BMC Helix NetOps overview
With BMC Helix Telco Extensions, BMC extends the Helix IT Service Management excellence into the CSP's (Communications Service Provider) Network Operations Center (NOC). The NOC is the essential nerve center for CSPs for delivering, monitoring, maintaining, and repairing all CSP services. The NOC is also expected to deliver always-on services to multiple devices and across fixed and wireless networks. Unfortunately, the CSP has not kept pace with the IT domain for automation and innovation. BMC Helix Telco Extensions is a service management solution offered exclusively to CSPs and is built around eTOM (enhanced Telecom Operations Map) processes.
Challenges for Communication Service Providers
- The telecommunication core connectivity services of data and voice have become a commodity.
- Because of declining CSP revenues and increasing financial pressures we require automated tooling solutions to perform service network operations to deliver service assurance and improve QoE in an increasingly complex environment.
- CSPs are currently maintaining a siloed approach across multiple network domains with fragmented islands of data and diverse mean-time-to-repair (MMTR) and mean-time-to-identify (MTTI) performance metrics. This is challenging from an opex, quick issue resolution, and customer experience standpoint.
- There is little convergence across CSP workflows, data, and remediation processes.
- Due to customer demands, there is increased network usage with decreasing CSP margins.
- There are significant operational costs across personnel and technology that are required to manage the CSP network operations center. Depending upon the maturity level of the CSP, today's CSPs rely on manual efforts to prevent outages and to identify anomalies and root causes and resolve critical service incidents.
- CSP are becoming increasingly software-driven with microservices architecture for flexibility and agility across network and IT domains. However, digital transformation journey has been difficult as CSPs are operating based on legacy technologies with a high number of customized applications as they continue to modernize toward low-code or no-code cloud-based environments with reusable network functions and elements that can be easily integrated and function as shared pools of resources.
Business value for the BMC Helix Telco Extensions product
The flagship capabilities of BMC Helix Telco Extensions include:
Capability | Description |
|---|---|
Alarm Management | CSP networks generate a high volume of alarms daily, submitted by a customer, auto-generated within the network, or from a field technician. Consequently, high alarm volume creates significant incoming activity to the NOC. Today, it requires a manual effort to sort through alarms to determine the critical verses non-critical (or noise) issues and sort through multiple incoming alarms behind a single incident. The proliferation of noise within the NOC delays service response. BMC Helix Telco Extensions, powered by AI/ML, groups all the alarms related to the same incident together. The NOC agent can then have one single panel with all alarms and decide what to do. BMC Helix Telco Extensions embeds alarm prioritization to trigger automated escalations and workflows to remediate the incident. With BMC Helix Telco Extensions, the incoming service alarm noise can be reduced, and incident handling can be streamlined significantly, resulting in a faster MMTR. |
Source Request Management | Compiling metadata logs across the entire CSP network and servicing footprint is often time-consuming and labor-intensive. BMC Helix Telco Extensions automatically generates detailed metadata capturing every resource request, approval, and allocation record. These metadata records are often required for CSP compliance or regulatory purposes. |
Related parties inclusion or multi-party collaboration | CSP NOC agents cannot add users or groups to access and modify a request during the lifecycle of an incident. This is often necessary to support cross-group and domain resolution processes. BMC Helix Telco Extensions allows network engineers to add individual users or groups outside their designated CSP NOC to collaborate on incidents across different NOCs. CSP NOC agents can now add technical specialists, additional SMEs, and other internal teams to access and work on a specific ticket. Improved collaboration results in faster communication and results in a faster MMTR. |