Alcatel-Lucent improves time to market for new services with enhancements to OSS Connected Partner Program

Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) today announced a significant expansion of its successful OSS Connected Partner Program with the introduction of Connected+ Partner Application, an advanced tier of the pre-certification program that enables service providers to operationalize their networks even faster. By aligning the interoperability of Element Management Systems (EMS) and Operational Support Systems (OSS) applications, service providers realize revenue sooner by achieving faster time to market when introducing services or migrating to a new network release.

The new Connected+ tier addresses one of the major challenges faced by service providers: the time lag between availability of OSS applications and interoperability with network equipment vendors’ management functionality, which has often resulted in service providers waiting weeks or even months to derive revenues from new services or achieve cost reduction targets.

Underpinning the new Connected+ category is a commitment by both Alcatel-Lucent and an OSS partner to proactively maintain compatibility with each planned release of the Alcatel-Lucent 5620 Service Aware Manager (SAM). Within the Connected+ tier, Alcatel-Lucent shares its product roadmap, provides advanced drafts of new interface documentation and scheduled re-certification to align with the 5620 SAM delivery. This results in a ‘just-in-time’ delivery model with near simultaneous availability of the 5620 SAM and the Connected+ Partner application.

“With the OSS Connected Partner Program, Alcatel-Lucent will enable us to implement the new Service Router release 5.0 faster and more efficiently because of the simultaneous availability of the 5620 SAM release 5.0 and pre-certified Infovista’s VistaInsight for Networks and IBM’s Tivoli Netcool Omnibus applications,” said Bob Belcher, OSS Technical Architect at Virgin Media. “This is an invaluable program that will allow us to speed up new service delivery and time to new revenue.”

“This new partner category is designed for OSS applications that are critical to a service provider’s operations,” said Basil Alwan, president of Alcatel-Lucent’s IP activities. “These operations must be fully supported before any network upgrade can be leveraged. By closing the time gap between OSS applications and management interoperability, we are achieving a record deployment time for service providers and effectively enabling them to take advantage of their network investment almost immediately.”

“By actively collaborating with Alcatel-Lucent’s 5620 SAM OSS team, we were able to accelerate our certification to match the 5620 SAM Release 5.0 delivery date and receive advanced notification of 5620 SAM features. This enhanced efficiency means that service providers and our numerous joint deployments will benefit from expedited service roll-out, and experience the levels of confidence and commitment they have come to expect,” said Ronnie Ray, VP Strategic Projects & Corporate Marketing, InfoVista.

“Customers are asking for more coordination between equipment vendors and OSS software vendors to reduce delays caused by OSS-EMS integration,” said Craig Farrell, CTO of Netcool solutions, Tivoli Software, IBM. “The OSS Connected Partner Program effectively answers that need by proactively reducing integration risk, cost, and time.”

Originally aimed at supporting interoperability requirements between OSS applications and the Alcatel-Lucent Service Routing portfolio through the 5620 Service Aware Manager (SAM), the Program has also been expanded to cover the Alcatel-Lucent broadband access portfolio. The OSS Connected Partner Program proactively manages the interoperability logistics on behalf of customers introducing the Alcatel-Lucent triple play solution, including the new 5523 ADSL Work Station (AWS) applications and 5526 Access Management System (AMS), which spans the 5549 Access Provisioning Center (APC), the 5539 Statistics and Data Collector (SDC) and the 5529 OSS Alarm Dispatcher (OAD).

Applications which are currently part of the Alcatel-Lucent OSS Connected Partner Program and have already been certified against the Alcatel-Lucent 5620 SAM 4.0 include: Axiom AxiOSS, Cariden MATE, EMC Smarts InCharge, HP OpenView TeMIP, HP OpenView Service Activator, IBM Netcool Omnibus, IBM Netcool Proviso, InfoVista L2/L3 VPN Services Module and Subex-Azure NetProvision.