The founding members of the ‘Product and Service Assembly’ (PSA) initiative have announced that Convergys, Microsoft, QinetiQ and TIBCO are to participate in the second phase of the Product and Service Assembly Initiative and associated TeleManagement Forum (TM Forum) Catalyst.

The aim of the PSA initiative is to develop a reference IT architecture that enable new telecommunications services to be easily assembled from existing or new service elements and to dynamically orchestrate the required changes that result within the appropriate OSS/BSS applications.

QinetiQ, one of the world’s leading defense technology and security companies joins BT, Cable & Wireless and TeliaSonera as sponsors of the initiative, while Microsoft, TIBCO and Convergys join existing vendor and systems integrator participants Atos Origin, Axiom Systems, Huawei and Oracle.

The approach is based around a set of co-operating product and service catalogs that are designed to allow product management, service and network engineering and operational communities to easily collaborate. TM Forum standards are leveraged to provide off-the-shelf integration of the OSS/BSS elements, dramatically reducing the time in which this type of architecture, utilizing multiple vendors’ products can be created and demonstrated.

Phase 1 of the PSA Initiative’s Catalyst demonstration, which served as the initial ‘proving ground’ for the Initiative, was successfully showcased at TeleManagement World (TMW) Dallas in December 2006, through a scenario that showed how a VoIP-based product can be conceived, designed, assembled and delivered within a matter of minutes.

The second phase of the PSA initiative expands the scenario to a consumer oriented Triple Play bundle of high value broadband media services that includes broadband Internet connectivity, basic voice services based on VoIP and IPTV services including Video on Demand. This will allow the development of production ready standards and the creation of an ecosystem of PSA compliant COTS.

QinetiQ’s Martin Huddleston said: “QinetiQ whole heartedly supports the PSA initiative and its ambitions of improved interoperability, greater efficiency and an increased capability to create virtual enterprises. We expect this ground breaking work to deliver real benefit to our customers.”

Ricardo Gomez-Ulmke, General Manager for Comms and Media at Tibco said: “TIBCO is very excited to join this initiative and demonstrate that our proven product lifecycle management and order fulfillment platforms work within an end-to-end environment. This initiative pulls together some of the most exciting developments within the OSS & BSS space, enabling previously unknown agility, speed to market, and quality for new product introductions – enabling zero-touch concept-to-cash operations.”

“The work of the PSA team takes the market demand of any service, anywhere, anytime and moves it much closer to a reality,” said Martin Creaner, TM Forum President. “Applying the concepts of manufacturing into the communications space creates a new business model for service providers that allows agility and flexibility required in today’s competitive environment.”

The second phase of the PSA Catalyst will be demonstrated at TeleManagement World in Nice, between May 21st and 24th 2007 where there will be opportunity to meet with the PSA team.

“The PSA illustrates quite clearly that a production line approach to product and service creation and delivery is highly achievable,” said Brian Naughton, VP Architecture and Strategy at Axiom Systems. “This collaboration will ultimately prove invaluable to the telecom industry as a whole because we will have provided a practical solution to one of the biggest pain points facing today’s Service Providers.”

About the PSA Initiative
Sponsored by some of telecommunications biggest names, British Telecom, Cable & Wireless, TeliaSonera and QinetiQ, the Product and Service Assembly Initiative (PSA) is a collaboration of vendors and service providers who are looking to solve today’s largest operational problem: How to create an IT reference architecture which will:

- Streamline the NGN product/service lifecycle

- Bridge the service creation gap between OSS/BSS/Service Execution

- Reduce the cost of service/product production

- Industry vendors involved with the PSA Initiative include:
ATOS Origin: www.atosorgin.com
Axiom System: www.axiomsystems.com
BT: www.bt.com
Cable and Wireless: www.cableandwireless.com
Convergys: www.convergys.com
Huawei: www.huawei.com
Microsoft: www.microsoft.com
Oracle: www.oracle.com
QinetiQ: www.qinetiq.com
TeliaSonera: www.teliasonera.com
TIBCO: www.tibco.com

For further information about the PSA Initiative go to: www.psainitiative.com