OSS Solutions: IP VPN

Visionael IP-VPN Automation Solution - PDF: 125KB

Deploying MPLS IP VPNs (RFC2547) manually in a NGN network involves demanding procedures, but is still very common among service providers today. They are, however, beginning to realize the benefits of automated service deployment through OSS driven provisioning.

The network element configuration in IP/MPLS networks is complex and several attributes must be allocated and used in a sophisticated non-overlapping manner. If the human factor only impacts a small minority of the service deployments, it may still have catastrophic impact on the product, as one can imagine what would happen with the credibility on a VPN service if two VPNs are accidentally connected. Also, the resource allocation is often solved in legacy ways (spreadsheets, etc.) making the process ineffective and non-reliable.

The Visionael Service Automation Suite with the Systems Orchestrator addresses both these issues. It has a reliable backend database potent of housing, allocating, generating and visualizing MPLS/IP VPN data in a data model based on current standards as well as a provisioning engine capable of real-time, transaction safe, provisioning in the network.

A provisioning process might involve various steps where information needs to be entered by people but more often retrieved or sent to other systems, sometimes in a transaction safe manner (resource allocation) and sometimes just as updates. The process below shows a conceptual flow where the various steps illustrate different phases of a Service Activation Manager flow involving many junctures at which information exchange takes place with other systems or users.

The process might start by retrieving information from a CRM system and continue by making some decisions, such as which VRF to use and which route targets to import and export, etc., all based on information retrieved from the Visionael Repository.

When the appropriate information is gathered we can present the configuration for the user and upon submission deploy the configuration to the network. Updates regarding the state of the allocated resources are then changed in surrounding systems. Because of the Service Automation Manager's features for handling wait states in both interactive and non-interactive flows, transaction-safe flows are easy to compose.

Visionael supports the creation and modification VPNs from the Visionael Repository through a set of configurable workflow tasks. The benefits are easy to derive from this:

Makes wide and large-scale deployment of IP VPNs possible by handling thousands of flow-through orders on a daily basis with minimal intervention by users
Leads to time savings for any level of user
No human factor in the configuration
Provides an easy-to-use web-based GUI to select hardware and other equipment from inventory to provision
Leverages the flexibility and power of the Visionael Inventory Management Solution to support VPN service creation
Transaction safe resource allocation
Ensures a higher level of accuracy and validation in the provisioning process
Improves efficiency and reduces maintenance costs through automated processes