A Tune-Up for the World’s Largest Machine

How can BI help with telco upgrades?

By Rob Mattison

Just think about it for a minute. What is the biggest machine in the world? Is it some huge strip-mining earth mover that chews up the ground and extracts valuable minerals? What about an oil tanker, those huge ships that sail the oceans and deliver fossil fuels to people everywhere?

No, the largest single machine in the world – by a wide margin – is the global telecommunications system. This system combines millions of miles of cable, millions and millions of switches, routers and other network devices, and billions of handsets into one huge coop­erative communications machine.

Like no other, the individual pieces of this machine are managed by a variety of companies in different parts of the world. On the other hand, just like any other complex piece of machinery, it is in constant need of fine tuning and adjustments. Where do you go when you have a network that needs tuning? There is no local repair shop that specializes in circuit switch overhaul. There is no shop where you can get an oil change for your routers. When it is time to tune up the network – or the part of it you control – you need to know how to do it yourself.

Specialists
Keeping a network tuned up is no easy task. In fact, most telcos employ hun­dreds of highly specialized engineers who make it their business to ensure that the phones keep ringing and the SMS messages keep zipping around the globe. Keeping networks in top shape is a big job, and one that comes with its own set of complications. For example, with so many different devices and transportation loads to keep track of, you might think that network engi­neers would be organized like a pool of auto mechanics: One person works on engines, another on the gearbox, another on the bodywork, while yet another takes care of the tires.

No, this environment is far more complicated than a simple little device like a car or a truck. If you needed a specialist for every type of network device or network component, you would need hundreds of specialists. In fact, there are just two main catego­ries of specialist charged with keeping track of the telecommunications network.

One group focuses on the perfor­mance of the network. These engineers are commissioned with the job of making sure that each of the network devices is working as close as possible to full capacity. The other group concentrates on errors, known as network faults. These engineers are concerned with identifying where network errors have occurred (or predicting where they are most likely to occur in the future) and fixing the problems to keep the network running 24/7.

The network maintenance deluge
Unfortunately for most network engineers, there are several factors conspiring to make their jobs more and more difficult on an almost daily basis. For one thing, new network devices are constantly being invented that carry hundreds and thousands of times the amount of traffic that old-fashioned devices used to handle. Not only that, but these devices are being pressed to do more and more different types of jobs. The "good old days" of POTS (plain old telephone service) are no more.

Today's networks have to handle voice, data, video, audio and a plethora of other media, all at speeds never before imagined. More traffic, more types, more often: The net effect is that those faithful repairmen devoted to keeping your network running are swamped. And of course, you still need to track and tune performance, and track and manage faults, only a lot more than ever before.

Getting some help
The good news, as many network engineers are coming to realize, is that they don't have to deal with this new situation with the same old toolbox. Along with the new devices, there are new tools and methods that make the job easier.

For example, in the "good old days" all of the information managed by network devices was unique and proprietary to the device. This meant that keeping track of the performance and faults had to be done on a painstaking device-by-device basis.

However, in the modern world, more and more devices use a standard set of protocols and languages. The ocean of data is becoming standardized and easier to manage. This has allowed the development of powerful tools that would have been unusable until very recently.

Business intelligence (BI) tools in particular have discovered a new life is in the world of network performance and fault monitoring. Many vendors of operations support systems (OSS) performance-monitoring products are incorporating business intelligence capabilities into their software. Other network performance-monitoring groups are installing their own databases and using traditional BI tools to do their analysis.

Engineers who have spent decades struggling with massive volumes of performance and fault data loaded into spreadsheets, which then had to be sorted and merged in order to perform the analysis they required, are now discovering the power of business intelligence software.

Even more interesting is the fact that they have discovered the power of statistical analysis. Predictive data mining techniques are helping network engineers to forecast system loads and to anticipate network device failures. As a result they are doing their jobs more effectively, and sleeping more soundly.

Network intelligence: the new frontier
What all of this means is that network intelligence presents an exciting new discipline for telco engineering groups to explore.

These groups are under tremendous pressure to keep incorporating new and improved products and services into their infrastructure, while continuing to drive down costs and improve productivity. So the ability to leverage the knowledge of a few bright engineers and escalate their reach through these powerful new tools is an extremely appealing prospect.

As the discipline matures, there is no doubt that network engineers will discover what many other business functions already know: that business intelligence can help keep any business machine running smoothly, whether it is a bank, a retailer or even the biggest, most powerful and most pervasive machine in existence in the world today.

There is no doubt that we will be hearing more and more about network intelligence as time goes on.

Bio: Rob Mattison is a globally recognized expert in the application of business intelligence to telco operations. www.xitelco.com