Today, service providers want, and need, to launch new services in weeks or days. Arguably, the potential of modern technologies such as IMS cannot be realized without this. Currently, the knowledge of service and product bundling is spread across the many OSS and BSS systems used by a service provider. To alter this bundling requires changes to many systems and processes. It is practically impossible to complete the necessary software development in such a short time. A different approach is clearly necessary.
The Product and Service Assembly catalyst (PSA) draws its inspiration from other industries where this type of problem has long been solved by using the combination of Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) to drive automated production.
PSA architecture envisages that knowledge of bundling should be removed from existing systems, as far as possible, and be collected within new Active Catalog systems.
An Active Catalog is the place where all of the service and product building blocks are modeled, for example network equipment, applications, or even more abstract building blocks such as work instructions and instructions for rating. These building blocks are modeled as components within the Active Catalog and can be assembled into service or product offerings that make sense to the customer or to a product manager.