Cantv (Compañía Anónima Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela), a leading Venezuelan telecommunications provider of wireline, wireless, and broadband services, announced today that it has joined the OSS through Java™ Initiative to lead the Initiative’s Procurement Guidelines project. This project will consolidate and define OSS/J product specifications for carriers seeking to implement OSS/J-standards based solutions. 

“OSS/J has been a key part of our Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) project, a companywide platform that integrates multiple systems—including three customer care applications, three order management systems, three provisioning systems, two CRM systems, two billing systems, and one inventory system,” says Cesar Obach Renner, Cantv’s Corporate Manager of IT Architecture.  “During the course of this project, we gained a great deal of valuable knowledge about the application of OSS/J technologies. We will augment this knowledge with input from other carriers who are using OSS/J APIs and Design Guidelines. All this information will be rolled into OSS/J’s publicly available Procurement Guidelines, which will help service providers systematically evaluate new solutions that adhere to OSS/J standards.”

In keeping with OSS/J’s commitment to providing the most accurate, extensive, and useful information possible, the Procurement Guidelines created by Cantv will draw from a wide variety of actual OSS environments that have implemented OSS/J technologies.

“The timing is perfect for Cantv to join OSS/J,” says Philippe Lalande, Sun Microsystems, who leads the Initiative’s management team. “Now that OSS/J technology is proven to enable the deployment in-production of OSS-aware SOA solutions, the role of the Service Providers within the Initiative is significantly strengthened. Service Providers complement the Initiative’s initial focus on technology standardization by sharing their best deployment practices and joining forces to drive coherent market adoption. With more than two years of hands-on experience implementing OSS/J technologies, Cantv is in an ideal position to lead the creation of OSS/J procurement guidelines.”

Carriers may use the Procurement Guidelines to more effectively interact with their suppliers, and accelerate and secure their next-generation OSS projects by adopting a standards-based approach.

“I am delighted to welcome Cantv as formal members of the OSS through Java Initiative,” says Joerg Frankenberger, Vodafone Germany, chair of the OSS/J Steering Committee. “Cantv has a well recognized track record for innovation and has actively supported industry-wide collaboration by participating in our Service Provider roundtables. They are setting a fine example for others to follow. It is extremely important that a wide variety of carriers throughout the globe – incumbents and newcomers, wireline and wireless, broadband and cable – actively support our collaborative efforts to extend the OSS/J ecosystem and create clearer, more reliable relationships between vendors and buyers.”

As an OSS/J Advisory Council member, Cantv joins a working group of industry leaders who are combining resources to speed the development of innovative telecommunications solutions supporting the rapid and cost effective deployment and integration of OSS components.

OSS/J APIs leverage Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE), XML and Web Services to create a multi-tier architecture based on re-usable components and container technology. OSS/J APIs are an implementation of the TeleManagement Forum’s (TMF) NGOSS (New Generation Operations Systems and Software) integration framework. They adhere to TMF’s SID (Shared Information and Data model) and are mapped to the TeleManagement Forums widely adopted enhanced Telecom Operations Map (eTOM).

OSS/J has made available Web Services profiles its Trouble Ticket API (JSR 91) and its OSS Common API (JSR 144).  Web Services specifications for all other OSS/J APIs will be available by April 2006.