Customer Service Management

Monitoring the network is a complex task.  Thousands of devices, millions of alarms, untold numbers of services, all generating an overabundance of data that require significant resources to manage and understand.   Too often the first indication of a customer service problem is when the customer calls to complain. Attempts to solve this problem has led to complex integrations between systems that ultimately fail to provide the required solution. 

NETPortal™ Customer Service Management provides a complete, productized solution to monitoring customer services by utilizing the NETPortal™  Inventory, Discovery and Event Management capabilities.  NETPortal™ Customer Service Management automatically monitors customer services in real time across Optical, Ethernet and IP networking technologies. It uses actual service configurations obtained from the network and a sophisticated service impact model to determine network outage impacts to customer services.

TIERONE understands that Service Providers have Fault Management Systems in place and are using them in a broader focus, often monitoring the health of devices and infrastructure items. NETPortal™ was built to co-exist and can take alarm feeds from them.  In addition, NETPortal™ can push alarm and service enriched tickets into existing trouble management systems.

In addition to integration to existing Fault Management Systems, NETPortal™ can communicate directly to a node using the Collector to retrieve alarm data. When this method is used, NETPortal™ has the ability to synchronize alarms with the network device. Synchronizing alarms ensures NETPortal™ has a clear current view to all active alarms on a device.

When NETPortal™ receives an alarm, it determines if this could be service impacting.  If it is, the alarm is then mapped against the NETPortal™ service impact model. The service impact model maintains a record of all services and understands their implementation, thus it can apply a set of rules (network topology, protection, etc.) to determine if a service instance is unavailable (i.e. out-of-service) as a result of the alarm. NETPortal™ makes this information accessible through its APIs or via the GUI Portal in a number of formats.  For example, lists of customer services that are unavailable, a rolled-up view of network alarms, and a graphical display of alarms on nodes and services.  A record of when a service was available and when it was not is also maintained.

NETPortal™ Customer Service Management allows the Service Provider to:

• Automate service management based on real-time, accurate network information
• Proactively manage customer service problems by understanding network outages and the impact to services and customers
• Quickly identify and prioritize customer problems for resolution

Utilize NETPortal™’s strong security model to provide end customer access to service status and availability information