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What makes a first-class OCS?

Lets accelerate the

OC S

By Wang Wei

he online charging system (OCS) provides far more functions than just online c h a r g i n g . It i s n e i t h e r a n intelligent network (IN) system with simply upgraded charging functions and enhanced flexibility, nor a traditional billing system integrated with an online processing mechanism. It is a nextgeneration charging system that is significantly advanced in respect to the basic system model, core technology, and development mode. The OCS inherits the carrier-class outstanding performance and the high reliability of a traditional IN. It also incorporates the exible modes of excellent traditional billing systems in response to customer requirements and market changes. As an invaluable aid to marketing and accounting departments, the OCS helps optimize the system by separating business activities and reducing not only technical and vendor dependency, but also decreasing the time-to-market for new services. Approximately 30 operators worldwide have started OCS development plans in 2007 according to statistics. Compared with new services, new tariff promotions can be more easily accepted by end users, and new products will immediately win popularity if the tari promotions cater to subscriber needs. It is a sure bet that increasingly more operators will start developing their OCSs.

Four key criteria

We can assess the OCS core technologies 27 APR 2008 . ISSUE 40

Huawei Technologies

based on four criteria as follows:

Openness on the network side and dynamic adaptation

The OCS is compatible with the peripheral NEs through standard interfaces, which meets the preconditions for future network evolution. The OCS standard specications dened in 3GPP clearly state the position of the OCS in the network and protocols used for interworking with peripheral NEs. This ensures smooth interworking between multiple systems provided by different suppliers, and these specifications can serve as criteria for evaluating the OCS. However, the specifications themselves cannot foresee all the changes on the network side, nor define the contents of each interface item in detail. In addition to meeting the specication requirements, the OCS has to be able to dynamically extend the interfaces, and configure or resolve new parameters based on external service NE changes and message content, to accommodate future charging requirements from the network side and marketing strategies.

of a system. To construct a stable platform that is adaptable to market changes, a universal common basic model is of prime importance. Retail businesses that feature highly developed marketing models could serve as an example. In a retail business, a customer-oriented foundation model should be followed in regards to product design, customer purchases, and payments. Customers can easily purchase any products that are on display and there are convenient payment options. In the OCS, the product design should be separated from the subscriber attributes. Customer can freely subscribe the o-theshelf products. Being prepaid or postpaid does not serve as the primary precondition for market segmentation as in a traditional solution; instead, they are just payment methods. All the attributes of customer, product, account, payment and the relations between them should be flexibly and somewhat independently dened. Only with such a foundation model in OCS, can the unmatched flexibility be achieved in online changing environment.

system is aected. Mode 2 maps the memory of the 3rd party memory database to the address space of the application program. This mechanism is much more ecient than the traditional invoking mode between processes, but the implementation of this mechanism is technically more dicult. It also poses great challenges to shared memory management, conflict avoidance, and efficient coordination between dierent vendors. Mode 3 universally designs and manages the application and memory database to achieve optimal resource sharing and overall coordination in addition to ensuring high reliability for carrier-class real-time processing. This mode features the highest performance out of the three, yet has stringent requirements for technological development, and only a few providers are currently qualied for this mode.

Practice makes perfect

None of the technologies or models described above can be individually regarded as brand new, but they pose unprecedented challenges to us. The challenges are how to smartly integrate the technologies and models, implement them in end-to-end and real-time charging processes as required both currently and in the future, while maintaining carrier-class performance and reliability. This requires the OCS suppliers to improve the architectural design of the OCS to fully integrate core technologies in real-time charging system with the customer-oriented product design ideas and modes in oine billing. It is believed that all the technologies and products, however superior they might be, must go through a eld verication and optimization process. Only by putting the products and technologies into long-term and large-scale application in live networks, can we discover the latent defects and continuously improve the original design. In conclusion, practical implementation is the ultimate validation for a new technology. Theres no shortcut to obtain experience from live applications, as each new application will present its own unique value. Editor: Pan Tao pantao@huawei.com
APR 2008 . ISSUE 40

Dynamic online charging conguration capability

The OCS is a customer-oriented functional entity, and needs to be flexible enough to provide a dynamic online charging configuration. There are two key assessment criteria: 1) Whether or not the OCS can provide dynamic online introduction and the prompt implementation of new charging factors without hard coding or software upgrades; 2) Whether or not the charging rules that are based on dierent charging factors can be exibly customized online, and whether the charging rules can be understood or even dened by the marketing personnel. The above two criteria are among the most outstanding advantages of the OCS over the traditional IN network.

Carrier-class, real-time processing performance

Integrated charging for multiple services, increasingly more diversified charging factors, detailed market segmentations, and real-time processing throughout the process all add exponentially to the processing load. They put great demands on the realtime processing performance of the system. Among those technologies adopted in the OCS relating to performance optimization, the memory database is considered to be one of the key technologies, and more vendors are now adopting it. The eciency levels of the system vary depending on the operation modes of the memory database. Generally, there are three modes: Mode 1 is to use the 3rd par ty commercial memory database with the standard SQL for the database-related operations. The most obvious advantage of this mode is simple implementation and mature technology. This mode is adopted by many vendors. Nevertheless, due to the limitation of the SQL in terms of eciency, the overall processing performance of the

Customer-oriented foundation model

The quality of the foundation model directly aects the capabilities and exibility

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