OSS/BSS Special Focus – Got your iD?
May 12, 2010 - Openet
The TMF already has a project up and running to explore these issues - the Dynamic (Syndicated) Content Delivery (DCD) catalyst project - which will be demonstrated at this year's TM World event in Nice in May. Running under the wider banner of ‘Widespread Access to Video, Entertainment and Services' (WAVES) - and supported by Microsoft and Tribold, the project is intended to help move towards a multi-industry architecture that enables consumers to access content over any available network connection, using any convenient device. The technologies involved include an active catalog component, a federated identity solution and multiple devices. The DCD initiative uses version 2 of the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML 2.0) OASIS to provide single sign-on (SSO) between multiple identity providers and multiple content providers. Information identity cards issued by an identity provider allow users to be authenticated to multiple web sites without having to provide a user name and password at each site.
This fragmentation is also apparent within the actual network plumbing itself and also militates against either getting a clear view of the customer's experience across all the different services involved and of working out ways to enhance their own identity through reliable service environment. "If service providers are to do more than just provide the access to connect subscriber to different services, then they must understand the complete customer experience," says Michael Manzo, CMO at Openet. "However, the complexity of collecting information across multiple access networks - especially where the service is frequently disaggregated from the network - poses a serious challenge to this required visibility. Addressing this challenge will require the real-time usage collection of data streams from heterogenous network elements; the capacity to aggregate these events and transactions into meaningful and accurate accounting records; and the enrichment of these records by correlating usage and subscriber information with static and dynamic data from CRM, billing and payment systems, subscriber databases and others."
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