Gaïa Billing

& Customer Care

6
Product Brief
 Table of content

1 Gaïa: a unique solution in motion 3

2 Gaïa BCC Benefits 4

3 Positioning of Gaïa BCC in Sofrecom global offer 5

4 Gaïa BCC functional Overview 6

4.1 Front Office / CRM - G.contact 6

4.2 Back Office - G.commercial 9

4.3 Business enterprises Management - G.client 10

4.4 Catalogue Management - G.catalog 11

4.5 Rating engine - G.billing 13

4.6 Financial Management - G.financial 14

4.7 Load Loop Management - G.network 15

5 Technical architecture and Gaïa BCC 6

offer performances 17

6 Interfaces with the other solutions

of the Gaïa Business Suite 22

7 References 23

 Gaïa Billing & Customer Care 6

1  aïa: a unique solution
G
in motion

The new convergent environment Unique on the market,

poses many challenges for
incumbent, broadband and
convergent operators. New innovative
triple-play services are becoming a
reality for subscribers in all markets
when the complex mix of new-IP
and -historic networks increases
the operator’s needs for new billing
capacities. Telcos are increasingly
looking to enhanced communication
services and operational efficiency
to turn the new technologies into
profits. The Gaïa software, which
automates and facilitates running
a communications network and
business, enables service providers
to operate efficiently and rollout new
revenue-generating services.
Gaïa Billing & Customer Care (BCC)
is the heart of the Gaïa offer.
It natively embeds a wide range
of features, including rating and billing
of voice or internet communications
and IPTV, as well as invoicing and
customers management
(CRM, Front & Back Office).
Gaïa BCC perfectly assists Triple
play operators in their new growth
strategies based on convergence:
voice / IP services convergence
prepaid / postpaid convergence
wireline / wireless convergence

Gaïa is a consistent software suite,

totally dedicated to operators.
As far as functionalities are concerned,
this suite corresponds to the fields
covered by OSS/BSS (Operations
and Business Support Systems).

Gaïa offer
Multi-languages, multi-taxation
Gaïa Billing Gaïa Global
& Customer Care Mediation
billing, Customer Care usage Collect
& Accounting activation
e-care
bad debt Management
local loop Management Gaïa Interco
fault Management
interconnect Billing
PRM

Product Brief 
 2  Gaïa BCC Benefits
optimize
 profits & limit bad debt
Efficient and accurate Billing
ensures faster Return on
Investments. Payments status are
managed to detect unpaid bills
and launch appropriate collection
actions. Costs reduction represents
another benefit: processes
automation and supply chain
control enable the workforce to
focus on value-added activities.
improve performance
 perational efficiency.
o The Customer Care provides
Making the sales, technical and
financial teams share the same
information on-line enhances
operational efficiency. Gaïa
BCC encompasses end-to-
end process flows in service
fulfilment, assurance and billing,
in order to minimize loss of
information and duplicated work.
 ey Performance Indicators
K guaranteeing consistency
(KPI). Gaïa provides a set of KPI
to monitor business activities.
Therefore, management can
clearly assign targets and
measure associated results.
 otal Cost of Ownership (TCO).
T System
Gaïa BCC is a pre-integrated
software that prevents from the
purchase of costly integration
services during installation and
later unexpected upgrades.
 Gaïa Billing & Customer Care 6
lead the market!
 e the first to market innovation!
b
Thanks to its flexible catalogue,
Gaïa BCC is adapted to all
Business models and enables
operators to reinvent their
products & services. New offers
and complex bundles launch is
simplified. Gaïa BCC is a real
asset both to keep existing
customers satisfied, and capture
new ones!
r esourceful Customer Care.
operators with a 360-degree
view of the customer, gathering
all information in a unique
database. Prepaid customers are
handled with the same care as
postpaid ones.
a unique customer database
for Billing and Customer Care,
minimizing errors risks and
multi-languages
& multi-currencies
interoperability with other
modules of the Information
seamless integrated
Business Suite
a field proven solution
 3  P
 ositioning of Gaïa BCC
in Sofrecom global offer

The diagram hereunder describes the

functionalities of each Gaïa module
and the flows between them.

Customers Risky Customers Corporates Web Enabling

Front Office Management Management Selfcare Functions
management /
Customer Care

> Customer Management

Commercial > Services and Products Management Activation
Management > Customer Directory Interface device

Local Loop Line test

Management system
Bank

Customer Inter-Carrier
Directory Settlements

Invoice
Edition > CDRs Rating > Payment
Financial
> Bill Preparation > Credit Control
General Managementt > Collection > Accounting Interface
Ledger

Reporting and Trafic and Quality Data CDRs Switches

Data Analysis of services analysis Storage Collections

Included in Gaïa BCC

Included in other Gaïa suites

Product Brief 
 4 G
 aïa BCC functional
Overview
The Gaïa BCC software solution is
composed of integrated, functional
modules.
4.1 Front Office / CRM - G.contact
Proactive Front Office tool, G.contact
module covers the CRM
(Customer Relationships Management)
software functionalities.
The Front Office is integrated with
the business processes of the Back
office, in order to ease the flow of
operation between the Customer
Service Representative (CSR) and
the customer (order, fault, collection,
information requests on the bill, tariff
offer proposal, disputes,
Solution Generation
Customer management
consult, search, create, modify propose commercial offers
a customer
personalize the relationship evaluate the feasability
with the customer, sending activate the service
targeted messages
Account management
display account
consult account
Dispute management
create disputes
create decisions
modify disputes
Contact management
generate customers contacts
according to customizable rules
Follow contacts and affect them display invoices
to agents baskets for action
 Gaïa Billing & Customer Care 6
They are marketed in the same
package, and perfectly integrated
around a single database.
adjustments, refund, service closing,
direct sales, etc.).
G.contact manages customers’
contacts through a sophisticated
module of contacts follow-up and
allows the definition of marketing
messages personalized or targeted.
It can also be interfaced, if needed,
with a call center, integrating the
option for Computer Telephony
Integration (CTI) at the sales agencies
level.
Requests management
attribute the service identifier
Collection management
agreements payments
establish and validate the bill-books
collect payments
refinds
Fault management
create trouble ticket
consult TT
Invoices management
display itemized bill
4.1.1 Main functionalities of contact management
o
 verview of customer data:
customers contact numbers,
general characteristics
(segment, agency, agent),
c
 ontacts history
a
 llocation of contacts to be
followed-up in the commercial
staff trays
m
 anagement of the Front Office
commercial tree diagram
m
 anagement of commercial
entities representatives:
definition of contact numbers
and job attribution inside an entity
generated activity volume, financial
situation, customer interaction history,
marketing messages…
definition of management rules for
customers contacts according to
the operator’s organization:
definition of different types
of contacts, follow-up rules,
and commitment in terms of
schedules, process priority, and
allowance rules to commercial
entities, etc.
marketing attributes management,
customized per customer
category
parameterizing of targeted
marketing messages
Moreover, G.contact offers a
functionality of direct sales
to customers. It consists in
telecommunication equipment sales
(telephone sets, accessories, etc.)
in Front Office.
Product Brief 
 4.1.2 Access point to the whole set of Gaïa modules
G.contact is the main entry point of
the commercial Information System.
It gives access to the whole functions
of Gaïa BCC modules necessary to
cover the business processes in Front
Office and allows to:
Theses modules are detailed in
the next pages of the document.
G.contact also allows the access
to other Gaïa solutions not included
in Gaïa BCC:
G
 aïa Network launches
automatic studies upon
feasibility concerning
requests of connection
to the wireline network
 Gaïa Billing & Customer Care 6
ensure the interface with
Back Office management
activities - G.commercial
manage corporate customers
by describing the customer’s
organization in accounts tree
diagram - G.client
promote commercial offers adapted
to the customer - G.catalog
manage financial flows and
accounting elements - G.financial
G.watch controls the customer’s
risk when the order is being
processed
G.selfc@re enables the customer
to consult directories and the
detailed bills, pay them on-line
and enter a request
4.2 Back Office - G.commercial
G.commercial, interfaced or not with
G.contact, is a module covering both
Front & Back Office functions. Front
Office functions can be accessed
through Gaïa BCC Graphical User
Interface (GUI) (management of
customers, folders, orders).
G.commercial functional cover allows
managing from end to end all types
of customer orders necessary for
a wireline operator, from order to
delivery. G.commercial is dedicated
to customers and prospects
management, to sales and associated
orders, to modification requests, to
line transfer, to the management of
automatic or manual work orders.
This module also ensures the
feasibility of the orders. Interfaced
with Gaïa Network, it guarantees
the technical data integrity from end
to end and the performance of the
dialogue between the commercial and
technical teams.
During the activation, Gaïa BCC
generates or updates the customer
folder with the necessary commercial,
financial, and technical information. All
these tasks are flagged in real-time with
a special status during the whole
provisionning process, therefore
delivering accurate information by the
consultant. The complete process of
customer order is split as follows:
register a customer order
checking of the customer’s credit
(analysis of the customer and
control of risky customers)
network equipment allocation
request (feasibility study)
organization of technical teams
works and appointments if
the order is feasible
activation order
(automatic or manual)
In addition to the execution processes
of orders, G.commercial manages:
triple play offers (Telephony, IP,
TV over ADSL) until the automatic
provisioning to the Video services
Platform
prepaid offers through interface to
the Intelligent Network Platform
loyalty programs: Management of
the points customers are gaining
while consuming products and
services. G.commercial manages
the way customers are going to use
those points on each bill according
to the selected program (Loyalty
programs are defined in the tariff
offer catalogue).
customer directory publications
the phone and switch numbers
through systems of numbering
boxes available at the customer
allocation level. Gold and silver
numbering boxes are created and
reserved for special customers
and for business enterprises that
request this type of service.
G.commercial offers the possibility to
execute a bulk renumbering on the
switches.
Product Brief 
 4.3 Business enterprises Management - G.client
Corporate management needs a
solution that perfectly suits the most
diversified needs.
G.client After-sales
> Customer Hierarchy Management > Invoices production
> CustInvoices grouping
> Reporting Pre-sales
> Tariff Offers (TO) orders
> Tariff Offers Management
> Charges transfer
> Customers requests Management
G.client allows the operator to create
a multidimensional approach of the
customer, for example:
b
 illing hierarchy: tree diagram,
which gathers the whole company
folders, with a “billing” vision (one
node by bill grouping)
g
 eographical organization: for
the same customer, another tree
diagram organization- oriented,
defining the different sites of
the company (department,
subsidiaries, headquarters, etc.)
10 Gaïa Billing & Customer Care 6
The CSP must be able to process
with no delay a bill grouping or
detailed analysis of any customer.
G.client, thanks to its tree diagram
structure, ensures the flexibility and
reactivity mandatory to any powerful
operator. Fully compatible with the
other modules of Gaïa BCC, it can
be easily integrated and brings a
specialized module for corporate
managers.
tree diagram by business line:
gathers all the customers of a
same branch in order to offer the
operator a global view and allow a
management by sector
Through a simple parameter setting,
G.client brings to the operator all
the flexibility needed to manage
the bill groupings. Moreover, the tree
diagram allows the reconstitution
of billing hierarchy for the Corporate
Customer. Moreover, it enables
the management of:
tariff offer orders. The tariff offers
are related to the sites, according
to their needs.
the reporting aiming at the
constitution of billing reports of
aggregated or detailed products
on any node of the tree diagram.
These reports can be displayed on
screen, or created as files in PDF
format that can be exported or
directly printed. G.client proposes
two modes of aggregation for billed
elements: per global summary or
per level.
the display of files classification
inside a portfolio but also a
portfolio inside a management
entity.
4.4 Catalogue Management - G.catalog
The main purpose of a telecom
operator is to sell.
The telecommunication market being
more and more aggressive and
demanding, the operators must
anticipate the requirements and
be reactive by offering products &
services bundles more competitive
than ever.
Services bundles make the operators’
incomes grow thanks to products
& services cross-selling and their
appropriation. Moreover, they offer
customers a better quality price ratio
while meeting their requirements
and corresponding to their budget.
Thus, the operators have to find
in their Information System the
flexibility necessary to create “taylor
made” bundles in order to target all
addressed market segments.
The powerful module G.catalog
offers this flexibility. It manages and
updates the exhaustive description of
products & services, bundled offers,
rating plans and Tariff Offers (TO).
t he catalogue of rating plans
allows configuring the way in which
usages will be rated during the
process. It offers a huge flexibility
and auto-adaptability while meeting
the complex requirements of the
market or of any marketing context.
It provides an unlimited number of
rating keys, both for recurring and
non-recurring charges, and allows
creating any type of rating plan.
The catalogue is composed of four
main parts: the rating criteria, the
rating models, the day slots and
the taxation profiles. It also offers
a feature of calendar management,
which is essential to define a
differentiate rating of calls by day
type. The discount functionalities
constitute a priceless help to deal
with the churn. With G.catalog, this
issue can be fixed immediately,
by finding solutions of discount
satisfactory for the customer and
profitable for the operator.
another powerful functionality of
G.catalog is its Tariff Offers (TO)
catalogue. This strength comes
from the TO structure. This latter is
composed of four elements: rules,
conditions, filters and discounts,
which enable to create the most
sophisticated TO. Every type of
tariff plans are accepted, like:
discounts on recurring charges
discounts on the traffic
(according to time slot, tariff
geography)
favourite numbers
discounts by step
discounts by thresholds reached
volume-based discounts
discount on bill footer…
This TO catalogue takes advantage
from a feature guaranteeing the
consistency of the offers between
them in term of compatibility, addition
and priority.
G.catalog is built around a GUI
totally configurable, which provides
the marketing expert with immediate
information on the products and
services range, as well as offers
designed by the marketing team.
The representative has the possibility
to negotiate the offers and to keep
concentrated on customer needs in
real time. Moreover, marketing tools
are included in G.catalog:
promotions: The TO catalogue
enables sales and marketing
departments to make promotions
between two dates for targeted
customers or for the complete
customer base.
Product Brief 11
 c
 ustomized simulation: This feature
simulates the impact of a TO
proposed to a customer during a
defined period in order to show
the advantages that he could have
benefit from while subscribing to
this offer.
global simulation: the Telco has
the possibility to test a TO during
a billing period (according to the
commercial target) and to check
its impact before launching the
commercialization of this TO.

4.4.1 Examples of bundled offers

G.catalog enables CSR to build triple play Bundle

bundled offers gathering services,
items and tariff offers like: voice-ver IP traffic Flat rate over

broadband access

traffic/data Flat Rate

IPTV and VoD services

modem, set top box, IAD

The marketing expert benefits from

the huge flexibility in the bundles
definition by combining the products
or services with the Tariff Offers and
determining different prices.

4.4.2 Benefits of G.catalog

high flexibility capability to customize the offers

h
 omogeneous structure for any
item benefiting from a discount
immediate handling for sales
and billing - Time-To-Market
reduction
(Favourite numbers, subscriptions
and levels of negotiable discount…)
live simulation of the offers before
their launch
management of the consistency
between items in the same TO

12 Gaïa Billing & Customer Care 6

 4.5 Rating engine - G.billing
One of the main issues of Telcos
is revenue leakage. They are often
the consequence of mistakes that
occurred during the collection
processes as well as data processing
during the billing processes.
Their reduction, the increasing flows,
the limitation of churn, the supply of
better services to customers were
drivers in the creation of a real-time
rating module, able to process the
different services enabled by different
technologies (wireline, Internet).
4.5.1 Benefits of G.billing
r eal-time rating
t ariff offers handling in real-time
m
 ulti-technologies and
multiservices rating
leakages reduction thanks
to CDR flows control
RATING ENGINE G.billing
Mediation CDR · XML format
Device
Dispatcher Analyser
IPDR · XML format
G.commercial G.commercial G.catalog
Commercial data Numbering plan Rating catalogue
Heart of the Gaïa BCC solution,
G.billing provides an engine which
is capable to rate any tariff plans,
among other things: flat rate,
preferential tariff, on a volume basis,
for duration, rebates, progressive,
time period, days of the week,
distance, promotions, etc.
The advantages of G.billing running
in real time do not only benefit to
Telcos but also to subscribers by
making accessible information on
their account without having to wait
the end of the billing period. Thus, the
customers can control their expenses
when the balance reaches a defined
level.
possibility to “re-rate” for special
commercial offers
supervision Graphical interface
of the rating engine
The complete rating cycle includes
four main steps: the dispatching, the
analysis, the rating and the discounts
calculation. The diagram hereafter
describes the rating engine activities.
Gaïa
Billing
Rater Discounter
G.financial
G.catalog
Tariff Offer catalogue
Product Brief 13
 4.6 Financial Management - G.financial
Billing all products and services,
reducing billing waiting periods,
optimising the follow-up of debts,
managing disputes, avoiding legal
disputes are all important objectives
for an Operator wishing to optimise
his cash flow and limit financial
risks. Financial features pertinent in
Front Office mode can be accessed
through the use of Gaïa BCC’s GUI
allowing the handling and follow-up
of invoices, disputes, bill-books and
collection.
4.6.1 Benefits of G.financial
r eliability of a financial system in
complete consistency with the
commercial system
c
 onvergent multi-service
billing (wire line, Internet,etc.)
r eal-time and batch input of
payments (collection of payments)
14 Gaïa Billing & Customer Care 6
Responding to these needs, the
G.financial module is a complete tool
for handling all aspects of national
and international billing, collection
and customer accounting:
collection
Prevention of legal disputes
Receipt of payments
Follow-up of unpaid invoices
Handling of disputes
customer auxiliary accounting
Accounting entries
Printing of journals
Closing of accounts
security functions for cash
transactions to avoid all risk of fraud
follow-up of unpaid bills (completely
parameterizable and flexible)
management of disputes
a Sales Ledger automatically
updated by all the relevant modules
4.7 Load Loop Management - G.network
G.network is a management tool of
the local loop aiming at providing the
operator with more flexibility.
Granted with a soft parameterization
for a compliant description of the
infrastructure and services, G.network
can quickly fit with new equipment
but also new technologies, through
special resources. The branch
management is facilitated by
functionalities of input support.
G.network, accessible via the front
office application, enables the
automatic study of a connection
request. In some complex cases, it
is possible to get back to technical
studies not automatically completed
in interactive mode. Once the study
technically completed, as well as
resource allocation, the order of
putting into service can be given by
another application of the commercial
Information System.
In order to anticipate on some
requests, G.network proposes
an automatic technical study
simulation. Contrary to the study,
this simulation realizes no resource
allocation.

Management
of passive equipment
equipment consultation, creation,
modification (MDF, Distribution
point) in a sub-network
influence area association
project association
Management
of active equipment
consult, create, modify
management of reports
and qualifications
support functionalities
for massive updating

Management Occupancy management

of branches initialization
consult, create, modify semi-automatic study
management of reports step by step study
and qualifications simulation
support functionalities locative Successor
for massive updating individual change
massives changes

Management Consultation, Printouts,

of projects Statistics and history
consult, create, modify graphical Consultation
management of reports HTML printout
CSV export

Graphical assistant Geographical assistant

consult, create, modify customer localization support
management of branches occupancy, fault, thematic, etc
management of cables

The operator also benefits from a view of its network perfectly adapted to its
needs selecting itself the indicators and reports issued for a global balance
or for a precise analysis of the network by geographical, technological,
equipment area… even previously thanks to data historic.

Product Brief 15
 4.7.1 Benefits of G.network
Any operator must face current
market characteristics such as cost
cut and rapid deployment of new
services. Gaïa Network results from
France Telecom expertise: a solution
thought by an operator for operators.
performance
 improvement
Gaïa Network gives the operator a
better knowledge of its network, the
status of pair occupancy (available
or not, out of service, in standby…),
to optimize its capacities and thus
reduce equipment cost.
16 Gaïa Billing & Customer Care 6
profit
 optimization
An efficient and clear activation
of products guarantees a quicker
return on investments. This saving
of time is strengthened by the “best
planning” automatic study enabling
to time limit reduction thanks to an
automated reply.
t ime to market improvement
Gaïa Network is particularly
relevant with its high level of
parameterization, which gives a
great flexibility, but also gives to the
operator the opportunity to react
rapidly to the emergence of new
services.
 5  Technical architecture
and Gaïa BCC 6
offer performances

The Gaïa BCC as well as Gaïa deployment in full web mode:

Network, natively rely on the
forms/J2EE Interoperability;
Oracle10g experienced software
suite for its application server and
great scalability and availability
database.
with the support of database
clustering software;
Gaïa BCC is fully adaptable towards
the Information System, standardizing
 peration tools: generalization
o
communication infrastructure through
of work scheduler (Visual TOM),
its API, Gaïa BCC 6 brings the
compliant with the main market
following main benefits:
tools:

new technical functionalities: exploitability, security,

deployment, and integration.
u
 se of Directory (LDAP) for
corporate data management;
These improvments and
m
 anagement of single consolidations to Gaïa BCC offer
identification (SSO); particularly rely on technological
evolution towards software
integration of portal for business
application as Oracle10g
content management to have
(Oracle Database 10gR2,
a unique entry point to access
Oracle Application Server 10g).
operator’s data and resources;

Gaïa BCC 6: Oracle 10G based technical and software architecture

Niveau 1 Niveau 2 Niveau 3

Oracle Application Server 10g
Oracle Internet Directory
Modules Forms/report
LDAP/SSO Oracle
Database
10G
Modules J2EE
Oracle PORTAL

API

external applications

Product Brief 17
 Gaïa BCC solutions are available
upon main Unix systems on the
market (AIX 5.3, HP-UX Itanium 11i,
Solaris 10, Linux RedHat ES/AS 4,
Linux Sles 9). Gaïa BCC solution
is a confirmed solution concerning
performances (several references
currently operating) capable of great
volumes processing:
m
 anagement of thousandof
customers;
p
 rocessing and Rating for dozen of
millions of CDR/day;
c
 onnection of hundreds of
branches to a centralized system.
The application scalability is, among
others, guaranteed by the use of
a high level technological base
(Oracle 10g Automated Storage
Management, Oracle Real Application
Clusters).
Gaïa BCC can be interfaced with
market supervision tools (Patrol,
HP Openview …).
Oracle Database 10gR2
The technological evolution of
Gaïa BCC towards Oracle
Database 10gR2 database server
provides benefit from the latest, but
nevertheless proven, release of the
most widespread database.
Its performances, reliability, and
security, but also advanced
functionalities, as clusterization,
constitute the main benefits.
18 Gaïa Billing & Customer Care 6
Oracle Database 10gR2 provides
a great upgradability and reliability
in cluster and mono server
configuration. This database includes
comprehensive functionalities for
the OnLine Transaction Processing
(OLTP), and Business Intelligence. It
provides a total open access to Web
services through SQL, Java, XML and
standard Web interfaces.
Oracle Database Enterprise Edition
guarantees performances and peak
upgradability for systems from small
departmental servers operating with
Windows or Linux, to UNIX mainframe
computers and servers. Moreover,
the Oracle Database is the only one
to have 19 independent security
evaluation.
Oracle Application Server 10g
The new release of the Oracle
Application Server 10g, of Grid
Computing type, proposes several
new functionalities, as improvement
in integration and in Web-services
infrastructure. It generates additional
cost-cutting, performance and overall
management improvement. This
server relies on open standards,
based upon a powerful evolving J2EE
server, with business portal software
(Oracle Portal 10g), a reactive “cache”
and access management system.
Providing the full support of services-
oriented architecture (SOA) lifecycle,
Oracle Application Server 10g
supplies upgradability, availability,
easy to operate (exploitabilité) and
unequalled security.
 Oracle Portal 10g
Oracle corporate portal (Oracle Portal
10g) is a gateway to access and
handle telecom operators data, but
also Information System resources
clusterized in a single interface.
Different corporate applications and
corresponding data can be accessed
to, in particular Gaïa BCC6, according
to user’s profile, and defined security
policy.
With more than 6.000 customers,
Oracle Portal 10g is the most
comprehensive portal solution of the
industry. Companies can rapidly set
up, manage, and deploy corporate
portals, compliant with the standards,
scalable, secured and dynamical.
Oracle Portal 10g has been strictly
tested to ensure its accessibility to all
type of users.
Oracle Portal 10g, based on the
Oracle Application Server 10g offers
a secured and single access point to
the whole company information and
services (among which Gaïa BCC 6)
to improve visibility and cooperation,
integration costs reduction and
provide investment safety.
O
 racle Internet Directory 10g
(OID)
Oracle Internet Directory 10g is a
technology implementing the LDAP
protocol release 3, that provides
corporate data management
(especially security data as users’
login and passwords) of Oracle10g
products.
The LDAP standard (Lightweight
Directory Access Protocol) simplifies
directory data management
and considerably increases the
deployment of application using
directory, as Gaïa BCC 6.
The Oracle Internet Directory
10g server is highly evolutive and
can process a great number of
entries and users in a same node.
As it is implemented in the Oracle
10g database, OID benefits from
database evolution. Oracle Real
Application Clusters can also be
used, to make OID more evolutive
and much more available.
Oracle Internet Directory 10g
provides with the following
advantages in terms of security:
data integrity;
data confidentiality;
passwords safety;
access to data control.
Oracle Application Server Single
Sign-On (SSO)
The Oracle Application Server
SSO server supplies application
authentication, based upon
information from the Oracle Internet
Directory users accounts, using a
single user name and password,
especially for Gaïa BCC 6.
Product Brief 19
 The SSO server has the following
advantages:
a
 dministration and management
costs are reduced , as there’s
no need to manage several user
accounts;
fi
 nal users connection is simpler as
a single user name and password
has to be memorized;
s ecurity is reinforced, as a single
user name and password has to
be memorized, users will select
complex passwords and will write
them down somewhere.
O
 racle Real Application Clusters
The integration of Oracle Real
Application Clusters provides
constant availability despite system
breakdown, site breakdown
and disaster, human errors and
planned maintenance, as well as
great flexibility in the evolutivity of
systems from small servers operating
with Linux, to UNIX servers and
mainframes.
In case of cluster server failure, the
Oracle database remains operating
on the other servers. Moreover, if
additional process power is required,
another server can be added without
disconnecting users.
20 Gaïa Billing & Customer Care 6
Oracle Automated Storage
Management (ASM)
Oracle Automated Storage
Management simplifies configuration
and storage management of the Gaïa
BCC 6 database. The administrators’
workload is therefore reduced.
The ASM release combined with
Oracle Database 10gR2 ensures
automatization of more storage
management operations, and provides
an improved mechanism for storage
virtualization providing easier resources
sharing.
Oracle Partitioning
Oracle Partitioning improves
databases management,
performances and availability.
Oracle Partitioning allows table and
indexes splitting into components
that can be managed more easily; it
is a key condition for great databases
with constraints of high performance
and availability.
With the partitioning, tables and
indexes can be split according to one
or several logical criteria. The object
is then divided in several instances of
restricted size. Oracle partitioning is
transparent for users.
The advantages are:
d
 ifferent storage criteria can be
defined for each partition (splitting
into several table spaces, different
segment size, etc…);
t he logical division allows quicker
access to information and response
time improvement;
t he opportunity of request
parallelization on several
processors;
p
 roblematic concerning data
storage, backup and restoration,
but also data purges are managed
more easily.
The splitting into several table spaces
enables to process data from a same
table independently, thus allowing
access parallelization.
visual TOM
Visual TOM work scheduler provides
productivity increase, costs cutting
and guarantees quick Return On
Investment. Moreover, it provides
great operating reliability, procedures
simplification, sustainable integration
level and great flexibility for process
scheduling.
Visual TOM provides the following
main characteristics and advantages:
automation of event software
production (Graphical design,
dynamical planning, intelligent
Scheduling)
performing management (control
and centralized follow-up of work
progress, remote administration)
controlled Production (Evolving
architecture, Security, Statistics)
interactive integration with
frameworks (as CA-TNG, Openview,
Openmaster, Patrol, Tivoli
Enterprise, etc.)
industrialization of process control
Product Brief 21
 6  Interfaces with the other
solutions of the Gaïa
Business Solution
Sofrecom supplies a consistent and  .watch: Front office scoring
G
transversal software suite, Gaïa, assistant that offers the opportunity
covering the whole Information to anticipate unpaid bills, to identify
System chain of a Telco, from network bad payers and to adapt the selling
to customer Management. process.
The Gaïa BCC solution is the heart of
the other Gaïa products.

It is interfaced with APIs to those

other modules:

G
 .selfc@re: e-care including
directory features

22 Gaïa Billing & Customer Care 6

7  References

Africa Middle East
Algeria Telecom, Algeria Jordan Telecom, Jordan
Côte d’Ivoire Telecom, Ivory Coast
Mauritius Telecom, Mauritius Island
Asia
PT Telkom, Indonesia
Sonatel, Senegal
Djibouti Telecom, Djibouti South America
Togo Telecom CTE Salvador, El Salvador
TDM, Mozambique

Product Brief 23