The special services automation initiative: an overall architecture for flow-through operations

AT&T´s special services automation (SSA) initiative provides an overall functional and network architecture for a number of operations support systems that, together, will radically reduce the cost of special services circuit installation and maintenance. Under SSA, currently deployed systems will be updated with the latest technology, including artificial intelligence, standard protocols, and new flexible human interfaces, and new systems will be integrated with the old to form a flexible multivendor environment. The SSA architecture is reviewed, and the design features that allow the systems under the SSA umbrella to be implemented separately, in combination with each other, and in concert with multiple vendors´ systems to provide flow-through operations are described