ENABLING SECURE EBUSINESS BASED
TELECOMMUNICATIONS MANAGEMENT
a new Paradigm beyond TMN
Masayoshi Ejiri
Fujitsu Limited, 4-1-1 Kamikodanaka Nakahara-ku, Kawasaki, 211-8588, Japan
Frank Birch
Fujitsu Laboratories of Europe Ltd, Hayes Park Central, Hayes End Road, Hayes Middlesex, UB4 8FE, UK
Keywords: Telecommunications management, Architecture, Service integration, Content delivery, Business process,
Security, TMN
Abstract: With the emergence of eBusiness within the Telecom
s sector, there is a growing need to reformulate our
existing understanding of the nature of the industry so as to provide an adequate basis for the development
and deployment of the necessary support infrastructure. The purpose of this paper is to identify what some
of the core issues are if this transition is to be performed and to indicate some of the changes that are needed
if they are to be satisfactorily resolved. The paper argues that the established functional architecture
provided by the Telecommunications Management Network (TMN), although useful for the Telecoms
industry, is no longer sufficient. Proposals are made for improved architectures and frameworks that are
based in part on lessons learnt from examining the nature of established service-based industries. Their
structure implies that there is a need to emphasise process groupings that are dedicated to service
integration. It is suggested that a key issue within this revised framework will be the delivery of content, and
it is shown how recognition of this can provide the basis for a richer variety of secure and high-value added
services. The paper concludes by identifying further work that needs to be undertaken.
1 INTRODUCTION
The telecommunications industry, stimulated by the
introduction of competition and the convergence of
technology, has started undergoing far-reaching
changes in recent years. Previously it was an
industry characterised by massive monolithic
operators that supplied essential “infrastructure”
type services that changed little over time. In today’s
eBusiness environment the ability to rapidly and
efficiently create new and modify existing services
by bringing together components from a variety of
ever-changing partners is becoming paramount if a
Service Provider (SP) is going to be able to continue
to compete and survive in the market.
To accommodate these changes a shift is needed
with
in the Telecoms sector towards business models
similar to those that have been developed by other
long-established service-focused industries. Such
industries, for example tourism, tend to consist of a
number of closely linked but distinct organisations,
each specialising in a different area that is relevant
to the industry’s core theme. Figure 1 shows the
tourism industry’s value chain. Partnerships are
crucial enabling Tour Service Integrators to bring
together the different resources needed to build
specific products. The Tour Service Integrator also
interfaces with customers, both to understand the
products that they need and to supply them with any
associated services that they require.
The structures used to support inter-working
enable a dive
rse range of resource providers to be
accommodated and make it easy to add new
resource providers to the mix. This contributes to a
Service Provider’s ability to offer a range of
attractive products which both stimulate their
business and enhance customer satisfaction.
Well developed service-oriented industries
i
ncluding Tourism point the way for the
3
Ejiri M. and Birch F. (2004).
ENABLING SECURE EBUSINESS BASED TELECOMMUNICATIONS MANAGEMENT - a new Paradigm beyond TMN.
In Proceedings of the First International Conference on E-Business and Telecommunication Networks, pages 3-9
DOI: 10.5220/0001387600030009
Copyright
c
 SciTePress

telecommunications sector. Partnerships are
essential if efficient end-to-end services are to be
realised. To support this, a common business process
framework needs to be established. The standardised
ways of interacting supported by this framework will
allow communities of collaborating partners to
interact more easily, permitting new combinations of
partners with appropriate skills and resources to
come together quickly and effectively.
Figure 1: Tourism Value Chain
The objective of this paper is to make some
proposals about how existing Telecommunications
Management needs to be enhanced if eBusiness is to
be properly accommodated. A first step towards this
is a brief exploration of the structure of some
service-centric industries that are already well
established. These have moved beyond using
business models that are based primarily on price as
a differentiator to ones that include product variety,
time to market and sophisticated support services.
This is seen as indicative of the future direction of
Telecoms and is used as a basis for proposing
changes to existing frameworks that will leave the
Telecoms sector better positioned to accommodate
future changes. An improved and extended
architectural framework is proposed that enhances
the existing TMN architecture (ITU-T, 2000
[M3010]). An outline Business Process Model is
then introduced which incorporates the idea of
“Service Integration”, a function that is key in other
service-focused sectors. The paper continues by
introducing a framework for Security-related
services, an area that is important for the industry
and which requires a strong “Security Integration”
capability if products tailored to customers’ needs
are to be made available. The paper finishes by
drawing some conclusions on what the key areas are,
requiring rapid research and development if
Telecoms is to be able to make the transition to
eBusiness in a smooth manner.
2 EBUSINESS MANAGEMENT
ARCHITECTURES
Changes in the Telecommunications sector are
driving a shift in emphasis away from equipment
and networks upon which they used to be focused,
towards both services and the customers to whom
they are delivered. With this shift comes a need to
generate a new framework based on an analysis of
IP/eBusiness services and existing value chains. To
start this analysis we shall first consider the types of
service that are now offered.
Telecom service types have been discussed
previously (Ejiri, 1994) where two main groupings
are identified. “Information transmission services”
hereafter called “Transport Services”, responsible
for transporting information between different
locations, and “Operations Services” which are
primarily responsible for a SP’s interactions with its
customers. In this paper an additional service type is
proposed - “Content delivery Services”. These are
responsible for delivering information (content)
tailored to customers needs via Transport Services
that have already been established.
This type of distinction is also present in other
existing Service-based industries. For example, the
logistic companies that transport goods for
consumers and small businesses within the Japanese
market. Collection of goods from location A and
their delivery to location B is an underlying raw and
fundamental transport service but this is
supplemented by a range of associated services
(Operations Services) that focus on making the
underlying service easy to use and are applicable in
a wide variety of circumstances. For example, a
local convenience store can act as a mediator for
collections, deliveries can be arranged in agreed
time-windows and information can be provided
immediately about the whereabouts of goods.
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4

Figure 2: eBusiness Services and Management Architecture
In addition, perishable goods such as fish or fruit can
be transported using a cold-storage service, and
delicate goods can be transported using a hanging
service or with special protection against breakage,
etc… These additions (Content Services) all add
value to the basic underlying transport service and
enhance the ability of the Service Provider to
compete with other SPs that are also trying to find
ways of making their offerings more attractive to the
customer.
Based on the distinction between Content
delivery and Transport services, an eBusiness
Services and Management Architecture is proposed
in Figure 2 which shows End Users who enjoy the
benefits of eBusiness positioned above a three-
layered architecture. The End Users are serviced by
the eBusiness Management layer which is
responsible for the creation and transfer of content
used in trading, banking, auctioning, and similar
eBusiness-based services and for the logistics of the
physical delivery of items where this is a
consequence of the content exchanged. Delivery and
exchange of this content is made possible by
“Content-Delivery” SPs who are responsible for
integrating and adding value to the underlying basic
transport services (resources) supplied by the “IP-
Bearer” layer. Value is added by the use of
components such as content gateways, for
exchanging different content types, and directory
and naming support services for enabling the
location of and access to a variety of different
content types.
The eBusiness, Content Delivery and IP-Bearer
areas all need to be managed. The TMN is well
established and is the basis for much work in the
Telecoms area. However, the TMN needs to be
enhanced or modified to address (i) the new
distinction that is emerging between content delivery
and content and (ii) the need for multiple
organisations to work together to deliver services.
Although previous work (Willetts, Adams 1997),
(Braun, Guenter, Khalil, 2001), has explored
possible enhancements to TMN to cover business
process automation and extended interfaces, these
issues have not been addressed.
In terms of Figure 2, the TMN is restricted to
management of resource. It provides a Network-
Element/Network centric view of operations focused
on the management of resources in the network and
how these need to be configured and monitored to
supply basic transport services to customers and
guarantee their ongoing performance. Although the
TMN does support some functionality in the area of
managing services and customers, this needs to be
extended.
The TMN perspective (Sidor, 1998), although
valid, is no longer sufficient for the continuing rapid
ENABLING SECURE EBUSINESS BASED TELECOMMUNICATIONS MANAGEMENT - a new Paradigm beyond
TMN
5

development of the telecommunications industry.
The supply of basic equipment from which network
infrastructure is constructed is becoming
increasingly commoditised, and the issues around its
deployment and use in supporting services to end-
users are becoming well understood.
The concerns of the industry have started turning
away from the management of networks and towards
transforming itself into a provider of services with
the customer as its focus. To do this effectively
requires efficient interaction with a wide variety of
suppliers and partners. Perspectives focused on
customer, service and partner/supplier are
complementary to the TMN’s focus on the network,
and any new proposal should accommodate all these
views.
Figure 3: TMN to eMS
The manner in which TMN needs to be extended
can be better understood by reference to Figure 3.
The concept shown has been introduced previously
(Ejiri, Iseda, Hamada, 2000) but only in abbreviated
from.
The figure shows the relationship between the
traditional TMN pyramid and the e-Business
Management Solution (eMS) which is proposed as
an alternative and more meaningful way of viewing
Telecommunications Management today. From an
eBusiness point of view it shows that the TMN
Business Management (BM) area responsible for
directing the business of an SP needs to be extended
so that it becomes responsible for managing
eBusiness as a top layer where eBusiness acts as a
customer for underlying services. Service
Management (SM) is repositioned within the eMS as
a middleware platform between Resource and
Business management, whose responsibilities
include the delivery of content while Resource
Management (RM) includes not only networks and
specifically IP bearer services, but also other
resources that services may be constructed from.
The TMN pyramid for conventional services can be
considered as being included and is still relevant
here.
3 A PROCESS FRAMEWORK FOR
EMS
TMN is primarily concerned with functional
architecture and components (ITU-T, 2000
[M3400]). Q and X interfaces are also defined and
are effective when considering existing networks, as
has been discussed elsewhere (Birch, Ejiri, 2000).
TMN does not, however, address the manner in
which functional components are linked together
into process flows. It is important to understand how
these flows are constructed for both internal use and
for enabling interactions with external entities.
It is widely recognised that a framework that
captures process flows has two key benefits: (i) it
provides a basis for efficient software development
by encouraging the reuse of software components,
and (ii) it facilitates inter-operability between
partners which simplifies the process of bringing
services to market. With the increased emphasis in
eBusiness on multiple Supplier/Partner interactions,
this second consideration becomes crucial.
Consider the roles that a Service Provider can
perform. It has been demonstrated elsewhere (Ejiri,
1997) that a Service Provider within a value chain
can be viewed as acting simultaneously as supplier,
partner and customer. In eBusiness several SPs can
act as suppliers or partners to a single organisation.
When this occurs there must be a strong emphasis
within the organisation on both Supplier/Partner
Management and Integration. For effective
Integration, a strong Process Framework is required
that can provide a basis for bringing together and
integrating service components that are owned by
both a Service Provider and its partners.
Any work related to process interactions within
the Telecoms industry needs to be considered in the
context of the Telecom Operations Map (TOM) and
the enhanced TOM developed by the
TeleManagement Forum (TMF, 2000) and (TMF
2002), and the contribution that these initiatives
have made to the understanding of Business
Processes within the Telecoms sector.
The enhanced TOM (eTOM) is a hierarchical
business process framework that covers, in varying
levels of detail, all the activities that need to take
place within a Telecoms-based SP. Although
ICETE 2004 - GLOBAL COMMUNICATION INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND SERVICES
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activities such as the Development of Resources and
the Management of Products are included, the
emphasis is on understanding those processes
involved in the day to day activities of providing
services to customers and the necessary interactions
with customers, suppliers/partners and
equipment/networks to ensure that this happens
effectively. eTOM has been successful in expanding
the discussion of Business Processes to all areas of a
SP and in emphasising the importance of
supplier/partner management, a topic that is also
being addressed actively by organisations such as
the Supply Chain Council and RosettaNet. However,
although eTOM is still being extended, it isn’t
currently addressing the increasingly complex needs
in the area of Service Integration necessitated by
eBusiness.
Referring to Figure 1, the role of “Service
Integrator” is vital. Its smooth operation allows SPs
in the tourist industry to rapidly assemble new
product offerings in response to opportunities that
arise. A similarly effective Service Integration
capability is needed in the telecommunications
industry.
Figure 4: Process Flows and Components in Resource
Operations
Service Integration hasn’t been identified as an
important area by previous work on process
decomposition. The related area of Mediation (Ejiri,
1998, 2002) has however been highlighted. Consider
Figure 4. This is a previously published figure (Ejiri,
2002) that shows a proposed internal structure and
decomposition for processes within a SP
organisation. Vertical flows, important for delivering
capability to the customer, appear together with
horizontal flows that represent the integration
needed if capability is to be delivered effectively. A
bridge is provided between the Customer and
Resource horizontals by an area that, as well as
supporting mediation, is also associated with
integrating components at the resource level to
present them as a coherent whole to the customer.
Figure 5: Contents Aware Process Management
Framework
Consider now Figure 5. This shows a proposed
framework for eMS processes that provides a better
basis for considering Service Integration. The
services delivered into the eBusiness environment
are created by a four-level process framework. The
first level – eBusiness Facing Integration
Management - is primarily concerned with
integrating components from below and mediating
between Contents Management and eBusiness.
Contents Management organises the supply of
content needed by business applications such as
banking, trading, auctioning, etc… whereas
Contents Delivery Management is focused on
supplying the transport infrastructure needed to
deliver the different types of content. It is here that
content delivery mechanisms such as directory,
gateway and other similar services are managed. The
resources used for actually performing delivery are
managed from within Resource Facing Management
which hides the differences between various types of
transport from the layers above. The emphasis in
Resource Facing Management is again on
Integration and Mediation with mediation being
particularly important in this context.
With reference to Figure 2, the Content Aware
Management layer is expanded from its previous
role of facilitating the fulfilment and assurance of
services with its emphasis on vertical process
linkage to a layer that provides the “glue” for
managing the assembly and integration of a wide
variety of both physical and logical resources into
products under guidance from the eBusiness
Management layer, ready for delivery to end users.
ENABLING SECURE EBUSINESS BASED TELECOMMUNICATIONS MANAGEMENT - a new Paradigm beyond
TMN
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4 TOWARDS A SECURE EMS
Security is a crucial issue for eBusiness and
Telecommunications Management, and any
architecture that is developed should be capable of
taking account of the variety of security
requirements that customers are likely to have.
Section 2 above identifies three distinct service types
and each service type needs to address specific
security requirements. Operations services should
address customer privacy, Transport services should
address access control and attacks based on intrusion
and jamming as well as eavesdropping and Content
Delivery services should support features that
address content integrity, confidentiality and
authentication as well as being instrumental in
providing protection against viruses, worms and
similar.
TMN (M3400) lists security functions and these
cover to an extent, Transport and Operations
services but do not address Content Delivery
services sufficiently. The approach used by TMN
needs to be extended so that end to end, secure
services can also be supported as contents-related
security will be crucial for eBusiness. It is therefore
important to start developing a framework that can
cover this area.
The security mechanisms available today to
support service features are provided by a SP as a set
of options from which a customer is constrained to
select. The options supported by the SP are based on
researching the likely requirements of customers but
with the onset of eBusiness the inter-related areas of,
the telecoms services offered, the threats that the
services might face, and the needs of customers, are
all subject to increasing rates of change. In this
context, a SP who can understand and respond to
each customer’s specific security needs will be at a
competitive advantage. In eBusiness there will
therefore be a shift away from existing SP-driven
security towards a customer-driven approach. When
this occurs a framework will be needed to assist with
mapping between the specific features a customer
needs (e.g. guaranteed privacy for certain categories
of data) and the security mechanisms (e.g.
encryption techniques, prevention of access to
equipment and cables carrying the data) that are
available or that need to be developed.
Figure 6: Three Dimensional Security Management
Framework
Figure 6 proposes a Three Dimensional Security
Management Framework to help understand this
mapping. Three security dimensions are identified
and are labelled as Objects, Domains and
Mechanisms. Security Objects represent both the
customers’ concerns and the things that customers
want to protect, for example, viruses, confidentiality,
wire-tapping and copyright violation. Each Object
may be present in one or more Security Domains
corresponding to locations such as terminal
equipment, routers, partners and other recognised
organisations and individuals. Customers and SPs
will discuss the Objects that need to be protected,
the Domains in which protection needs to be applied
and the Security Mechanisms, e.g. cryptography,
biometrics, and protocols that need to be deployed if
protection is to be provided.
Content Aware Management, see Figure 2, will
be central in supporting the combination and
integration of items from the three dimensions to
build and fine-tune the specific security services that
customers require. The security services delivered
will also need to take account of the culture of the
community into which they are to be deployed
accommodating both local regulations and social
conventions. When security services are created they
will be constructed from commonly provided
security mechanisms where-ever this is possible, but
customer and culture specific mechanisms may also
need to be developed and supplied.
Security is a topic that requires further extensive
study, and it is important that an exhaustive
framework is developed. The initial analysis
presented above may provide a basis for starting this
work.
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8

5 CONCLUSIONS
Given the current direction of the Telecoms industry
we should be mindful of lessons already learned by
other industries that have been focused for some
time on (i) the delivery of services, and (ii) the
provision of customer satisfaction, and which have
developed frameworks for conducting business that
make it straightforward to integrate new components
with existing service offerings.
The existing TMN architecture isn't sufficient to
support these new trends. A structure is needed that
addresses Customers and Services more adequately
and that takes into account eBusiness and the need
for a distinct content-delivery function as proposed
for the eMS in Section 2. It should also recognize
the importance of capturing how functional units are
linked together within the process flows needed by a
business to meet its business goals including those
process flows related to interactions with partners
and suppliers and the integration of the components
that they provide. The eTOM has provided a good
starting point for the analysis of process flows but
this initial work needs to be extended. The key area
that has to be addressed is Service Integration and
the processes that are needed if eBusiness
requirements are to be met flexibly and on time.
This paper has introduced some initial perspectives
that may help us to understand the nature of this area
but detailed work is urgently required to provide a
basis for a common understanding within the
industry as the progress of eBusiness oriented
initiatives accelerates.
In addition, this paper has also drawn a
distinction between different categories of service.
Operations, Transport and Content Delivery are
identified as categories that require different
resources and hence need to be supported in
different ways by their organisations. This
distinction is not reflected in currently available
frameworks, and it is proposed that categorising
services in this way may start to provide a richer
basis for understanding future service offerings and
how these will need to be managed. This is also an
area that will benefit from further detailed study.
Finally this paper has discussed security issues
that are crucial in eBusiness and has suggested for
consideration a framework for security that will help
to clarify and understand both the security
requirements for eBusiness and the mechanisms that
SPs need to support if those requirements are to be
met. Further detailed study is again required.
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