The ability to deliver services within an evolving network will play an increasing role in the profitability of a service provider, from revenue generation to return on network infrastructure investment. This requires that a radical new approach to operations is needed if our industry is to maintain profitable forward momentum.

Resource management is being deployed by service providers in the quest for greater network profitability. Essentially, it provides a unified way to manage complex network resources and overcome the skills shortages which are constraining service growth. Resource management is a powerful competitive tool that helps roll out new services faster, maximizes network usage and speeds the migration of networks from older legacy systems to newer IP-based technologies.

The subtle but important difference between resource management and inventory

So what is resource management and in what way is it any different from inventory? The challenge of knowing and recording what equipment is in a network has been discussed for many years. In its most basic form, inventory is just a simple spreadsheet. Resource management is much more than ‘just’ inventory. Inventory is, in effect, the data (devices, cards, ports) but resource management is defining what you can do with that data. For example, how can you trend and monitor network capacity, or provision a diverse circuit with a defined protection path, or trigger an alert when a capacity threshold is crossed; that’s what resource management can do.

The resource management challenge

One difficulty of running an inventory rather than a resource manager is the inventory becomes inaccurate over time. The usefulness and ‘fitness for purpose’ of an inventory is directly related to how accurate it is, and the accuracy of the inventory is directly related to how it is used. The industry has recognised that an approach of design first, fulfill second; this results in an accurate inventory and low fallout. It is important to draw the distinction and understand this philosophical debate; if not, the ‘inventory’ just becomes an asset management system and not a resource management system.

Resource management is either complementary to, or a superset of, inventory. It is not simply inventory management in the form of a database of record.

Resource management provides a foundation for much more

An argument that has traditionally been debated is where physical and logical inventory reside; some believe inventory should end at the physical device or port, and fulfillment systems should handle the logical inventory. This ‘stove-piping’ provides little support for integrated change management and fulfillment, little support for 360-degree service assurance and promotes higher capital expenditure through deployment of new resources when existing resources could have met the need. Just because you know a device exists, doesn’t mean you know what capacity is being utilized

So how is resource management put into action?

Often a service provider makes a strategic decision to implement a new OSS solution to support service and network resource management. It's at this point that the choice between a simple ‘database of record’ solution or a more comprehensive resource management approach must be taken.The latter combines a unified inventory with process automation, providing strategic value that will deliver the improved savings, efficiencies and speed that required in a more competitive market.

One of the biggest issues service providers face deploying an OSS is data migration. We know, from experience, that inventory data is usually bad – and that is why a holistic resource management approach is so important.