Verizon Business System

Business System Paper
NAME
University of Phoenix

At Verizon Wireless hundreds of changes re implemented on the network every day. It becomes difficult to know what changes were made and who made the changes. Verizon Wireless uses a system called BMC Remedy Change Management software. The software has many functions and ties into another system called M.O.P Routing tool, which is where we store method of procedure documents. These documents describe step by step what is being installed and who is doing the work. In the M.O.P routing tool every procedure must be reviewed by members of management to ensure the steps do not violate the process and procedures laid out by the company standards.
What Drove the Development of
these Systems On August 28, 2012 United Airlines had a “temporary network outage”, where some of the airlines key systems went down for more than two hours.
There were at least 200 flights delayed in several hubs. This outage was due to problems United has been having merging the Continental systems with their own. CBS. (August 28, 2012, 7:08 PM). CBS Moneywatch. In United hit by "network outage," widespread delays. Retrieved October 13, 2012, from http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-57502163/united-hit-by-network-outage-widespread-delays/. It is issues like the one United had back in August that cause companies to lose money and customer satisfaction quickly. Verizon Wireless is not new to these types of outages either. With the release of the new 4G LTE network there were several outages within months of each other. These outages hit the news and caused the “most reliable” network in all of cellular to be questioned by both the customer and the media. CNET. (February 22, 2012 7:50 AM PST ). News, Internet & Media. In Verizon customers hit by another 4G LTE outage. Retrieved October 13, 2012, from
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57382686-93/verizon-customers-hit-by-another-4g-lte-outage/. These outages cost companies a great deal of money and can have serious effects on the reputation of the company. They can also cause customers to lose faith in the company’s services and ultimately leave. While the system I am referring to was not developed specifically due to the events related to the specific outage stated above, Verizon Wireless has always done whatever they could to help mitigate these types of customer impacting changes.
The M.O.P routing tool and Remedy Systems were developed to assist in tracking the changes to ensure that conflicting changes do not happen on the same day and in the same area. This system is also available to the Network Repair Bureau customer facing division. The Network Repair Bureau (NRB) will receive customer complaints and work to resolve them. Having access to the Remedy System allows the NRB to watch customer complaints to ensure a change that was made isn’t impacting the
customer.
Basics of the Systems The Remedy Change Management system is divided into various different groups depending on the part of the network they support. It ranges from Network Operations Center, Data Services, and Regional. The system is a ticketing type system that allows a user to request support from another group, schedule their change, or obtain an IP address range or VLAN. One of the most important uses of the system is scheduling changes. A change is considered anything that touches the network in any way, either in production or not. An example of a change would be implementing a PGW into the existing 4G LTE network. The system allows one ticket to spawn many other tickets to different groups that may play a part in the implementation of that change. A ticket contains detailed information on what needs to be done to complete the change and includes a method of procedure for the implementation, the date the change will start, the date it will end. It contains the name of the group that should be working the ticket, the component being worked, the area and region of the change. It can be used to track if an outage happens as a result of the change. There is a log of all work that happens on the ticket created.
How System Helps All departments are able to see who is doing what and when. The system allows for organization to the hundreds of changes happening on the network. It allows different groups to collaborate on a single change and track their part of a project. It ensures that there is timely resolution to network issues. There is reporting to show what was done on a specific date, so it makes it easier to troubleshoot if something does go wrong. It allows customer facing departments to easily see if there could be a network related issue causing customer complaints.
Future Development Plans
There are no current plans to improve the system that I am aware of at this time, but with any system there are constant changes happening as the network advances and changes. One thing I would like to see happen with this program is to tie the M.O.P routing and BMC Remedy Network Change Control systems together. At this time there are many fields in the two systems that are the same, such as description of change, steps of change, back out plan, what systems are being worked on, and who is doing the change. These fields could be combined and pulled in from database to database. Or they could add an approvals tab to the BMC Remedy Change Control that would allow the method of procedure to go through the approval processes.