Systems and methods for real-time service assurance

• US 8,793,363 B2
• Filed: 08/12/2008
• Issued: 07/29/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 01/15/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: AT&T Mobility II LLC (AT&T, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: AT&T Mobility II LLC (AT&T, Inc.)
• Inventors: Sater, Melanie, Chien, Ginger, Druta, Dan
• Primary Examiner(s): Tiv, Backhean
• Application Number:
  US12/190,369
• Publication Number:
  US 20090181665A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,177 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 709/224
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0769 Readable error formats, e.g. cross-platform generic formats, human understandable formats
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0631 Resource planning, allocation, distributing or scheduling for enterprises or organisations
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0213 Standardised network management protocols, e.g. simple network management protocol [SNMP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/06 Management of faults, events, alarms or notifications
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5003 Managing SLA; Interaction between SLA and QoS
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5009 Determining service level performance parameters or violations of service level contracts, e.g. violations of agreed response time or mean time between failures [MTBF]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5029 Service quality level-based billing, e.g. dependent on measured service level customer is charged more or less
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5054 Automatic deployment of services triggered by the service manager, e.g. service implementation by automatic configuration of network components
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5064 Customer relationship management
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5074 Handling of user complaints or trouble tickets
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0852 Delays
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/16 Threshold monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/10 in which an application is distributed across nodes in the network software deployment G06F8/60; multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/75 Indicating network or usage conditions on the user display
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/08 Testing, supervising or monitoring using real traffic

Abstract

A system and methods for providing service assurance using real-time monitoring, management and maintenance capabilities to provide customers and vendors with information related to the state of the service. The service assurance domain implements end-to-end functionality with a level of granularity sufficient to diagnose issues to the device and call/session level.

Claims

1. A system, comprising:

a memory to store computer-executable instructions; and

a processor, communicatively coupled to the memory, that facilitates execution of the computer-executable instructions to perform operations, comprising;

facilitating generation of an interface, between a device and services and applications for the device, wherein the interface includes a functionality to create the services and the applications;

managing an availability and a performance of the services and the applications across a service plane and a control plane, wherein the service plane includes a data path associated with the services and the applications and the control plane includes a service policy used to maintain the services and the applications;

providing solution responses in response to detection of any of network, service, and application problems;

invoking a business rule and an automated action to resolve a system problem, wherein the automated action includes a notification of service level agreement management billing of other systems that is tiered according to a business impact assessment and wherein the business impact assessment includes an analysis of a revenue impact of the system problem, a balanced assessment of a revenue impact and a cost impact of the system problem, a subscriber affected by the system problem, opinion data representing a public opinion of the system problem, a competitive advantage of the system problem and operational dependencies of the system problem including an inter-carrier dependency, and inter-service dependency, a regulatory mandate, and a criticality in time of disaster dependency; and

storing the network, service, and application problems, and the solution responses associated with the network, service, and application problems.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise providing a service interaction with internal and external devices.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise enabling creation of the services and the applications by a provider device external to the system.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise monitoring availability and performance of the services and the applications across the service plane and the control plane.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the operations further comprise using passive instrumentation and active instrumentation to monitor the availability and the performance.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein the passive instrumentation includes a use of standardized management information to monitor the availability and the performance.

7. The system of claim 5, wherein the passive instrumentation includes a use of usage information and enhanced data information to monitor the availability and the performance.

8. The system of claim 5, wherein the passive instrumentation includes a use of log information to monitor the availability and the performance.

9. The system of claim 5, wherein the passive instrumentation includes a use of pre-positioned passive probes to monitor the availability and the performance by measurement of a defined key process indicator.

10. The system of claim 5, wherein the active instrumentation includes a use of pre-positioned active probes to monitor the availability and the performance by measurement of a defined key process indicator.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein the pre-positioned active probes are activated in response to use of any of the services and the applications.

12. The system of claim 10, wherein the pre-positioned active probes are activated based on a configured system policy.

13. The system of claim 5, wherein the passive instrumentation and the active instrumentation generate an instruction to report and diagnose the network, service, and application problems and suggest respective resolutions for the network, service, and application problems.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein the operations further comprise correlating an outcome of the instruction with other outcomes of other instructions across time to provide a chronological pattern for a root cause analysis of the network, service, and application problems.

15. The system of claim 13, wherein the operations further comprise correlating an outcome of the instruction with other outcomes of other instructions across layers to provide a layer pattern to determine an association of a root cause with an individual layer.

16. The system of claim 13, wherein the operations further comprise correlating an outcome of the instruction with other outcomes of other instructions across domains to provide a domain pattern to determine an association of a root cause with an individual domain.

17. The system of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise generating a graphical view of a network, a service, an application, and a device, allowing a view of a subset of the network, services, applications, and devices associated with the system problem.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the graphical view enables a drill down operation with a view of a service, application, and device that displays diagnostic information about the service, application, and device.

19. The system of claim 17, wherein the graphical view includes a view of customer performance for account management and customer service.

20. The system of claim 17, wherein the graphical view includes a service and an application provided by a third party device.

21. The system of claim 17, wherein the graphical view includes end-to-end service and application life cycle management and testing.

22. The system of claim 1, wherein the automated action further includes an invocation of an automated test to isolate the system problem.

23. The system of claim 1, wherein the automated action further includes an invocation of a control to resolve the system problem.

24. The system of claim 1, wherein the automated action further includes a communication of a condition of a first system to other systems for invocation of a policy-based control for problem resolution.

25. The system of claim 1, wherein the automated action further includes a generation of maintenance ticket data representative of a maintenance ticket that requests an additional resolution and a transmission of the maintenance ticket to a device identified as responsible for the additional resolution.

26. The system of claim 1, wherein the automated action further includes a notification of other systems'"'"' credit, and capacity information.

27. The system of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise shifting application resource usage between a server and a client device based on activity of the client device.

28. The system of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise shifting application resource usage between a server and a client device based on predefined optimization.

29. A non-transitory computer readable storage medium having computer-readable instructions that, in response to execution, cause a system including a processor to perform operations, comprising:

interfacing to a device with services and applications;

facilitating instantiation of the services and the applications;

managing an availability and a performance of a service and an application of the services and the applications;

billing for use of the service and the application;

resolving a problem for any of a network, the service, the application, and a device as a function of a control plane and a service plane, wherein the control plane includes a service policy for any of the network, the service, the application, and the device and the service plane includes a path traversed by data associated with the services and the applications in conformity with the service policy;

invoking a business rule and an automated action to resolve a system problem, wherein the automated action includes a notification of service level agreement management billing of other systems that is tiered according to a business impact assessment and wherein the business impact assessment includes an analysis of a revenue impact of the system problem, a balanced assessment of the revenue impact and a cost impact of the system problem, a subscriber affected by the system problem, opinion data representing a public opinion of the system problem, a competitive advantage of the system problem and operational dependencies of the system problem including an inter-carrier dependency, and inter-service dependency, a regulatory mandate, and a criticality in time of disaster dependency; and

storing system data and reports relating to usage of the services and the applications.

30. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 29, the operations further comprising:

displaying a view of a service assurance system.

31. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 29, the operations further comprising:

providing access security and system visibility based on a login credential.

32. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 29, the operations further comprising:

allocating system resources based on a current condition of the system.

33. A method, comprising:

facilitating generation of an interface, by a system including a processor, to services and applications usable by a device;

facilitating, by the system, instantiation of the services and applications;

determining, by the system, a service and application availability and performance including determining the service and application availability and performance based on a control of routes, a capacity, a reservation, and a service policy, and a path traversed by data associated with the services and applications in conformance with the control of routes, the capacity, the reservation and the service policy;

detecting, by the system, a problem and providing a solution response to any of a network, a service of the services, an application of the applications, and a device;

invoking, by the system, a business rule and an automated action to resolve a system problem, wherein the automated action includes a notification of service level agreement management billing of other systems that is tiered according to a business impact assessment and wherein the business impact assessment includes an analysis of a revenue impact of the system problem, a balanced assessment of a revenue impact and a cost impact of the system problem, a subscriber affected by the system problem, opinion data representing a public opinion of the system problem, a competitive advantage of the system problem and operational dependencies of the system problem including an inter-carrier dependency, and inter-service dependency, a regulatory mandate, and a criticality in time of disaster dependency; and

storing, by the system, data and audit information collected from monitoring the network, the problem, and the solution response.