Cisco Cisco Prime Fulfillment 6.1 White Paper
© Analysys Mason Limited 2014
October 2014
Cisco’s RTOSS service fulfilment turns catalogue
synchronisation upside down in preparation for NFV
synchronisation upside down in preparation for NFV
October 2014
Mark H. Mortensen
Cisco has designed and implemented innovative multi-vendor service fulfilment architecture, Cisco Real-Time
OSS (RTOSS), which derives and loads service and resource catalogues from the bottom up rather than the top
down. This speeds up the implementation of new physical equipment into the network and improves data quality
for communications service providers (CSPs) as they implement new types of service-providing software. The
architecture is based on an open standard – Product and Service Assembly (PSA) – and provides benefits today,
and will do so to an even greater extent in the coming virtualised world of network function virtualisation
(NFV).
Cisco has worked for several years to develop a strong OSS offering to support its equipment sales to CSPs. The
Cisco Prime offering has brought Cisco tremendous credibility for operations support – especially in service
fulfilment – for Cisco equipment. The active catalogue part of Cisco Prime has brought its offerings into the
more complex, real world of multi-vendor equipment, domain-based element management systems and multiple
product catalogues. Furthermore, it has an innovative method for catalogue synchronisation, reversing the usual
top-down catalogue synchronisation schemes.
Catalogue-driven order orchestration and order management is
standard in the industry
standard in the industry
Catalogue-driven order management – an order management approach, originally developed by Axiom, has
become standard in the industry during the past 10 years. This obviated the need to specify a workflow for each
product (a bundle of services) and of each service itself (many of which share many components). In this
technique, the task is divided into ‘process fragments’, each of which is associated with a component. When an
order comes in for fulfilment, it usually is processed as shown in Figure 1.
Order orchestration. The order is decomposed into pieces that are then passed to third-party partners or to
individual service fulfilment ‘stacks’ that cover one or more technology areas. The rules for doing this are
in the catalogue.
Order management. Each stack takes its piece and decomposes it into its constituent components. Each
component to be fulfilled has a process fragment associated with it. The order management system
dynamically pieces together the process fragments to create the overall process. This process may be
repeated again, in a technology or element management system (EMS) sub-domain.