Provisioning
Encyclopedia
In telecommunication
, provisioning is the process of preparing and equipping a network to allow it to provide (new) services to its users. In NS/EP telecommunications
services, "provisioning" equates to "initiation" and includes altering the state of an existing priority service or capability.
In a modern signal infrastructure employing information technology
at all levels, there is no distinction possible between telecommunications services and "higher level" infrastructure. Accordingly, provisioning configures any required systems, provides users with access to data and technology resources, and refers to all enterprise-level information resource management involved.
From a management
perspective, it is typically managed by a CIO
, and necessarily involves human resources
and IT departments cooperating to:
As its most central responsibility, the provisioning process monitors access rights and privileges to ensure the security of an enterprise's resources and user privacy. As a secondary responsibility, it ensures compliance and minimizes the vulnerability of systems to penetration and abuse. As a tertiary responsibility, it tries to reduce the amount of custom configuration using boot image control
and other methods that radically reduce the number of different configurations involved.
"Provisioning" often appears in the context of virtualization, orchestration
, utility computing
, cloud computing
, and open configuration concepts and projects. For instance, the OASIS
Provisioning Services Technical Committee (PSTC) defines an XML
-based framework for exchanging user, resource, and service provisioning information, e.g. SPML
(Service Provisioning Markup Language) for "managing the provisioning and allocation of identity information and system resources within and between organizations".
Once provisioned, the process of SysOp
ping ensures that services are maintained to the expected standards. Provisioning thus refers only to the setup or startup part of the service operation, and SysOpping to the ongoing responsibility.
from a pool of available servers, load the appropriate software (operating system
, device driver
s, middleware
, and application
s), appropriately customize and configure the system and the software to create or change a boot image
for this server, and then change its parameters, such as IP address
, IP Gateway
to find associated network and storage resources (sometimes separated as resource provisioning) to audit the system. By auditing the system, you ensure OVAL
compliance with limit vulnerability, ensure compliance, or install patches. After these actions, you restart the system and load the new software. This makes the system ready for operation. Typically an internet service provider
(ISP) or Network Operations Center
will perform these tasks to a well-defined set of parameters, for example, a boot image that the organization has approved and which uses software it has license to. Many instances of such a boot image create a virtual dedicated host
.
There are many software products available to automate the provisioning of servers, services and end-user devices. Middleware and applications can be installed either when the operating system is installed or afterwards by using an Application Service Automation
tool. Further questions are addressed in academia such as when provisioning should be issued and how many servers are needed in multi-tier, or multi-service applications.
In short, server provisioning configures servers based on resource requirements. The use of a hardware or software component (e.g. single/dual processor, RAM, HDD, RAID controller, a number of LAN cards, applications, OS, etc.) depends on the functionality of the server, such as ISP, virtualization, NOS, or voice processing. Server redundancy depends on the availability of servers in the organization. Critical applications have less downtime when using cluster servers, RAID, or a mirroring system.
Service used by most larger scale centers in part to avoid this. Additional resource provisioning may be done per service.
, consolidated user administration, delegated user administration, and federated change control. User objects may represent employees, contractors, vendors, partners, customers or other recipients of a service. Services may include electronic mail, inclusion in a published user directory
, access to a database
, access to a network or mainframe, etc. User provisioning is a type of identity management
software, particularly useful within organizations, where users may be represented by multiple objects on multiple systems.
See User provisioning software
.
, MMS
and Instant Messaging
for an existing subscriber of a mobile phone
network, and any gateways to standard Internet chat
or mail
services. The network operator typically sends these settings to the subscriber's handset using SMS
or WAP
as mobile operating system
s accept.
A typical example of provisioning is the BlackBerry
services. A mobile user who is using voice services wishes to switch to BlackBerry services as his emails and data is very crucial for him to carry, his BlackBerry services are "provisioned" and thus he is able to stay connected through push emails and other features of BlackBerry services.
, such as mobile internet to a mobile phone
, agnostic of the features of said device. These may include operating system type and versions, Java version, browser version, screen form factors, audio capabilities, language settings and a plethora of other characteristics. As of April 2006, an estimated 5000 permutations are relevant. Mobile content provisioning facilitates a common user experience, though delivered on widely different handsets.
There are four approaches to provisioning an internet access:
Telecommunication
Telecommunication is the transmission of information over significant distances to communicate. In earlier times, telecommunications involved the use of visual signals, such as beacons, smoke signals, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags, and optical heliographs, or audio messages via coded...
, provisioning is the process of preparing and equipping a network to allow it to provide (new) services to its users. In NS/EP telecommunications
NS/EP telecommunications
NS/EP telecommunications is an abbreviation for National Security or Emergency Preparedness telecommunications of the United States. Telecommunications services that are used to maintain a state of readiness or to respond to and manage any event or crisis that causes or could cause injury or harm...
services, "provisioning" equates to "initiation" and includes altering the state of an existing priority service or capability.
In a modern signal infrastructure employing information technology
Information technology
Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...
at all levels, there is no distinction possible between telecommunications services and "higher level" infrastructure. Accordingly, provisioning configures any required systems, provides users with access to data and technology resources, and refers to all enterprise-level information resource management involved.
From a management
Management
Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively...
perspective, it is typically managed by a CIO
Chief information officer
Chief information officer , or information technology director, is a job title commonly given to the most senior executive in an enterprise responsible for the information technology and computer systems that support enterprise goals...
, and necessarily involves human resources
Human resources
Human resources is a term used to describe the individuals who make up the workforce of an organization, although it is also applied in labor economics to, for example, business sectors or even whole nations...
and IT departments cooperating to:
- give users access to data repositories or grant authorization systems, networks applications and databases based on a unique user identity, and
- appropriate for their use of hardware resources, such as computers, mobile phones and pagers.
As its most central responsibility, the provisioning process monitors access rights and privileges to ensure the security of an enterprise's resources and user privacy. As a secondary responsibility, it ensures compliance and minimizes the vulnerability of systems to penetration and abuse. As a tertiary responsibility, it tries to reduce the amount of custom configuration using boot image control
Boot image control
A boot image control strategy is a common way to reduce total cost of ownership in organizations with large numbers of similar computers being used by users with common needs, e.g. a large corporation or government agency...
and other methods that radically reduce the number of different configurations involved.
"Provisioning" often appears in the context of virtualization, orchestration
Orchestration (computers)
Orchestration describes the automated arrangement, coordination, and management of complex computer systems, middleware, and services.It is often discussed as having an inherent intelligence or even implicitly autonomic control, but those are largely aspirations or analogies rather than technical...
, utility computing
Utility computing
Utility computing is the packaging of computing resources, such as computation, storage and services, as a metered service similar to a traditional public utility...
, cloud computing
Cloud computing
Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility over a network ....
, and open configuration concepts and projects. For instance, the OASIS
OASIS (organization)
The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards is a global consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of e-business and web service standards...
Provisioning Services Technical Committee (PSTC) defines an XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
-based framework for exchanging user, resource, and service provisioning information, e.g. SPML
SPML
Service Provisioning Markup Language is an XML-based framework, being developed by OASIS, for exchanging user, resource and service provisioning information between cooperating organizations....
(Service Provisioning Markup Language) for "managing the provisioning and allocation of identity information and system resources within and between organizations".
Once provisioned, the process of SysOp
SysOp
A sysop is an administrator of a multi-user computer system, such as a bulletin board system or an online service virtual community. It may also be used to refer to administrators of other Internet-based network services....
ping ensures that services are maintained to the expected standards. Provisioning thus refers only to the setup or startup part of the service operation, and SysOpping to the ongoing responsibility.
Server provisioning
Server provisioning is a set of actions to prepare a server with appropriate systems, data and software, and make it ready for network operation. Typical tasks when provisioning a server are: select a serverServer (computing)
In the context of client-server architecture, a server is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, the "clients". Thus, the "server" performs some computational task on behalf of "clients"...
from a pool of available servers, load the appropriate software (operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
, device driver
Device driver
In computing, a device driver or software driver is a computer program allowing higher-level computer programs to interact with a hardware device....
s, middleware
Middleware
Middleware is computer software that connects software components or people and their applications. The software consists of a set of services that allows multiple processes running on one or more machines to interact...
, and application
Application software
Application software, also known as an application or an "app", is computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks. Examples include enterprise software, accounting software, office suites, graphics software and media players. Many application programs deal principally with...
s), appropriately customize and configure the system and the software to create or change a boot image
Boot image
A boot image is a type of disk image . When it is transferred onto a boot device it allows the associated hardware to boot....
for this server, and then change its parameters, such as IP address
IP address
An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label assigned to each device participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing...
, IP Gateway
Gateway (telecommunications)
In telecommunications, the term gateway has the following meaning:*In a communications network, a network node equipped for interfacing with another network that uses different protocols....
to find associated network and storage resources (sometimes separated as resource provisioning) to audit the system. By auditing the system, you ensure OVAL
Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language
Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language is an international, information security, community standard to promote open and publicly available security content, and to standardize the transfer of this information across the entire spectrum of security tools and services...
compliance with limit vulnerability, ensure compliance, or install patches. After these actions, you restart the system and load the new software. This makes the system ready for operation. Typically an internet service provider
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...
(ISP) or Network Operations Center
Network Operations Center
A network operations center is one or more locations from which control is exercised over a computer, television broadcast, or telecommunications network....
will perform these tasks to a well-defined set of parameters, for example, a boot image that the organization has approved and which uses software it has license to. Many instances of such a boot image create a virtual dedicated host
Dedicated hosting service
A dedicated hosting service, dedicated server, or managed hosting service is a type of Internet hosting in which the client leases an entire server not shared with anyone. This is more flexible than shared hosting, as organizations have full control over the server, including choice of operating...
.
There are many software products available to automate the provisioning of servers, services and end-user devices. Middleware and applications can be installed either when the operating system is installed or afterwards by using an Application Service Automation
Application service automation
Application service automation is the field where the operations needed to deploy and service data center applications are automated in order to centrally and accurately control application change....
tool. Further questions are addressed in academia such as when provisioning should be issued and how many servers are needed in multi-tier, or multi-service applications.
In short, server provisioning configures servers based on resource requirements. The use of a hardware or software component (e.g. single/dual processor, RAM, HDD, RAID controller, a number of LAN cards, applications, OS, etc.) depends on the functionality of the server, such as ISP, virtualization, NOS, or voice processing. Server redundancy depends on the availability of servers in the organization. Critical applications have less downtime when using cluster servers, RAID, or a mirroring system.
Service used by most larger scale centers in part to avoid this. Additional resource provisioning may be done per service.
User provisioning
User provisioning refers to the creation, maintenance and deactivation of user objects and user attributes, as they exist in one or more systems, directories or applications, in response to automated or interactive business processes. User provisioning software may include one or more of the following processes: change propagation, self service workflowWorkflow
A workflow consists of a sequence of connected steps. It is a depiction of a sequence of operations, declared as work of a person, a group of persons, an organization of staff, or one or more simple or complex mechanisms. Workflow may be seen as any abstraction of real work...
, consolidated user administration, delegated user administration, and federated change control. User objects may represent employees, contractors, vendors, partners, customers or other recipients of a service. Services may include electronic mail, inclusion in a published user directory
Directory service
A directory service is the software system that stores, organizes and provides access to information in a directory. In software engineering, a directory is a map between names and values. It allows the lookup of values given a name, similar to a dictionary...
, access to a database
Database
A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...
, access to a network or mainframe, etc. User provisioning is a type of identity management
Identity management
Identity management is a broad administrative area that deals with identifying individuals in a system and controlling access to the resources in that system by placing restrictions on the established identities of the individuals.Identity management is multidisciplinary and covers many...
software, particularly useful within organizations, where users may be represented by multiple objects on multiple systems.
See User provisioning software
User provisioning software
User provisioning software is software intended to help organizationsmore quickly, cheaply, reliably and securely manage information about userson multiple systems and applications...
.
Mobile subscriber provisioning
This refers to the setting up of new services, such as GPRSGeneral Packet Radio Service
General packet radio service is a packet oriented mobile data service on the 2G and 3G cellular communication system's global system for mobile communications . GPRS was originally standardized by European Telecommunications Standards Institute in response to the earlier CDPD and i-mode...
, MMS
Multimedia Messaging Service
Multimedia Messaging Service, or MMS, is a standard way to send messages that include multimedia content to and from mobile phones. It extends the core SMS capability that allowed exchange of text messages only up to 160 characters in length.The most popular use is to send photographs from...
and Instant Messaging
Instant messaging
Instant Messaging is a form of real-time direct text-based chatting communication in push mode between two or more people using personal computers or other devices, along with shared clients. The user's text is conveyed over a network, such as the Internet...
for an existing subscriber of a mobile phone
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
network, and any gateways to standard Internet chat
Online chat
Online chat may refer to any kind of communication over the Internet, that offers an instantaneous transmission of text-based messages from sender to receiver, hence the delay for visual access to the sent message shall not hamper the flow of communications in any of the directions...
or mail
Mail
Mail, or post, is a system for transporting letters and other tangible objects: written documents, typically enclosed in envelopes, and also small packages are delivered to destinations around the world. Anything sent through the postal system is called mail or post.In principle, a postal service...
services. The network operator typically sends these settings to the subscriber's handset using SMS
Short message service
Short Message Service is a text messaging service component of phone, web, or mobile communication systems, using standardized communications protocols that allow the exchange of short text messages between fixed line or mobile phone devices...
or WAP
Wireless Application Protocol
Wireless Application Protocol is a technical standard for accessing information over a mobile wireless network.A WAP browser is a web browser for mobile devices such as mobile phones that uses the protocol.Before the introduction of WAP, mobile service providers had limited opportunities to offer...
as mobile operating system
Mobile operating system
A mobile operating system, also known as a mobile OS, mobile software platform or a handheld operating system, is the operating system that controls a mobile device or information appliance—similar in principle to an operating system such as Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux distributions that controls a...
s accept.
A typical example of provisioning is the BlackBerry
BlackBerry
BlackBerry is a line of mobile email and smartphone devices developed and designed by Canadian company Research In Motion since 1999.BlackBerry devices are smartphones, designed to function as personal digital assistants, portable media players, internet browsers, gaming devices, and much more...
services. A mobile user who is using voice services wishes to switch to BlackBerry services as his emails and data is very crucial for him to carry, his BlackBerry services are "provisioned" and thus he is able to stay connected through push emails and other features of BlackBerry services.
Mobile content provisioning
This refers to delivering mobile contentMobile content
Mobile content is any type of media which is viewed or used on mobile phones, like ringtones, graphics, discount offers, games, movies, and GPS navigation. As mobile phone use has grown since the mid 1990s, the significance of the devices in everyday life has grown accordingly...
, such as mobile internet to a mobile phone
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
, agnostic of the features of said device. These may include operating system type and versions, Java version, browser version, screen form factors, audio capabilities, language settings and a plethora of other characteristics. As of April 2006, an estimated 5000 permutations are relevant. Mobile content provisioning facilitates a common user experience, though delivered on widely different handsets.
Internet access provisioning
When getting a user / customer online, beyond user provisioning and network provisioning, the client system must be configured. This process may includes many steps, depending on the connection technology in question (DSL, Cable, Fibre, etc.). The possible steps are:- modem configuration
- authentication with network
- install drivers
- setup Wireless LANWireless LANA wireless local area network links two or more devices using some wireless distribution method , and usually providing a connection through an access point to the wider internet. This gives users the mobility to move around within a local coverage area and still be connected to the network...
- secure operating system (primarily for Windows only)
- configure browser provider-specifics
- e-mail provisioning (create mailboxes and aliases)
- e-mail configuration in client systems
- install additional support software
- install add-on packages purchased by the customer
- etc.
There are four approaches to provisioning an internet access:
- Hand out manuals. Manuals are a great help for experienced users, but inexperienced users will need to call the support hotline several times until all internet services are accessible. Every unintended change in the configuration, by user mistake or due to a software error, results in additional calls.
- On-site setup by a technician. Sending a technician on-site is the most reliable approach from the provider’s point of view, as the person ensures that the internet access is working, before leaving the customer’s premises. This advantage comes at high costs – either for the provider or the customer, depending on the business model. Furthermore it is inconvenient for customers, as they have to wait until they get an installation appointment and because they need to take a day off from work. For repairing an internet connection on-site or phone support will be needed again.
- Server-side remote setup. Server-side modem configuration uses a protocol called TR-069TR-069TR-069 is a DSL Forum technical specification entitled CPE WAN Management Protocol...
. It is widely established and reliable. At the current stage it can only be used for modem configuration. Protocol extensions are discussed, but not yet practically implemented, particularly because most client devices and applications do not support them yet. All other steps of the provisioning process are left to the user, typically causing lots of rather long calls to the support hotline.
- Installation CD. Also called a "client-side self-service installation" CD, it can cover the entire process from modem configuration to setting up client applications, including home networking devices. The software typically acts autonomously, i.e. it doesn’t need an online connection and an expensive backend infrastructure. During such an installation process the software usually also install diagnosis and self-repair applications that support customers in case of problems, avoiding costly hotline calls. Such client-side applications also open completely new possibilities for marketing, cross- and up-selling. Such solutions come from highly specialised companies or directly from the provider’s development department.