Products, CFS and RFS

Products, CFS and RFS

At the time of writing a number of traditional Communication Service Providers (CSPs) are “morphing” into total digital players. This is seen as a means to address the dynamic, competitive ICT Market and to allow Value Added OTTs (VAOTTs) to be a part of the CSP’s value chain. As King Canute (Cnut) “discovered” it is somewhat a challenge to hold back the tide. The same is being seen with the competitors that are snapping at the heels of the CSPs.

To help CSPs, the adoption of a Catalog will help by providing a much needed “truth table” of what Products and Resources will be required to entertain and deliver Products to the end customer (e.g. Retail, Wholesale, etc..). A Catalog helps with Product creation and the end to end lifecycle of Products supported by the CSP.

A central and unified Catalog is an enabler facilitate the consolidation of the “home grown” IT estate (e.g. numerous Databases, manual processes, non-standard technologies, etc..) and to serve as a catalyst for further business growth by offering flexibility with Product creation and deployment.

From a high level perspective, a Catalog can be split into the following parts:-

-Product (e.g. Sales Catalog, Product Catalog, Services Catalog, etc..) that highlights what can be ordered and consumed)

-Services, (e.g. configuration and technical details) and
Resources (e.g. what needs to be setup with the Network)

The Services are basically Customer Facing Services (CFS) and Resource Facing Services (RFS). Generally, CFS is tied, or linked, to a Product and RFS is connected with the required resource.

VBR/ Wallis Dudhnath

Reference:

TMF Forum and the SID (Shared Information Data) model