11/2/2017 Introduction to SID – Telecommunications OSS and BSS

Introduction to SID
By Murat Balkan | April 12, 2010 4 Comments

SID (Shared Information and Data model) is one of the frameworks of the TMForum NGOSS Frameworx suite.
It is also called the Information Framework. SID can be considered as the language of the NGOSS. It helps us to
identify the business entities that play role in the business processes of a telecommunications service
provider.

As I mentioned in my previous eTOM article, eTOM is the framework that identi es the business processes of a
service provider. When modeling the business processes, we have to involve some business entities. For
example, suppose, in an end-to-end ful llment process, a customer selects a product o ering from the
product catalog to buy at a speci ed price. During his/her interaction with the order ful llment system, he/she
also speci es some attributes of the product he/she is buying (such as the color of the physical resource that
will be delivered). Along with this resource, and as part of the product, he/she also buys a service (a
communication service such as DSL). The process goes on until the customer order is successfully delivered to
the customer.

Some of the entities that play role in this speci c scenario can be listed as customer, product catalog, product,
service, resource, price, o ering, order and interaction. All of these entities are the subjects of the SID
framework.

SID helps you to nd out the domain objects and their relationships between them when you are designing an
NGOSS solution. Business domain analysis is a very time consuming and complex step in system analysis &
design phase. It is complex because you need to know the domain very well. (That’s why we require analysts in
the projects).During the analysis, you should identify the entities that should appear in the domain. The
analysis should also include the relationships and dependencies between those entities. For a
telecommunications provider, luckily, this analysis is ready for us to use. SID provides a ready-to-use domain
model, based on the best practices, which can be directly applied to the new or re-engineering projects. Using
SID in the analysis & design phases saves us a lot of time.

SID is the Information “and” the Data Model. Let me explain what this means. Information models are more
abstract models that aim to tell us the inner workings or let’s say the nature of the modeled system. They look
from the “business view” perspective. The data model, on the other hand, appears when you make this
information more concrete. (When you apply it as a database system or a class diagram) In the information
model, I may have abstract domain objects, but in the data model, I may not prefer to implement them at all. (I
may want to implement those multiple objects as one object)

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11/2/2017 Introduction to SID – Telecommunications OSS and BSS

I really cannot see the “data model” part in SID. The data model is the model an enterprise architect should
draw and it is enterprise speci c. It could be seen as the technology and application independent, “system
view” perspective of the logical information model.

SID and eTOM goes hand-in-hand and TMForum provides mappings between them. SID Domains are consistent
with the eTOM domains. The Domains include the Level 1 ABEs which are also mapped to eTOM Level 2
business processes. What an ABE is? Well, it is the abbreviation for Aggregate Business Entity, which means an
entity that can further be decomposed to other sub-entities. (Just like the decomposition we see in the eTOM
hierarchy).
SID Business Entities are modeled in UML diagrams and can be imported to UML tools. (TMForum publishes
them in di erent importable formats). The framework also comes with an extensive documentation that
explains the structure and the behaviors of the business entities. Typically, you will nd an abbreviation
document for each ABE.

Today, OSS application vendors are more NGOSS aware and they try to design/re-design their products based
on NGOSS. In order for two di erent OSS systems to communicate e ectively, their data structures should be
consistent with each other. This way, it will require minimum conversion during the conversation. OSS/J
enables this on the API level but the data structure of the application is also important. Using SID in designing
applications eases the integrations between the di erent applications. Explaining your OSS product in SID
terms will also be appreciated by your customers and supplier/partners.

Category: NGOSS

4 thoughts on “Introduction to SID”

Janit
April 17, 2010

Hi Murat,
This is a great write up. Wikipedia does provide all the necessary info abt eTOM, SID etc…but what you have
written is far easier to undersatnd for novices like myself.
Do keep writing, I promise to keep reading.

Anonymous
May 22, 2010

Interesting and informative. Keep them coming. Marius

Aayush Bhatnagar
August 7, 2011

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11/2/2017 Introduction to SID – Telecommunications OSS and BSS

Good Introduction.

The challenge is to maintain the eTOM – SID mapping at greater levels of process element decomposition / SID
extensions.

There would be a need to extend the SID once we decompose the process elements and look for mappings.

In the TM Forum guidelines, they mention that SID L1 ABEs map to eTOM L2 process elements. An ABE can
have ideally one, or at most two primary process elements.

It would be interesting to see, whether this rule of a single or at most 2 primary process elements holds true,
once we extend the SID information model and bring it closer to the target data model (implementation
model).

Any thoughts ?

Regards

Aayush

José
June 27, 2012

Thank you for this overview, it’s too easy to understand.

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