Product and Service Assembly (PSA) initiative

As part of Comptel's commitment to industry standards, we are an active contributing member of leading industry organisations which drive major change in telecommunications, including the TeleManagement Forum (TMF).

Comptel’s most substantial recent contribution to TMF Standards has been the Product and Service Assembly (PSA) Catalyst program, which proposed an industry standard model for the rapid design, build, and delivery of new services and products in complex service ecosystems. The PSA Initiative, initiated by Axiom Systems (acquired by Comptel in 2008), has been a working group within the TMF since October 2006.

PSA Initiative – IT reference architecture

The PSA Initiative set out to create an IT reference architecture which would:
For CSPs, the creation and launch of new services in convergent environments can be a long and expensive process. In addition, fierce competition, together with ongoing retail price erosion, is driving demand for lower operational costs and quicker launch.

Simplified product development and enhancement

The PSA Initiative provides a framework and standardised interface that allows CSPs to organise their business on a 'factory' model that can conceive, create, assemble and launch new products and services much more quickly and efficiently. It allows multiple catalogs and supplier systems to be linked and federated, simplifying the process of product development and enhancement in ever more complex service ’ecosystems’. Reuse of product components and processes allows both the cost and launch time for new services to be reduced.

Automated product creation and assembly

In addressing the automation of product creation and assembly in a competitive market the PSA model draws on the experience of other highly competitive industries, in particular the use of Computer-aided Design (CAD) and Computer-aided Manufacturing (CAM) techniques by the automobile and consumer electronics industries.

NGOSS contract and a practical framework

The PSA Initiative has led to an NGOSS contract (TMF 211) describing the role of an Active Catalog within a PSA architecture. The highly successful Catalyst (winner of the ‘Best Catalyst’ award at TMW Europe 2007) also delivered a practical framework through which capabilities can be listed and exchanged between platforms, and later delivered through an orchestrated process.

New catalysts

At Tele-Management World (TMW) Conference, Nice, 2009, Phase 2 of "Managing the Transition to Greenfield: Creating the Required Visibility and Flexibility using PLM, Active Catalog and BPM" catalyst will be showcased. In addition, Phase 1 of the new catalyst project "Enhanced Service Component Assembly for Converged Telecom Environments" will be introduced.

Active involvement of the industry

The PSA Initiative has had the active involvement of a number of CSPs, systems integrators and software vendors, including Atos Origin, Comptel Corporation, BT, Huawei, Microsoft, Oracle Corporation, QinetiQ, TeliaSonera and Tibco.

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