The NetSuds™ Report ©

The March 1, 2002 Issue:

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Definition:  "com and .com" = Telecom, Datacom, IT or Internet

In this Issue:

        1.0  Heard on the Net - New Service Announced
        2.0  Jobs in the "com and .com" Market
        3.0  NetSuds and MedicalSuds Calendars Debut! - Another New Service
        4.0  Tidbits
               4.1 NetSuds and MedicalSuds - Together on March 5
               4.2 Entrepreneur Skills Workshop - April 11
               4.3 Resume Resource for Job-Seekers
        5.0  Calendar of Events
        6.0  Minnesota Venture Capital Conference &
                     Bleeding Edge Technology Showcase
        7.0  Strictly Business Expo
        8.0  BOB is Coming - New Event Announced
        9.0  Broadband Provisioning: The need for a standardized framework
        10.0 Guest Writers for this Report

1.0 Heard on the Net

1.1 People on the Move:

Please email:  people@netsuds.com to report a change in your job status if you are moving from or to a company in the "com or .com" space.  NetSuds will be announcing a "news as
it happens service" in the near future in order to keep you informed of changes hours, days and weeks before it is reported elsewhere.

1.2 Companies on the Move:

Please email:  start-ups@netsuds.com to report (1) the formation of a new start-up, (2) momentum change at an existing start-up, (3) addition of key hires, or (4) a funding event at a start-up.

Please give details on the above including any information you do not want made public.  We are very discrete.

2.0 Jobs in the "com and .com" Market

Please email:  jobs@netsuds.com to report job openings in the   "com and .com" Market.  In the body of the message, give the name of the company and a URL link to the job postings.

** alwaysBEthere - http://www.alwaysbethere.com/jobs/
** CNT - http://www.cnt.com/careers/opportunities.asp

4.0   Tidbits

5.0  Schedule of Events

You can also try our new online calendar by clicking here.

5.1 - Minnesota               

5/8-9  Minnesota Venture Capital Conference - Minneapolis
          http://www.mnvcc.com/

5.2 - Outside Minnesota

3/5     NetSuds Evening Gathering - Bethesda, MD
          http://www.netsuds.com/dc/eg/

4/11    NetSuds Evening Gathering - Raleigh, NC
           http://www.netsuds.com/rdu/eg/

5.3 - Non-NetSuds Events

2/28     MinnesotaBusiness Magazine's AFTER HOURS - The Depot, Minneapolis
           http://www.minnesotabusiness.com/afterhours.htm

John M. Morrison Center for Entrepreneurship, house on the Minneapolis campus of the University of St. Thomas, offers a number of special outreach/lifelong learning programs with Just-In-Time information.  Visit http://www.stthomas.edu/entrep/programs for a calendar of events.

6.0  Minnesota Venture Capital Conference

The MNVCC/BETS is being held in conjunction with the Strictly Business Expo - www.strictlybusinessexpo.com being held at the same place at the same time. For those companies wanting to exhibit at the Strictly Business, contact me. All exhibit space which is referred by NetSuds for the Expo qualifies for free exhibit space at a future NetSuds event.

7.0  Strictly Business Expo - May 8-9, 2002

8.0  BOB is Coming

A staple of NetSuds over the past 2+ years has been the Entrepreneurs Breakfast.  Due to the "slow down" in start-up activity, VC investment and IPOs, we have very irregular with the breakfast events in the past 3-4 months.  No more.

BOB stands for "Best Of Business".  After the May VC Conference, we will be instituting these breakfast events and limiting attendance to between 120-150 people; making them intimate while still trying to include a good many people.  We will have 2-3 BOB presentations and a sponsor presentation.  The BOB presentations will come from companies in our market space with exciting stories to tell; breakthrough technology, large roll-out plans, new funding, etc.  We will hear about technology, business models and execution strategies.  Yes, we will also hear from entrepreneurs looking to raise venture capital.  However, we may also hear from publicly-traded companies like Stellent, Digital River or Lawson Software with exciting stories.

Sometime in the next 30-60 days we will be announcing the first BOB breakfast.  Feel free to push some suggestions for presenters to me.

For those of you don't like to register event-by-event we will also be announcing an event series registration option so you can be assured a seat at each event without having to register each and every time.

9.0  Broadband Provisioning: The need for a standardized framework
       Putting an end to reinventing the OSS wheel once and for all

By NetSudser Bruce Bahlmann 

Building any broadband service offering (e.g. data, voice, video) requires many different components (hardware, software, and people) that all must work in harmony for any business offering this service to be successful. As these service offerings diversify (e.g. data service divides into tiers to address the needs of varied business sectors in residential, institutional, schools, telecommuting, and commercial) there is a need to build upon an existing framework. Broadband provisioning is an area that is crucial to the success of building & expanding broadband service offerings yet void of an all-encompassing standard.

The sum of all its parts is less than the whole

When broadband operators and engineers alike rallied to conceive data over cable service interface specification (DOCSIS), a tremendous milestone in the broadband industry was reached. The result was a complete system of components that together would compose the building blocks of a myriad of service offerings to come. Among these components a number of them composed something called an operational support system (OSS). OSS components consisted of simple network management protocol (SNMP) server, dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) server, trivial file transfer protocol (TFTP) server, and time of day (TOD) server. These components (servers) were defined within the DOCSIS specification relative to how each contributed to the activation, continued operation, and support of a service offering based on DOCSIS. The word provisioning became associated with this suite of servers/applications that together performed the function of DOCSIS OSS.

Interestingly, there really is no provisioning specification that describes these applications collectively. Part of the reasoning for this was when DOCSIS was written each OSS application functioned independently elsewhere out on the Internet and was described in infinite detail in Internet engineering task force (IETF) request for comments (RFCs). Perhaps the authors of the DOCSIS OSS never envisioned what they were doing in specifying the required interaction of these IETF standards-based applications to facilitate their evolving DOCSIS specification. In fact, early DOCSIS OSS merely consisted of a collection of these well-configured applications. However, as automation and operational efficiencies have played out, the days of these applications all running independently in a kind of component-based approach to provisioning have all but died out.  

Today, all major vendors in the provisioning application space bundle all their OSS applications together. They do this out of the need for provide full-functionality and a tightly integrated solution. Vendors still offering a component-based approach fail to match the functionality of the major vendors, as the best they are able to offer is mean functionality – only that functionality that works across all disparate components. 

Broadband operators who do not seek a single vendor solution to their DOCSIS provisioning needs face a dieing breed of vendors offering full-featured component-based systems and also find they must take on outside consultants or build up integration experience within to manage this complex blend of vendors required to offer such a system. Even with the help of this acquired expertise, these solutions will always lack the functionality of competing against tightly integrated solutions and in the end these operators will find the road to new broadband service offerings slow and cumbersome. That is, unless they become full-fledged development houses creating their own software. For most broadband operators, they would like to keep customer and service focused so the distraction of designing, developing, and supporting software goes beyond their desired core competency. 

The advent of the second service offering based on DOCSIS has begun to reversed the component-based provisioning approaches previously established. The implementation of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) using DOCSIS has began to treat its OSS as a system rather than a set of individual components. Unfortunately much of this implementation (which is also known as PacketCable) was developed around the same time as DOCSIS so the idea of treating the entire OSS as one system evades even this service offering. The result of not treating all these applications as one becomes obvious when deploying an OSS that supports both data and voice – you pretty much need two separate systems (one OSS for data and another for voice). 

If you want to expand your number of service offerings but don’t want to keep purchasing entirely new applications/equipment for each service offering somewhere you need to lay down a framework on which you can build. This framework should not be an individual component of the system that you can add other components to and then continually re-glue them all together to create new service offerings. Rather, a fully functioning framework that supports all the basic aspects of OSS as described in DOCSIS along with others that are just as important but not sufficiently mentioned in DOCSIS – like billing, troubleshooting, administration and management, etc. Upon this framework you can continue to grow and expand your service offerings by merely reusing and/or expanding existing your OSS system. Treating OSS as a system also buys you a lower incremental cost to enter new service offerings as opposed to fork lifting entirely new systems into place that require months of preparation, testing, and field trials before they are ready for prime time – not to mention risk assessment! 

Opps, there is something we forgot to test 

Unfortunately the fear of a single vendor solution remains an obstacle for many broadband operators in purchasing a complete provisioning system. Few of the major provisioning vendors are stable companies with unwavering support and loads of reserve funds. However, and perhaps more importantly, there is nothing that really describes the OSS as an entire system in terms of the direction so many of the major provisioning vendors have taken. So, any OSS system that is purchased by a broadband operator ends up being unique. If vendor who provided it goes out of business or changes its focus, the operator is left with something they must replace to grow their business. No simple task if the OSS system supports multiple service offerings! 

If only OSS was approached as a system. Better yet, if the OSS system was approached as a black box. If the OSS system was a black box with everything both north and south of the black box defined, there would not be any fear by the broadband operator of a single vendor solution – the whole system becomes modular or plug-n-play. If the whole OSS was certified and conformed to such an interface specification the broadband industry would thrive, new service offerings would abound, and the trepidation by broadband operators would cease to exist. 

Treating the OSS as a system is not a new idea. It has been around for quite a while, but lacks the support of public opinion to establish a beachhead within the standards body as well as broadband operator demand. A number of attempts have surfaced to start some kind of qualification or standardization program for OSS but require vendor participation and more importantly broadband operator need. If broadband operators are not asking for this, its much more difficult to get provisioning vendors interested in standardizing their products. Only out of an established need from the broadband industry will standardization come to this all-important area of provisioning OSS. 

Bruce Bahlmann is director of technical market development for Alopa Networks (www.alopa.com) and owner of the broadband technical information site www.birds-eye.net. 

10.0  Guest Writers for This Report

I have opened up the Monthly NetSuds Report to guest writers. If you have a passion for a topic, and you can write (at least no worse than me), send an email to me matt@netsuds.com.  You can even send copies of your work.  It needs to be on "com and .com" topics and can include entrepreneur/investor activities.  Good information from our    service providers and vendors is also welcome so long as it is not a "commercial" for any one company or individual.

We will consider both sponsored and unsponsored columnists and guest writers.

If you are aware of others who would like to receive the NetSuds Report, ask them to visit http://mailman.netsuds.com/ to subscribe or unsubscribe.

Please send your comments and feedback regarding this issue of the NetSuds Report to matt@netsuds.com.

Matt Noah

980 Lake Susan Hills Drive
Chanhassen, MN  55317

612.279.2154
fax:  425.795.2019
matt@netsuds.com

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