Edge Technologies ServiceSuite

Edge Technologies BV, is an industry leading ISV providing software to telecommunication companies. Edge Technologies' ServiceSuite product increases the scope and reduces the cost of delivering services and support to telecom customers.

About ServiceSuite

ServiceSuite is a comprehensive set of products which dramatically reduces the complexity and cost of monitoring and managing a network.

To retain customers telecom companies and Internet service providers must provide excellent customer service. This becomes increasingly difficult as customer expectations for new services increases while technology continues to change. New and existing services are offered on top of a common broadband infrastructure creating a complex operational challenge.

ServiceSuite greatly simplifies and speeds up the processes used to deliver excellent customer service. ServiceSuite provides a standardized interface between the internal network infrastructure and a telecom or Internet service provider's business processing systems.

ServiceSuite's architecture includes a large number of "probes" running within their customer's network. The probes are service access devices acting as the "scripted" eyes for the operator that provide information on problems in networks or service platforms, assist the order processes and execute configuration changes. The probes communicate with the ServiceScanner and ServiceRouter which retrieve network information from data sources (typically an SQL database). The ServiceViewer is an OpenLaszlo[1] based front end for both user and administrator screens. In a typical clustered installation multiple chains of ServiceScanner engines and probe hosts run in parallel for redundancy and capacity reasons.

Java J2EE Foundation

Edge Technologies developed the original ServiceSuite product using Java J2EE technologies. However they were not satisfied with the results. "We faced serious challenges when increasing the scale of ServiceSuite installations. In addition installation maintenance and updating to new releases was very difficult", said Sven Wallage, Chief Operating Officer at Edge Technologies, "We consider building our own execution platform. However we picked NetKernel instead because it provided a superior platform immediately and most importantly, it increased our own productivity."

Migration to NetKernel

Edge Technologies was determined to build the next version of ServiceSuite on foundation that would address the challenges of deploying and maintaining a system running on many nodes within a network. Their core development team downloaded and played with NetKernel, becoming immediately convinced that many of the challenges could be solved by using NetKernel as the foundation.

They contacted 1060 Research and were "impressed by the excellent support and knowledge", said Sven. After a brief training session, development using NetKernel began in July 2007. At the end of 2007 all ServiceSuite components had been migrated to NetKernel. Looking forward, in Q1 of 2008 the ServiceSuite product with be enhanced with an easy-to-use administration GUI, load balancers and a rock solid versioning system that will provide an enormous increase in availability for their customers.

Sven adds, "With NetKernel we find that we write significantly less code than with Java J2EE. Now we focus on implementing new features ourselves instead of writing lengthy specification documents to be implemented by out-source software development centers. With NetKernel we can quickly build new products to capitalize on what we learn about our customer's needs."

Summary

Edge Technologies found 1060 NetKernel to be superior to Java J2EE as their foundation for ServiceSuite and future products. Finally Sven added, "we are very pleased with our decision to use NetKernel. It gives us a competitive edge and allows us to focus on building new features while our current installations run reliably and predictably".

References

[1] OpenLaszlo http://www.openlaszlo.org