Modeling software integration scenarios for telecommunications operations software vendors

- Telecom operators deploy a vast number of software systems to support their operations. Vendors of these systems often integrate such software in their products in order to enable innovations, minimize the customer's integration efforts, etc. Different integration scenarios can be envisioned, and the issue of identifying more beneficial scenarios is of a great importance to the vendors. This paper focuses on analyzing different integration scenarios in the context of telecommunications operations software. For each scenario, the overall modularity of the set of software systems is evaluated, and the expected benefits of the scenario are modeled in terms of the modularity gain it provides. The paper introduces a modularity-based approach to the integration scenario analysis, and applies it to compare the benefits that can be obtained from each scenario. As a result of the analysis, the scenarios which are likely to be more beneficial for the vendors (and therefore more likely to occur) are identified.