Given the fact that investments in OSS/BSS also demand huge investments in network storage solutions, telcos are faced with capex-related issues. A need has been felt for a closer cooperation with storage and other vendors in this regard.

There are a few levels of rationalization that need to be done and this requires the cooperation of multiple parties-application vendors, system software vendors, storage vendors and service providers:

• Storage of online data needs to be rationalized. This has to be done by the service provider. For example, service providers need to limit online data to no more than 3–6 months in a billing system, no more than 1–2 months in mediation systems, no more than 30 days in network fault/traffic management systems, etc.

• Archiving options should be in-built in BSS/OSS application software. This is the responsibility of the BSS, OSS application vendor

• Archiving of data should be a standard operating procedure managed by IS teams within the service provider organization, rather than a fix that is applied during a crisis

• BSS/OSS applications should provide online monitoring for storage capacity utilization and raise alerts in case of excessive utilization

• Data marts and data warehouses should be used to store filtered, archived data, for further analysis

• Data compression techniques should be supported by all three parties-system software vendors (the RDBMS vendor), application vendors (billing system vendor), and storage vendors

• Storage and database vendors can collaborate to ensure optimized access speeds for online queries, analytical queries, and complex updates viz. orders