Micro Focus
Case study

Sigma Systems uses Orbacus to build an integrated, cost-effective system, protecting against internet service theft

Sigma Systems is the pioneer in real time catalog-driven products for communications, media, and high tech companies. The company’s BSS/OSS product portfolio spans product and service catalog, configure price quote, order management, service provisioning, service inventory, cloud brokerage, and device management. Sigma products manage 100s of millions of services with customers in 40 countries.

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Sigma Systems

INDUSTRY

Telecommunications/Internet

LOCATION

Canada

PRODUCT

Challenge

Offering advanced IP multimedia and new converged services has become essential to telecommunications, mobile, and cable service providers looking to continue and evolve business growth. But as service enhancements increase, so does the need to successfully provide residential and business solutions. The numerous devices and service end points associated with these must also be automatically configured and activated. Sigma Device Provisioning makes this possible through its robust, secure, and extensible out-of-the-box functionality. It caters for end devices, performs firmware upgrades or downgrades, supports real-time monitoring, and performs a variety of actions to optimize service availability for the end device. The services that clients receive through their devices range from traditional telephony, to video, internet, and mobile access.

Brian Bauer, Director Product Management at Sigma Systems, explains why security is key in providing these services: “There is a real problem with theft of internet service in the shape of device cloning. The electronics are reverse-engineered and the service is accessed illegally for free. Our clients like the anti-roaming and anti-cloning mechanisms built into our product. Micro Focus Orbacus, which is embedded in Sigma Device Provisioning product, underpins this functionality.”

Solution

CORBA has for many years made software work together, regardless of locations, equipment, or language. As one of the earliest distributed computing standards, it supports mission-critical applications in traditionally conservative and demanding IT environments, including telecommunications, banking, insurance, utilities, manufacturing, and government.

CORBA has for many years made software work together, regardless of locations, equipment or language. As one of the earliest distributed computing standards, it supports mission-critical applications in traditionally conservative and demanding IT environments, including telecommunications, banking, insurance, utilities, manufacturing, and government.

Sigma Device Provisioning leverages Orbacus as a full-featured CORBA-compliant Object Request Broker (ORB). It enables Sigma to build a cost effective CORBA system and have access to source code for better control. Sigma Device Provisioning was initially written in different programming languages, which made CORBA and Orbacus the obvious choice. Orbacus’ small footprint means it is easy to embed into the Sigma Device Provisioning application.

Results

Sigma Device Provisioning is fully integrated with Sigma’s other OSS applications, providing end-to-end, catalog-driven order capture and service fulfillment. When a communications service provider defines the types of products it wants to bring to market, it collects the orders for these services from its customer service representatives or third-party channels. These are then run through an order provisioning system which makes all the necessary changes in the network to turn on the service for the user.

The systems are mission-critical and down-time is unacceptable, as Bauer explains: “If a customer needs to reboot their cable modem, set-top box, or SIP device, and the system isn’t available, we have a problem. It doesn’t sound very exciting, but Orbacus does ‘exactly what it says on the tin’.”

Bauer concludes: “If parts of your system are architected in different programming languages and you need a way to integrate them, Micro Focus Orbacus could be your answer. We love the fact that multiple operating systems are supported, including a cloud-based version of our Sigma Device Provisioning, hosted on Amazon Web services.”

Micro Focus, a member of the FTSE 250, provides innovative software that allows companies to dramatically improve the business value of their enterprise applications. Micro Focus Enterprise Application Modernization, Testing and Management software enables customers’ business applications to respond rapidly to market changes and embrace modern architectures with reduced cost and risk.

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Sigma Systems case study

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release-rel-2021-1-3-hotfix-5713 | Thu Jan 21 09:20:43 PST 2021
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release/rel-2021-1-3-hotfix-5713
Thu Jan 21 09:20:43 PST 2021