After a brief hiatus, I’m back to blogging! And having just spent the last couple of months deep in the bowels of a CSP advising on their product data architecture, I’m more passionate than ever about what needs cleaning up around the Telco product landscape.
So carrying on from my previous blog’s notion that sorting out the data challenge (PDM) of products takes supremacy over the process (PLM) challenge, let’s talk about the question that inevitably arises for managing the data...centralized or federated???
Where centralized asserts a common view and predominant master over all (or most) product data, federated supports a common view but is still slave to multiple masters.
On first telling, federated is the concept with which many people are most comfortable. On the surface it means less disruption to existing architectures and processes, whilst still achieving the single view of the product. Contrast that with centralized, which involves consolidation of data, changes in the direction and integration of data and changes to operations. With those optics, who would choose anything but federated?
Well, the answer lies deeper than glossy architecture. It is somewhere in the effect that the approach should have on the ability to manage data and the cost and time of doing so.
The reason federated seems so undisruptive is because it is undisruptive. It provides very little basis for change. A lot of work still needs to be done to create that single view, but everything else remains the same. Federated still requires multiple points of entry when creating or updating products / prices. Federated does not rationalize the view of products into something logical with which both the business and IT can relate and work together. Federated does not shift the organization into thinking in holistic product terms, rather than the traditional rate plan or network capability terms. Little change in this case does mean little benefit.
Centralized, on the other hand, gives the organization the opportunity to consolidate products into a standard, comprehensive and very useable view that is focused on component reuse and service enablement. Centralized gives the organization the ability to make changes in one place and disseminate those changes in an automated, error-resilient fashion. Unfortunately, one of the myths about centralized is that it would require major changes to existing systems and the repopulation of data. In fact, if done properly, the changes are limited to the new catalog and to the integration. Finally, and most importantly, centralized asserts real control over the thousands of pieces of data that sit dispersed across the BSS/OSS. This type of control effects real change in the organization and ties together the operations from the best possible perspective – getting the right products out to suit customers’ desires and needs in less time and at lower cost.
So, yes, there is definitely a right answer to the question of Centralized vs Federated.
Posted
10-19-2009 5:43 AM
by
Catherine Michel