I think it is convenient to briefly give some background and reasons that have prompted me to approach this task, before going into the development of the topic.
First of all, I must say that this is the result of many years of observation, in different environments, of public and private telecommunications systems.
administration-systems-telecommunicationsIn each place and on each occasion I was collecting isolated details, which, like a puzzle, I was gradually able to integrate and structure, into a consistent and generally valid whole.
Secondly, I regret to say that I have not seen good examples of the management of Telecommunications Systems, especially private ones. High degree of improvisation, little planning, almost no statistics, and above all, tremendous modernization efforts that, immediately after being executed, leave them to their fate. All this, despite the tremendous technological advance that has affected in recent times, especially telecommunications services, which has increased its relative importance compared to other basic services and increase the capacity of its management available to users..
There are two contradictory characteristics in Telecommunications services: on the one hand, much is expected of them and on the other, they receive little concern. It appears that it is believed that they can function satisfactorily without attention. (Specialists often complain that Telecommunications services are noticed only when they fail, which, unfortunately, I must admit that my experience confirms this).
The third reason, closely related to the second, is for three characteristics of Telecommunications services: they are complex, transcendent and expensive.
The complexity should be indisputable, despite the fact that it is still possible to find people who have not noticed it and dare to intervene, very superficially indeed, without adequate training.
The significance is measured by the amount of functions within any organization, civil or business, which for the effective and efficient achievement of its objectives depend on the support they receive from telecommunications services.
The same complexity of the technique implies high development and production costs. On the other hand, due to their importance they have a demand that makes them commercially attractive.
The last reason and sorry for my professional deformation, is that I have faith in Telecommunications. I believe that thanks to these services, the life of society has changed and will continue to change, for good. Therefore, it is better to serve them properly.
This work is preferably oriented towards private telecommunication systems. However, it should also be of interest to the operators of public systems, since the Administration requirement also exists in them. In addition, public service companies are natural providers of private systems, so they must consider the issue and apply its principles.
Similarly, the principles that are proposed are general in nature, not exclusive to Telecommunications, and can therefore be applied in any organization regardless of its nature, size and complexity and by any professional or organic level.
Are you not afraid to edit a text on a technological subject, which will become obsolete in a very short time? Partly yes, because indeed there will be news regarding the proposed (computational) procedures. But the general principles, the foundations of the need to manage, will remain unchanged, as has always been the case.
If it is possible to highlight a beneficial characteristic, it would be that it has been tried to use a language that is as simple as possible, understandable by any reader and not only by specialists.
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Manage, is the set of techniques and procedures to apply to achieve a permanent maximum use of human, technical and financial resources available for a certain purpose.
1.2 The Administration is and has always been present in all human activities, including the daily life of each individual. We are always managing, we always have to manage. We do it permanently, at every moment.
The Administration is so universal and daily, that after reading these notes it will be verified that only common sense aspects have been treated in them. That is to say, it is a proposition of principles, ordered and of effective interest, although, I must warn, nothing spectacular will be found.
1.3 Managing is a direct application of the Law of Least Effort, a condition that is a constant of nature. For example, you can't conceive of doing something in an hour if it can be done in 15 minutes. That is looking for the best use, that is managing.
Human beings learn from childhood, or better yet, we are born with the principle of energy economy, which we begin to apply from the act of breastfeeding. In effect, the infant will always try to adopt the physical position from which it costs less to suck the mother's breast, that is, that demands the least energy consumption. The same can be seen later, in the first children's games.
Other beings also apply it. Why do flocks of birds wedge? Why its aerodynamic shape or the hydrodynamics of the fish? Why
plants, to achieve light, make the effort to reach it, twisting and stretching, only when they do not receive it directly?
1.4 As mentioned, with a little attention it can be seen that the Administration is a permanent concern. Manages the homeowner, the student, the boss, the businessman, the worker. Even leisure time should be administered.
1.5 If it is recognized that resources are always limited or that there is always a desire to do more than can be done, it will also be necessary to recognize that seeking the best use of these resources is an important part of the problem.
1.6 Telecommunications services do not escape the condition. Managing them is an inescapable necessity, for which there are techniques and procedures that take into account the special characteristics of this field, all of which has as its final objective the timely and adequate satisfaction of needs, in this case the transportation of information, with the minimum use of resources. (Chapter 3 expands on this concept.)
1.7 Now, if the Administration is such a general need, it is worth asking why special treatment for Telecommunications services. There can be several causes:
- Of course, the technical complexity of these services. A Telecommunications System is made up of a wide diversity of elements, which are also widely distributed throughout the territory. For example, knowing what is in each place is a need that corresponds to the Administration. Perhaps more than any other, Telecommunications services must function in an integrated manner and therefore, must be integrable. Due to this characteristic, any measure or action applied in one place will produce an effect, greater or less, beneficial or harmful, in the rest of the System. This means that there should be no local, isolated, independent decisions; the System must be permanently managed as a whole.
Attention should be drawn to the term SYSTEM used in the title and repeatedly afterwards in this work, instead of another, such as SERVICES. In SYSTEM it is implicit integration, SERVICES no. Seen from another point, it can also be affirmed that whenever there are one or more services there will be a System, although sometimes it is disorganized, improvised, inharmonious, inefficient and ineffective.
On the other hand, the importance that Telecommunications services have for any Organization, whatever its nature, should be noted as it is the most effective means to satisfy an essential need: the transfer of information. So essential is this need, that it is lawful to affirm that there is no human activity that can be carried out efficiently and competitively, without the support of Telecommunications resources.
Thus, it is recognized that the Telecommunications services constitute the nervous system of any Organization, that is, the routes through which the signals corresponding to the orders transit, to the controls to verify compliance with those orders and the consequent needs to reiterate them., modify them, etc. In other words, an Organization without Telecommunications services is like a body without direction or sensitivity or control.
- From another point of view, if we review the factors on which production and development have historically depended, it will be seen that initially it was only capital, characteristically represented by the figure of the feudal lord.
Later, with the industrial revolution, it was recognized that work also played a fundamental role. Later, with the oil crisis of the 1960s, it had to be accepted that raw materials were also decisive factors. Today the same position is proclaimed for information. Telecommunications are essential in obtaining, taking advantage of, distributing, transferring and making good use of the latter.
True, what is the use of knowledge if it is not transferred or shared?
How does he find out, who should react to an important fact, if he is far away and cannot appreciate it directly? How is it possible to shorten reaction times in the event of an accident by a worker or the malfunction of a machine?
Looking at the table above, can it be concluded that only now is the information important? That is not the correct conclusion. What happens is that only now the information can be handled in volumes and at a speed that makes it a significant factor.
There are people who today can access a large amount of information very quickly, which makes a significant difference with others who cannot.
Definitely, the Administration must maintain the same concern regarding the Telecommunications System during the project that was in charge of its design, specification, installation, and commissioning.
- Finally, we should add the dynamics that any organization shows today to meet the need to adapt to the permanent variations, of all kinds, that its environment poses. Just as the organization evolves, so must its Telecommunications System, to maintain consistency between organization and system. For this purpose the Administration exists.
On the other hand, we must add the variation of the Telecommunications services themselves. In fact, to the constant concern to adapt to user variations, the commercial and technological novelties of the Telecommunications market must be considered, which make the solutions in use, after a short time, obsolete or show a worrying level of inefficiency.
It should be noted that the Telecommunications Administration takes on more importance, when the System corresponds to a very dynamic organization, that is, it is changing rapidly in time and / or space. Think, for example, of a military unit, engaged in an operation in a certain territory and that is encountering various situations as it progresses. (Example: Operation Desert Storm).
1.8 Another important situation to consider, as far as Telecommunications Systems Administration is concerned, corresponds to the cost of control compared to the cost of what is controlled, which should be a relationship << 1. And here we come to an aspect Critical: What is the cost of my system, which I want to control?
This is a difficult question, because your answer has 2 components: direct cost and indirect cost.
- The direct cost contains the values that, for investment or expenses, correspond to Telecommunications. This includes the purchase or lease of equipment, traffic, maintenance, operation, civil works, etc. The direct cost is relatively easy to determine. We call the indirect cost the sum of those values that are replaced by the Telecommunications services. That is, how much would it cost me to do the same, with the same result, if I did not have these services. And here is the difficulty, because it is not a simple problem of elementary arithmetic; Performance differences should also be considered by appropriately weighing one or the other.
Take for example the cost of having a fax machine compared to the alternative, a courier. There is no doubt that the fax has a very different performance from the courier, in the sense that the reception is immediate, in circumstances that the courier has to physically move, which will take a longer time, a difference that must be taken into account.
It can be mentioned, for clarity, the multiplier effect of the
Telecommunications, with reference to the fact that these services, with a cost X, strongly influence the result of other elements of the organization, whose cost is several X. (Fig. 1.1).
To reaffirm what has been said, the following real case can be mentioned.
An important Bank in my country wanted to know what would happen if it suddenly ran out of Telecom resources. To do this, a group of specialists carried out an exercise, in which they noted the effects that would gradually occur. The dramatic conclusions were:
* The first day nothing would happen.
* The second day …… nothing would happen.
* Within a week the Bank has failed.
The Telecommunications services, constituted in a System, must be so effective for the Organization that they are constantly "pushing" it in the direction of achieving its objectives, thanks to the participation of its specialized resources and procedures. Importantly, this is accomplished through System Administration.
1.9 It should also be noted that, in the case of the Telecommunications Systems Administration, the work is oriented to the actions and care that must be faced and addressed from the day after the System has started operating. The design, specification and construction stages of the System are already behind us.
In other words, given a functioning Telecommunications System, what must be done to maintain its levels of effectiveness and efficiency, supposedly satisfactory at the initial moment?
It is inconceivable that after making a considerable investment to put a Telecommunications System into service, it will be left to its own devices. Something will have to be done to ensure that this investment gives the best results for the longest possible time. This principle is especially important, given the dynamics that characterize the Organization (demand) and technique (supply). The option of an outsourced solution does not eliminate the need.
If the essentially dynamic demand and supply are not always being updated, the time will soon come when the system will be out of date and the nefarious patch solutions will appear, inorganically adopted by anyone with no ability or opportunity to see the system. global.
As an example of the above, note the information contained in the sequence of Figs. 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4, which represent the way in which a Private Telecommunications System corresponding to a real case evolved within a period of less than 10 years.
In the first figure, a “clean”, “clear”, “clear” system can be seen, in which a minimum of elements meets the initial requirements.
In the second figure, the ideal system at the beginning has developed multiple “flaps”, without appreciating a uniform or optimizing criterion. It is about adding anything, wherever it falls, surely by decision of many participants, different and independent.
The third image, which corresponds to the result of the intervention carried out after 12 years of operation, shows again an optimal system to which technological innovations have been incorporated. (Commercial news, also included and not insignificant, logically are not appreciated).
And if the Administration is a necessity for many (or all) human activities and our works, the concern about the advisability of structuring procedures to administer Telecommunications Systems surely applies to many other situations. For example, scheduling the construction of a bridge is an absolutely solved problem and will be taught in all
You give the world's engineering schools, with very little variations. But what about the Administration of the bridge after the inauguration and its entry into service? What controls are carried out and what data is recorded? How is the collected information processed? What are the acceptable levels? There can be no doubt that this need is being met, but there is likely
As many modalities as there are bridges. Although these are notes on Telecommunications, it presents principles that are applicable to almost any field. Exaggerating the note a bit, even in the
Marriage gives you the situation you want to deal with. Indeed, starting the day after the wedding ceremony, after fulfilling all the prerequisites of all kinds, certain that they have taken a very thoughtful, felt and desired step, what should the couple do to maintain (or prolong as much as possible) the ideal initial conditions, in short, the illusion?
But on the other hand, the Telecommunications Administration itself has been complicated by the flexibility and versatility of the equipment and its work programs. For example, there is now a large number and variety of attributes available to users, who are a permanent source of demand for modifications.
Said in a very simple and graphic way, before "the wires were sent", that is, what the System did was determined by the wiring of its equipment and any modification, although feasible, was complicated by having to be done on the equipment itself, many times with a service cut. Today, for example, each address (terminal) is a code, part of a computer program, in which there is a large number of conversions, virtual or phantom addresses, etc., which is done remotely and without any interruption for users.
1.10 Consequently, with what has been said in the preceding paragraph, it must be recognized that undertaking the task of preparing notes such as these, devoted to a technological topic, also risks rapid obsolescence. In other words, this text could soon be overtaken by the advancement of technology, which, in any case, may vary the how, but not the what.
In effect, the value of this work is the methodology it proposes, the content of which will have to be updated each time new procedures and technological tools emerge.
However, on this occasion it seems that the positive factor is more important, that is, the feasibility that is now observed of carrying out a good Administration would be indicating that the importance of the topic will grow, as the tools become more powerful and efficient. Indeed, the need for the Administration always existed, only that before, its limited scope was in accordance with the quality of the available means.
1.11 The accelerated development of the Public Telecommunications System allows it to offer its users, among other features, the detailed availability of results, much more extensive and cheaper than until a few years ago. These results should allow the user to measure performance and detect the need to search for more efficient solutions, possible in an open market. To take advantage of this capacity, the principles presented in this work must be applied.
1.12 As will be seen, the Administration, that is, the control to obtain the best permanent performance of the resources that constitute a Telecommunications System, depends on a number of factors, of varied nature, all of which are discussed in the paragraphs that follow..
It is worth drawing attention to the fact that the overall quality obtained from the effort devoted to the Administration depends on the set of previous factors, without forgetting that the stability of a construction depends on the weakest brick that makes it up. That is, in our case, the total quality will be limited by the factor to which less attention is paid.
1.13 This work is especially based on, and oriented towards, what happens in a Private Telecommunications System. However, it is also worth bearing in mind that the principles and methodologies are equally applicable in a Public System.
1.14 Another of the Administration's objectives is to develop predictive capacity, that is, by keeping a record of the events and of the human, material and financial resources used, to be able to predict, to anticipate the facts, to have the best reaction studied and ready to be executed, at the right time.
Ideally, and after some time of experience, the Administration should be able to model the different situations and their treatment.
This is valid for all aspects inherent in the behavior of the System.
1.15 Almost at the end of this Introduction we leave certain principles that must permanently govern the structure, equipment, configuration, dimensioning, operation, etc., of any Telecommunications System, which the Administration must observe, maintain and comply with..
As there must be a perfect and permanent consistency between the System and the organization (national, business, institutional, etc.) it serves.
(see para. 1.7 d), the System should have been designed and built:
- with enough flexibility to easily and timely incorporate the modifications required over time, either due to variations in demand (user needs) or supply (new products and services, new commercial conditions); with the means to instantly detect the variations experienced by the Organization's information transport needs; and as an integrated system, a condition that includes two aspects:
- the solutions for the services it contains must be based on the greatest number of common elements (optimization of resources), and from any terminal (eg voice) any other, from the same service or network (eg telephony, radiotelephony).
1.16 In the work that follows, the field of action, responsibilities and activities of the Telecommunications Administration are presented, which will be concentrated or distributed in different actors, depending on the way in which it has been contracted. the supply of the System.
In effect, if the System has been provided entirely in an outsourcing regime, a large part of the Administration will be in the hands of the same provider, with the user being solely responsible for the final controls and the proposals that must be made to the provider, when they occur. poor results. On the contrary, if the System is made up of parts from different sources and it is the user himself who gives him the final configuration, most or all of the attention of the Administration tasks will correspond to him.
In any case and regardless of who attends them or how they are distributed, the tasks of Administration are always the same.
All the techniques and services possible to establish a Telecommunications System allow and require the comprehensive application of the Administration methodologies presented here, regardless of who owns them and the contractual regimes that regulate supplies. That is to say, the Administration tasks are fulfilled by the user, the provider or are divided between one and the other, but are not left unattended.
1.17 And finally, in summary, it can be highlighted that the Administration must keep in mind that all the measures that it decides to apply will have as an essential condition that they will be valid after the achievement of the objective of the Managed thing, which must be very clearly determined, for avoid confusion.
This is also a general principle, of continuous application. Let's see some situations.
If my goal is to travel to Rancagua, I can do it in a helicopter, by car or by bus. If I manage my economic resources well, I will do it in the cheapest way, in this case, the bus.
But if my objective was to travel to Rancagua in the fastest and most immediate means possible, clearly different from the previous one, I would have to rent a helicopter, despite being more expensive.
Note that in both situations the objective is being met first, absorbing the corresponding expense.
If it were a question of the administration of a housing condominium, the objective should be to achieve for the inhabitants the best quality of life, safe, hygienic and
pleasant. For this, it is necessary to consume some human, material and economic resources, which an effective Administration will try to make as few as possible, accepting that they can never be void. Likewise, if the objective is to erroneously spend as little as possible, the absurdity of dispensing with the Administration may be proposed, totally eliminating expenses, but accepting to live in a poor quality environment, insecure, dirty and unpleasant.
In the case of Telecommunications the same thing happens. Starting from the principle that these services are essential, because the objective is to have the means for the exchange of information, the Administration will have the mission of ensuring that the best quality service is available, with the minimum use of resources.
1.18 And an additional comment. In my long professional career, I have not met any work (text, book) that covers the entire subject of the Telecommunications Systems Administration, in the broad way that it purports.
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