronger return on investment in these targeted locations.
Marketing and Sales
A new business and technical model is being used to support the CLEC community. CLECs from all market tiers enter new markets simultaneously. They purchase wholesale resources from the ILEC, including but not limited to, customer and network information. • A scaleable, spatial based network management system combined with business geographics capabilities will be mandatory for the ILECs and CLECS to be competitive.
- Since the CLEC will be operating in many different markets of variable size and growth, the spatial network management system must scale bi-directionally (up and down) to the market requirements.
- By utilizing a spatial network management system solution, key business goals will be supported and achieved.
- The ability to serve new customers with services that originate in the legacy loop will be readily available since interfacing to and integrating with the data repositories in legacy OSSs will be possible.
- ILECs will sell the required network services and data to the CLEC. For the CLEC to be successful, it will be necessary to put this information to work.
- The spatial based network management system will enable telemarketers to select certain target neighborhoods based on demographic overlays of ILEC infrastructure.
- By combining proper economic targets (customers) with matched services and resources, the CLECs will have the ability to sell the appropriate and available services to the targeted customer base that will buy.
- Once the customer is "sold", the spatial based network management system will enable the CLEC to interface into the provisioning databases. This will allow the CLEC to configure and provision the customer and their services in a timely and efficient manner.
The current ILECs' ability to detect and repair faults within their respective domains has been reasonably successful with legacy infrastructure (OSS and network elements). The process of reporting alarms through the network to the OSS is not always an automated end-to-end function. The process includes the issuing of alarms by the network elements; communicating these alarms to the OSS, processing the messages and issuing test and manpower response, spare parts utilization. Furthermore, with the addition of new and more complex elements this process has become more arduous.
As advanced services such DSL are introduced into the service provider local loops, the ILECs will need to accommodate changes in the techniques used to monitor their network. Legacy OSSs do not have the capability to query and respond to intelligent network elements and data communications segments within their domains. New technologies and approaches to keep the network reliable will need to be implemented as functional blocks within the spatial network management system. ILECs will need to monitor CLEC owned components of the local loop to keep ensuring a high level of quality of service for ILEC customers, which utilize CLEC elements.
For example, a CLEC could potentially wholesale a dry copper pair from an ILEC. The CLEC could then install an DSL overlay on the copper pair (placing a DSLAM in the CO and equipment at the customer premise). If the DSL equipment is improperly installed, or if faulty equipment is being used, the DSL overlay could disrupt the ILEC's service delivery creating crosstalk to other non-CLEC pairs in a binder group.
This translates into a network management approach that requires specific connectivity to support:
- vendor specific sub-networks with their proprietary element managers,
- connections to legacy OSS that may not understand the functionality of the advanced services (DSL, and Data) in the sub-networks, and
- providing and extracting information from other service provider equipment in their local loop.
One Call Support
The GeoData Display tool can be integrated with CBUD notice management in order to enable mapping capabilities. Features include:
- Notices can be geocoded and precisely displayed on digital maps.
- Service territories can be defined geographically to facilitate notice redistribution.
- Dig request locations can be compared to mapped facilities to pinpoint conflicts or automatically clear notices without human intervention.
- You can pan across maps and zoom through multiple map layers.
- Various map formats can be supported.
Business objectives of users vary, however, all users wish to visualize geospatial data in a spatially enabled repository (data warehouse) and subsequently analyze it by categorizing, querying, grouping, etc. Users need to generate reports by either printing, creating an image, or exporting to a format suitable for further analysis or distribution to others. The capability to connect and view across previously disconnected domains can be achieved by utilizing a spatial network management toolset, a component of which is the GeoData Display tool. Elements of this tool set include:
- A central network inventory database access tool;
- Inside plant/outside plant logical resource mapping tool;
- An integration tool for CAD files;
- A GUI interfaces for configuring features, views and queries; and,
- Local database for storage, file server role, and access to other systems.
- Coordinate transformation functions (e.g., lat/long to X,Y).
- Map projection functions (e.g., lat/long to UTM).
- Address geocoding (street address to X,Y).
- Scale/rescale operations manually and automatically by area and by feature.
- Rubber sheeting capability.
- Registration capability--matching overlayed control points.
- Simultaneous display (layering) of a variety of external spatial data sources in different formats.
- Saving views that include a variety of external spatial data sources in several output formats.
- Printing of a variety of external spatial data sources.
- Incorporation of both spatial and tabular aspects of external data sources into the analysis work space.
- Both raster and vector overlays.
- Connect easily to third party applications. With an application such as the GeoData Display tool and the coordination of connections either manually or via middleware, to other applications, the spatial network management system will be able to provide an end-to-end view of a network, sub network or customer circuit.
- Support standard CAD formats. ILECs have been accumulating CAD drawings of their inside and outside plant resources for many years. The spatial network management system will need to have translation abilities to incorporate the core legacy CAD formats into easily projected images within its views. This will enable network managers to quickly locate network equipment and assist in future resource deployment. Also, fault and bottleneck identification will be facilitated by providing a thorough understanding to craft personnel about the location of these components.
- Generate and display accurate maps of the service provider physical and logical resources. In current telephony networks, network resources include inside plant resources, outside plant resources, logical resources and data resources. Maps of central offices with all of their related network elements--which include transmission, switching, access, data, power and network management systems must be combined with OSP resources--including poles, cross boxes, remote digital terminals (RTs), bridge taps, amplifiers, fiber routes, copper routes, network interface devices (NIDs) and customer premise equipment.
- Incorporate standard and custom object models (process and data/information centric). Embedded within the network, reside vendor specific/proprietary element managers. Within the network elements themselves, reside the information models that need to be accessible by the spatial network management system. The spatial network management system will enable the network manager to view and manage both the voice and data domains. In this manner, the independent SNMP and CMIP managers will not have to be altered nor will their processes have to be changed to provide the end-to-end capabilities afforded by the spatial network management system.
- Provide dynamic views of geographic data. A fundamental feature of the spatial network management system, must be the ability to add views of mobile resources in geographic regions. This will greatly enhance the service providers' ability to quickly react to their customer requirements and demands. Craftspeople and their resources (e.g., trucks and spare parts on board these vehicles) would be dynamically displayed for the network manager. When faults are detected, or when modifications or enhancements are required to the network, proper resources, people and parts, would be quickly identified and the closest resource could be dispatched to the location.
- Meet TMN, Telcordia, and OMG standards. In order for the spatial network management system to reasonably integrate into the telecommunications network, the specific application and all of its related modules need to meet fundamental standards. An alphabet soup of standards and guidelines are required. ITU, Telcordia, ANSI, TMN, OSI, SNMP, RFC, OMG, NMF and others could all be part of the solution set.
- Expand the telecommunications management capabilities to meet the new data communications needs. The initial telecommunication network was designed to provide voice services to business and homes. New technologies that enable the integration of data into the network are now available. Remember, voice and data respectively have distinct approaches to their management, as well as different management tools and standards. Voice requires real-time delivery for the service to be effective. On the other hand, data service can afford to have delays (as we see in the Internet) with varying rates of delivery. Network management systems from each domain, voice and data, have been engineered to support their respective needs. The spatial network management system will enable disparate network managers to efficiently manage each segment of their network without reengineering major changes in either of the domains. The spatial network management system will provide the ability to view each of the domains in its native setting rather than having to patch them together in order to facilitate an end-to-end view.
Operation support systems are large applications that deal with business workflow. An enterprise that achieves seamless integration of OSSs within its business process is better able to compete in the rapidly changing marketplace. Mergers and the pressure to become more efficient have created a market opportunity for products to assist in Enterprise Application Integration (EAI). Early attempts at EAI tightly coupled applications in a point-to-point manner. While achieving the immediate goal of accomplishing integration, this approach is not scalable and results in increased life cycle maintenance as the applications evolve. Loosely coupling systems together is a viable alternative. Loose coupling reduces dependencies between systems so that they evolve more freely without affecting each other. While it is necessary to establish a reliable middleware communications channel between applications, they also must be able to understand each other’s message formats. Messages must be integrated at the semantic level in order for true communications to occur. There are three functions required to successfully perform integration:
- Transport
- Routing of messages
- Transformation of message into the different formats required by the end systems.