Background

The NICC B2B forum was restarted in September 2006 with the agreement of over 20 UK Communication Providers (CP). Its objectives were "To agree system & process standards & best practice for automated business transactions between UK Communications Providers (CP) via Business-to-Business (B2B) and portal interfaces; In support of the emerging eMarket for "multi-service, multi-supplier, triple/quad play" services; By creating quicker, cheaper and better automated interfaces to the benefit of all UK CPs."

During its 3 years of operation NICC B2B has in collaboration with CPs published over 30 standards, best practice, requirements and proposal documents. In terms of support there are now over 150 people from nearly 40 organisations represented on the distribution list. In the year to March 2009 alone, there were 23 meetings, attended by 93 different people from over 25 CPs plus all areas of BT.

At the recent BT Wholesale Systems & Process Interface Workshop it was stated that BT Wholesale & Openreach B2B fault reporting schemas (T2R) used the NICC B2B process framework and T2R schema templates. For ordering (L2C) the process framework and schemas has been developed for the next generation of products. So as new products are introduced using these standards and old products are withdrawn, the aim is to achieve 100% reuse and keep the standards up to date as the market develops. In addition, these documents have now been contributed to the TMForum for wider international adoption

So with a major part of the original work plan complete, notably the ebXML profile, process frameworks & schemas for orders (L2C) & faults (T2R), and the B2B Designers & Developers Guide, we now need to consider the future.

Key to survey question numbers:

1.1   Reducing the number and complexity of interfaces has reduced development and maintenance costs through development and reuse of standard components and capabilities;
1.2   Standard components means development times come down reducing time to market for new products and services;
1.3   Standard high quality components and capabilities make them more able to support complex trading relationships and maintain end-to-end services for consumers;
1.4   Standard interfaces means more focus and investment on non-functional operational requirements such as security, resilience and scalability;
1.5   Improved and standard interfaces means less things go wrong, costly manual intervention is replaced by zero touch working;
1.6   Establishing best practice means better quality services, less reinvention and confusion;
1.7   Overall NICC B2B has been a good thing for the industry and will lead to more benefits as the standards are reused for new product interfaces
2.1 Do you use BT Wholesale and/or Openreach B2B interfaces
2.2 To what extent do you believe BT use NICC standards for its B2B interfaces
2.3 To what extent do you use NICC B2B standards and best practice for your own product interfaces

2. Going forward we chose Option 1, which was: “Option 1. Implementation & maintenance (default option)

• Continue to implement existing standards & best practice agreed over the last 3 years including L2C & T2R process frameworks and schemas across new B2B interface developments;

• Maintain standards & best practice documentation on a project by project basis, ie where gaps in a standard are identified they will be updated;

• Maintain the NICC B2B web site, but archive all the development material, drafts, meeting notes etc.
• Continue to offer the NICC B2B standards and best practice documentation to other standards organisations like the current work with the TMF.
• Review NICC B2B status via quarterly or bi-annual calls as required and at Forums such as the proposed BT Wholesale Systems and process forum.“