Abstract: Because of the cost and complexity of building bespoke telecom service management systems, telecommunications management developers are moving toward the use of off-the-shelf componentware to satisfy their management requirements However, a crucial problem with such an approach is the ability to integrate components to realise integrated management solutions. A second trend is that increasingly telecommunication management operators are becoming ‘business process driven’. This can be evidenced by the increased activity in business process based solutions and customer facing processes, e.g., TMFs Telecommunications Operations Map. The central idea being that management systems must become more ‘service’ oriented, i.e., must be integrated across traditional management functional areas to support the business objectives, e.g., service fulfilment, service assurance, service accounting rather than just implement stand alone applications. This paper surveys the different approaches for representing the knowledge contained in business processes and evaluates the strengths/weaknesses in the various approaches. Then the paper proposes the innovative design of a component based Workflow Management system which enables not only the evolution/change of business process but facilitates the ease of introduction of different knowledge representation techniques to support the automated enactment of business processes in a distributed (CORBA based) environment. Finally the paper evaluates the applicability of workflow based telecoms management solutions based on its usage in telecom information service trials.
Keywords: Telecommunication service management, workflow, automated business processes, business rules, representation of business processes
