Cloud BOSS: Cloud-centric BSS/OSS for enterprise cloud service operations

Abstract

According to the long term vision of cloud computing, the cloud service gradually becomes a utility just like water, electricity, and telecommunication. Although the cloud service is supposed to greatly improve today's IT delivery model and offer potential benefits to customers by the saving of capital and operational expenditure and the greater flexibility of IT resources, cloud service providers are still facing a number of challenges such as service quality assurance and need to tackle them to gain advantage from cloud computing. In this paper, a set of cloud-centric BSS/OSS, called Cloud BOSS, was developed by adopting TM Forum NGOSS framework to support the management and operation of cloud services in a more efficient way. Cloud BOSS provides a self-service and self-management portal for customers to subscribe and manage cloud services on an “on-demand” basis. It also supports the integrated management of heterogeneous cloud resources on the common platform. To assure the quality of cloud services, Cloud BOSS provides service problem and quality management functions which proactively monitors the operation status of the cloud service from the viewpoint of customers. Currently, Cloud BOSS is on-line and used to support the operations of CaaS services offered by Chunghwa Telecom.