Subject: [NEXTEL-1] CROME Overview and Business Case

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2003 04:39:13 -0500

Introduction

The purpose of this document, "CROME Overview and Business Case", is intended to provide
an overview and a business case for the acquisition of the CROME system by your
organization
via brief introductions and descriptions of the various capabilities of the CROME system.

This overview document does not provide a complete evaluation. Quantum also recommends
that your organization review the "CROME Client Users Guide" which describes with the
initial
steps of installing CROME as a native application and invoking CROME. The "CROME Client
Users Guide" covers each of the major features of the client GUI from running reports,
editing/creating reports, editing/creating formulas, editing/creating groups, and includes
other
sections that assist in the process of creating extremely complex and powerful reports.

About CROME

CROME (Cell Reporting and Object Management Environment) is a high performance fifth
generation client/server distributed DSS system custom crafted to meet the needs of
wireless
telecommunications providers.

CROME is a performance management (PM) tool that rapidly solves the needs of real-time,
historical, and long-term trend analysis of statistical performance of a national wireless
network
infrastructure.

CROME can measure trends and identify problems down to the level of an individual radio or

channel in a wireless network, thus it is invaluable for assisting RF engineers and system

planners. However, the true power of CROME is seen in its ability to quickly and
efficiently mine
and present low level data utilized by engineers into comprehensive, concise national
level
reports used by national staff, including marketing, sales and top corporate executives.

CROME optimizes all data sources for high speed secure access across an intranet or even
the
Internet and eliminates both the need for, and the delay from, the traditional data
analyst
functions. The CROME system does this by providing easy-to-use exploration and reporting
tools to every individual within the organization. Traditional wireless vendors are making
far
reaching decisions based on intuition because managers and executives have to act fast and

cannot get timely information. CROME solves this problem by allowing the decision maker to

quickly access information directly in any manner he or she sees fit.

End users (via the CROME client) or automated gateways (via the CROME server) can export
data and reports into many formats such as traditional PC office suites (e.g., Microsoft
Excel) for
distribution and presentation. In addition CROME supports standard HTML formats for basic
web access and interfaces to third party applications such as fault management systems
(e.g.,
NetExpert).

The CROME Client

The CROME client is a 100% pure JAVA application/applet for managing the reporting needs
of
wireless service providers.

CROME reporting can be run from inside a browser (such as Netscape or Internet Explorer)
or
can be run as a stand-alone application. When run as an application, there are no browser
security restrictions, and thus more features are available (such as local printing, local
file access
to save reports and formulas, etc.). Every authorized user in your organization is enabled
to run
reports when they need them, across time periods they require, and with their own custom
groupings or filters.

Operationally, CROME provides the means to quickly produce reports that have been defined
locally by the user or stored as "system-wide" reports by the CROME administrator.

The report editing capabilities are extremely flexible, with a point-and-click interface
to format the
report and to select the appropriate raw statistical data (i.e. pegs) or formulas.
Formulas
themselves are defined with the same point-and-click interface, and can contain a variety
of pegs,
mathematical functions, constants, and even formulas-within-formulas.

Even after a report and its formulas are defined, the same report can display information
in
hundreds of different ways, by dynamically selecting choices when running the report. Such

choices include time granularity (hours, days, weeks, months years), summary options
(daily,
bouncing-busy-hour, etc.), viewing the data by its network element, and specifying the
desired
physical network level.

CROME also provides the ability to run any report within an arbitrary grouping of
user-defined
network elements, and a flexible editor to create the groups (which allows direct
selection of
known network elements and regular-expression grouping).

The CROME Server

The CROME server is a distributed and highly scalable data warehouse / decision support
system that provides near instant enterprise access to key statistical performance data.
Together
one or more CROME servers and at least one CROME client or API gateway comprise a CROME
system.

A set of CROME servers can also be configured to mirror each other such that they form a
fault
tolerant "ring" for high availability and non-stop operation. In such a configuration, a
failure of
an individual server is completely transparent to any CROME client.

The CROME design offers orders of magnitude performance over traditional RDBMS solutions
via proprietary space and time optimizations - yet delivers its data in a multitude of
useful formats
to any desktop or web-top within the enterprise. CROME servers maintain data for time
spans
ranging from six months to decades (depending upon available storage) providing a
framework
for powerful historical and trend analysis.

The CROME open Gateway API is an open solution for data import, able to acquire data from
both equipment and legacy systems including serial, TCP/IP, X.25, direct RDBMS and CMIP/Q3

interfaces. For more information, refer to the document "CROME open Gateway API
specification".

The CROME open Reporting API is an open solution for data export allowing easy
distribution
of data to third party products. For more information, refer to the document "CROME open
Reporting API specification". Some actual working integration examples using this API are
shown in this document.

About Quantum

Quantum is a Systems Integrator and Software Developer for mission critical applications:
QSI
personnel provide our clients with in depth experience in the development and integration
of
custom real-time, mission-critical systems for telecommunications, petrochemical and
aerospace
industries.

Quantum is a leader in applying technology: Using our internally developed APIs and
products
we are able to offer clients significant technology advantages and cost savings. Developed

using object oriented design concepts, the QSI library has been providing clients with:

Significantly reduced development time
Minimal maintenance for Zero Administration Costs (ZAC)
Multi-Platform Software Design and Porting for true portability
Client/server computing
Internet development CGI & PERL scripts, JAVA, SERVLET and proprietary solutions
Real-time "Mission Critical" application development
DBMS, Data Warehousing, and data mining
Graphical and Character user interfaces
Interfaces, i.e. middle-ware, to both relational and object database systems
Network Management via CMIP, SNMPv1, and SNMPv2
Extensive JAVA application expertise including DBMS, VRML and DSS systems
Web hosting, and advanced Web site development via Apache Web server products
Hardware and Software Sales (DBMS/Workstations/Peripherals/Software)

Quantum has leveraged over 30 man years of experience in the creation of both wireless and

wireline performance reporting tools into the development of the CROME product line to
meet
the unique and demanding reporting requirements of telecommunications operators.

For further information on Quantum, CROME, or to establish a full scale
Demonstration/Validation deployment prior to purchase, please contact the Wireless
Products
Division at Quantum Systems Integrators, Inc. at (714) 428-1133 -or- E-mail
[email-masked] .

Cost Benefit Analysis

As well as providing an overview of CROME capabilities, this document is also meant to
illustrate how CROME can create significant cost savings for a wireless operator. Many of
the
discussions and examples throughout this document are specifically focused on how the
planning and maintenance of a national network infrastructure can be improved.

The attributes of CROME that saves your organization time and money are as follows:

Performance -- reduced time-to-solution: answers in seconds NOT hours.
Data accuracy -- the elimination of time consuming error prone tasks.
Flexibility -- the ability to be extended, adapted, and integrated with other systems.
Access -- the ability to reach the data and gain meaningful insights from anywhere in the
enterprise.
Needs -- support specific needs such as multiple busy hours crafted to specific service
types.
Scalable -- the ability to grow to larger and larger deployments.
Commercial – commercial, off-the-shelf products are more reliable, cheaper to maintain,
and in many cases have new features introduced at no cost due to other customer
requirements.
Proven -- Installed customer bases both nationally and internationally.
Availability -- CROME exists today and can meet your needs "as is". It is not "vapor
ware"

Typical uses of CROME that provide positive measurable return on investment:

CROME can be used to optimizes major equipment resources, at the proper busy hour, to
minimize procurement and installation (for example, help accurately determine how many
Base Radios or DS0s are really needed to meet the desired grade of service to the
customer - or - planned build-out). This lowers and delays capital expenditures.
The speed or time-to-solution of CROME (get answers in seconds instead of hours)
drastically reduces the engineering hours necessary to perform critical analytical tasks.
This lowers labor costs and enables better planning, more detailed forecasting and
"what-if" analysis.
Standardization: the CROME system both promotes and enforces standards, increases
organizational memory and efficiency. In many cases reports can encapsulate you
companies best "expert knowledge" and thus disseminate best practices throughout the
organization.
CROME's performance also allows near real-time reporting and proactive correction of out
of variance situations. This improves customer satisfaction.
The CROME open Reporting API allows ease of integration into both analyst’s PC
desktop applications as well as server-side data and object management systems,
minimizing the time users must spend with other local and enterprise software.
Data sharing supports a "single service" concept of data distribution in the enterprise
eliminating hard to maintain redundant application islands. CROME can read information
from other central data service points as well as perform its primary role as the
performance management (PM) service.
Integration with legacy systems (in both data input and data output) minimizes upgrade
costs in other subsystems and enhances the lifetime and usability of these systems.
CROME opens up possibilities to proactively and automatically tune the system to meet
specific one time events (e.g., the Olympics) or marketing promotions.

Other:

Elimination of BIG iron costs, the CROME solution does not need expensive multi-million
dollar platforms like the high end Sun's E10000 data center platform to operate or scale
to
larger and larger deployments.
Elimination of hidden costs like RDBMS licenses, which grow quickly at high user
counts, and/or extremely expensive CPU based licensing. The speed of CROME minimizes
end user connect time to the RDBMS and thus lowers the cost of ancillary third party
software.
Very low management, upgrade and support costs. Quantum manages overseas CROME
servers in both Asia and the Middle East in a completely remote fashion. All client
software is self-updating.
Quantum has an unmatched client/vendor relationship. Simply ask any direct customer of
Quantum services.

Best in the World Performance

CROME is not a simple batch processing system used to generate reports from a flat RDBMS.
CROME is a complex, complete data management and data mining environment offering an
unprecedented level of performance over traditional batch processing and direct SQL based
queries. CROME offers outstanding performance whether doing a quarterly report across a
multi-switch national area or reporting on all available data across thousands of sectors
for any
given day. Simply put, CROME does what our competitors can only claim. When using CROME
as your reporting tool, full custom ad-hoc market and region level reports are complete in
a few
seconds and national reports across scores of switches in a few minutes.

CROME reports are always fully user definable and are generated in a matter of seconds -
most
competing systems require lengthy batch processing runs taking several hours. CROME is an
ideal system to drastically improve time-to-solution for performance management reporting.

On Demand Reporting

The CROME database is the only source of data for the CROME client. There is no
intermediate
files or redundant data. Every report is run on demand from the most current and accurate
data
available.

Traditional solutions typically batch-process data and create intermediate files and or
tables for
later analysis stages. These systems lead to loosely coupled and poorly managed flows of
data.
Traditional batch systems decouple the final step or steps of processing from the original
data
source, therefore the end-user (or final report) remains unaware of changes due to either
corrections of late data.

Control and Consistency

CROME provides unsurpassed version control of your company’s critical reporting, yet still

allows ad-hoc analysis by any engineer in the organization. Thanks to CROME's built-in
version
stamping and source stamping for both formulas and reports and compatibility tracking
system,
you won’t find yourself presenting the wrong data to your management due to an outdated
formula.

Standard reports can be defined and mandated. All reports include version stamping to
allow the
organization to unambiguously identify what report and what formula set was used to ensure

that, where appropriate, approved corporate standards are followed. However end users are
still
free to experiment, their reporting outputs are simply stamped and versioned as a "local"
non-standard or non-approved result.

Since all released versions are maintained on the CROME server, comparisons between
various
revisions or "apples to apples" analysis can be done to validate and/or prove superior
formula/reporting sets.

The design goal of CROME promotes organizational uniformity and standards but does not
hamper the engineer or manager in performing special ad-hoc analysis quickly, in localized

contexts, to respond quickly to local emergencies or perform local "what if" analysis.

Empowerment

Because CROME client software is 100% JAVA, PC users now have the power of a true data
mining application with the performance and flexibility previously only offered by
expensive
workstations. Installation onto any Win95/98/2000/NT PC platform is done via a simple
click from
a Web page. No longer is there an analyst between you and your data. CROME frees the
analyst
from his typical role, a single interface between reporting tools and a multitude of
report
generation requests, to his proper role of validating formulas and designing reports.

CROME allows every authorized user in your organization to run reports when they need
them.
This level of empowerment allows non-engineering departments such as finance, sales, and
marketing to get important data instantly. For example there may be a financial need to
track radio
counts in the field that might take weeks (and hours of phone calls) to regional markets -
this
information is instantly served by CROME. We have found that CROME customers constantly
find new and novel uses for enterprise data.

Because CROME delivers answers to questions swiftly, your company makes the best use of
its
statistical and performance data to proactively improve its current operations,
strategically plan
and budget future resource needs, and avoid costly mistakes.

Resource Analysis and Capacity Planning

CROME includes precise high speed mathematical features to quickly generate "one button"
capacity planning reports. One typical use of CROME reports is in resource and capacity
planning. Built-in Elrang B, Erlang C and grade of service (gos) functions instantly and
accurately
identify resource bottlenecks in wireless and wireline networks.

CROME also allows "what if" analysis. For example a report/formula set can be modified to
adjust
channel reservation parameters or "drop" one radio from all sectors in an RF network to
view the
possible impact of provisioning changes, or perhaps over provisioning, of RF resources.

Wireline planning

CROME can analyze dozens of Nortel DMS switches at various busy hours in a matter of
seconds and generate a report showing only those trunk groups (or routes) that are under
provisioned. This type of report can tell the end user exactly how many DS0's must be
added to
each under-provisioned trunk group to meet a user specified grade of service target.

The above report took under nine (8.6) seconds to run across all trunk groups in six fully

burdened Nortel DMS switches. The resulting CROME report identified nine routes which
require additional DS0 circuits to meet a specified grade of service level.

The above report shows data "if and only if" the number of working circuits (WCCT) is less
than
the justifiable number of DS0s (WCCT_TRU_JSTD) required to meet the customers 1% grade of
service target (WCCT_CAR_TRU_GOS) for voice traffic (i.e. TRU from the OM group TRK).

Of course all the functions of the CROME client are still available, such as sorting,
limiting and
"on the fly" creation of new experimental thresholds. For more information on the CROME
client
software, please refer to the CROME Client Users Guide.

The same data is simple to export into other tools such as Microsoft Excel or Sun
Microsystems'
Star Office. Below is the same data exported via the "File/Export/Result Set" menu
operation.

Note, this report instantly (under nine seconds) performed extensive Erlang-B analysis, an

intensive mathematical summation of factorial results, on every trunk group and found the
minimal number of DS0's required to meet a defined grade of service metric during a voice
traffic
busy hour.

It is also important to realize that no manual Erlang or probability table lookups by your
RF
engineers were needed all the required mathematical capabilities for capacity planning are
built
into the CROME client application.

Wireless RF planning

CROME can also dynamically analyze multi-function RF resources to determine and report the

optimum radio counts per sector in a wireless network and allow fast "what if" analysis
when
varying pre-allocated and dynamic resource constraints for various RF allocations.

The iDEN environment where different service types (i.e., dispatch, interconnect, and
packet
data) co-exist in the same RF environment can benefit drastically from CROME analysis.
Each
service type has its own unique busy hour due to varying customer peak usage. In addition,

when calculating the grade of service, each service type requires specific sets of
formulas to
correctly analyze that service type.

CROME allows every service type to be correctly analyzed with its own specific formulas at
its
own unique busy hour. For example, a result of a dispatch grade of service analysis is
shown
below that takes into account the impact from the reserved channels for interconnect (i.e.
the
provisioning item i3tchminnum).

The above report took under 80 (71.3) seconds to run across sectors in five (5) iDEN OMCs
and
then was exported to Microsoft Excel. The applied threshold and sort shows the sectors
with the
worst grade of service at a dispatch busy period of 30 minutes (a 30 minute busy period
has
higher peaks than a busy hour) sorted by the formula "gos_t0". This analysis is used for
dispatch and packet data capacity planning in an iDEN environment (a different report is
required
to handle normal interconnect calling grade of service levels).

Note, this report performed extensive Erlang-C analysis on every sector and found the
actual
measured grade of service ("gos") at several different call delays while taking into
account
reserved channels and dynamic channel allocation between service types in an iDEN
environment. It is also important to realize that once again no Erlang or probability
table lookups
were required - all the required mathematical capabilities are built into the CROME client

application.

Busy Periods

One of the most important features of CROME is that your organization can define the
actual
service windows (i.e., fixed windows of time) and the formulas used to calculate busy
periods,
typically called a bouncing busy hour. In addition, CROME allows any number of important
service windows or busy periods to be defined.

In the iDEN environment this ability is critical for correctly assessing and analyzing all
service
types. For example the dispatch busy period is NOT the same as the interconnect busy
period
and thus doing any resource planning on the wrong busy period can lead to expensive and
costly mistakes.

A quick illustration via an example of running a capacity planning report on (1) the WRONG
busy
hour and then on (2) the RIGHT busy hour, will now be discussed to highlight the need for
multiple busy hours.

Below is a gos report built for dispatch analysis BUT incorrectly run on an interconnect
busy
hour (it is sorted by gos_t0 and limited to the top 10 items):

Below is the same gos report built for dispatch analysis BUT correctly run on an dispatch
busy
hour (it is sorted by gos_t0 and limited to the top 10 items):

It should be apparent that the results are off between the two reports by about two orders
of
magnitude! It is critical to have the proper tools to analyze your data in the proper
periods.
Competitive solutions that only provide one busy period will result in mistakes with a
very high
cost in either capital equipment and/or customer satisfaction.

Summary

CROME provides instant reporting, multiple busy period support, and eliminates tedious
table
lookups for functions like Erlang B and Erlang C. These key mathematical features coupled
with
high performance frees the RF engineers in your organization from time consuming tedious
and
error prone manual work. In addition, more exotic tuning and planning equations can be
quickly
crafted to meet explicit environmental or strategic constraints.

In addition, CROME can be configured to also access and utilize key provisioning constants

such as i3tchminnum and dchprefnum to facilitate exotic calculations when RF resources are

shared between service types.

CROME open Reporting API

The CROME open Reporting API is an open solution for data export allowing easy
distribution
of data to third party products. For more information customers should refer to the
document
"CROME open Reporting API specification".

This section will highlight the use of the "CROME open Reporting API" and currently
existing
integration with a variety of sub-systems and data distribution types.

Built in CROME client export functions

CROME's basic User Interface (UI) can directly export data (with or without formulas
applied) to
flat files or to spreadsheets like Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Works, and Sun Microsystems
Star
Office. This allows easy publishing and dissemination of reports across the enterprise
using the
familiar PC-based products your organizational staff works with every day.

CROME client

Many of the examples in this document show Excel style exports, which are generated from
the
CROME client via a simple menu selection, at which time the Excel application is invoked
and
data is automatically populated into a worksheet. Quantum also provided macros to graph
CROME data within Excel via a hot key.

For more detailed and expanded information on CROME client capabilities please refer to
the
CROME Client Users Guide.

Built in WEB/HTML/GIF export

CROME's open Report API directly supports automatic generation of graphs, spreadsheets,
flat
files and GIF images for automatic publishing to a standard web server.

Typically, we recommend the use of the CROME client, however there are instances where
organizations want to have a few standard reports with fixed filters to be automatically
and
permanently published on a web server. Another possibility or reason to use CROME's web
export interface is to publish quality of service or uptime reports for a specific
customer (or even
the general public) on a non-secure www server exposed and available to the Internet.

Shown below is CROME Web Reports, and feature of CROME that provides HTML-based
CROME generated report/GIF sets that can be placed on any web server for instant access
(without the Java based CROME client) from any browser.

Built in CROME Server Functions

The CROME open Report API directly supports in-house analysis tools to create outputs such

as "top N" sorted variance reports, and provides a performance management hooks to other
third
party products.

The CROME system has been providing real-time PM variance reporting for directly OSI's
NetExpert&trade; (as shown below). The integration of NetExpert was performed in a matter
of
hours by Quantum System's staff in Costa Mesa. Products such as Micromuse's Netcool® (or
any other TBD Fault Management System) can also be quickly be supported using the CROME
open Reporting API.

Note the same real-time out of variance information is also available now on a live,
self-updating
web page and via "HDML", which enables any packet data HDML compliant iDEN phone to
be a CROME data browser (See HDML and WAP section below).

OSI NetExpert

Below is a typical NetExpert display used with reports and thresholds made to the exact
requirements and specifications of a particular market.

Netcool/OMNIbus®

Below are a few a typical displays from Netcool®, another fault management engine, also
fed
with the CROME reports and thresholds of the particular market.

Please note the power of the CROME open Report API. This initial Netcool integration task
was
accomplished by a non-developer from Micromuse in a few hours via simple E-mail
instructions
(i.e. no manual was required). Note this is not yet a full implementation but a quick
validation to
prove that data can in fact be easily exported from CROME into yet another system.

The formulas/thresholds used in the variance reports

The CROME Real Time data is generally 70-90 minutes behind the current time, since the OMC

itself is about 40-60 minutes behind in processing EBTS upload data. The Phoenix data will

appear to only be 10-30 minutes behind, since its time zone is one hour off from the rest
of the
South West market.

Note that CROME has been configured to produce the "No Interconnect or Dispatch Traffic
(IMOU = 0 or DMOU = 0)" report ONLY between the hours of 7am and 7pm, because too many
sectors report silence during the off peak late night hours. In addition, new sites are
automatically filtered out during their first day of operation.

Issues to address in future releases:

1.(Filtering) Predefined sites are not currently masked from the report as there is no
current
automated centralized repository for information that specifies that sites are built but
not
active. This capability will shortly be added to the TOAD system at which time CROME
will also utilize the centralized exclusion list.
2.(Filtering) Test bed sites are not currently masked (see above).

Currently, CROME is configured to report on five (5) standard Sector-level variances, all
reported
for a half-hour period (lagged by about ninety minutes):

1. Subrate Mismatch (IBCR > IBQR)
IBCR is Interconnect Block Clear Rate defined as

t_tch_failed - h_failed_rscr - h_failed_thres
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

t_tch_reqs - h_failed_rscr - h_failed_thres - h_chan_alloc

and IBQR is Interconnect Blocking Queue Rate defined as:

t_tch_queued

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
t_tch_reqs - h_failed_rscr - h_failed_thres - h_chan_alloc

2. High Intererconnect Blocking (IBCR > 5%)
where IBCR is the Interconnect Blocked Clear Rate defined as:

t_tch_failed - h_failed_rscr - h_failed_thres
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

t_tch_reqs - h_failed_rscr - h_failed_thres - h_chan_alloc

3. High Interconnect Drop Rate (IDCR > 4% and IMOU > 100)
where IDCR is the Interconnect Dropped Call Rate defined as:

t_lost_calls
----------------------

t_tch_hold_times

and IMOU is the Interconnect Minutes of Use defined as:

i3_tch_c_secs + tel_i6_tch_c_secs
-----------------------------------------------

6000

4. High Dispatch Queueing (DBR > 5%)
where DBR is the Dispatch Blocking Rate defined as:

d_tch_queued + d_tch_failed
--------------------------------------
d_tch_reqs

5. No Interconnect or Dispatch Traffic (IMOU = 0 or DMOU = 0)
IMOU is the Interconnect Minutes of Use defined as:

i3_tch_c_secs + tel_i6_tch_c_secs
-----------------------------------------------

6000

and DMOU is the Dispatch Minutes of Use defined as

dis_i6_tch_c_secs
------------------------

6000

This data is actually created from a set of standard CROME reports written to find
variance
situations. The reports are automatically run every half hour and streamed into a Quantum
Multicast Buffer (or MCB) where it can be accessed by multiple applications.

For example, the same data feed is accessed by TCP/IP by both NetExpert&trade; and
Netcool®
fault analysis engines which utilize simple rule sets or probes to respectively analyze
the data
and generate alerts.

JAVA Servlets

CROME's open Report API directly supports Java Servlets. Below is a Java-based Servlet
hosted
on an Apache web server (which serves the same data as seen in the NetExpert&trade; alert
display shown previously).

Quantum constructed a self-updating web page (i.e. it automatically refreshes every 30
minutes)
utilizing Java Servlet technology to show variance data information in HTML format. This
web
page is accessible at http://newt.quantumsi.com/jbin/CromeVariance

This Servlet is currently in operation, serving customers current-as-possible PM variance
information 24 hours/day.

This web page displays the same data that is streamed into NetExpert and Netcool.

Note that each line has a red-green bar showing the number times this Sector was out of
variances over the last 48 half-hour reporting periods. In the above picture the
"hand-cursor"
mouse is positioned above the 20/48 image for 5205-Costa Mesa, Sect 3 1 6 0 1 61 22. This
means
that this sector was out of variance in 20 of the last 48 half-hour reporting periods. If
you click on
this image, you can get a detail page, as shown on the next page:

This page shows the result of clicking on the previous page – all of the variance
information for this
Sector over the most recent 24 hours.

Geographic Mapping of Sites with CROME Variance
Data and Foreign Data

The same data shown on the Variance web pages is also shown Geographically in CROME’s
Variance Mapping Applet, which also runs directly off of a web page:

This Applet shows all of the EBTS Sites. The map can be panned and zoomed to find
particular
sites, and allows the user to light up sites are out-of-variance based on the configured
variance
formulas (it can combine all the variances on the same map, or even rotate between the
different
variances at a user-chosen speed). Like the other variance pages, this is live,
current-as-possible
real-time variance reporting.

As you move the mouse around the map, the blue text above changes to show the site name,
the
number of sectors in that site, the number of BRs and the number of working BRs, the
lat/lon
position, and the OMC. The applet automatically updates its variance data every half hour
and
the geographic position of each site every day.

If you click on a site on the map, you will see the sectors and carriers that violated the
selected
variances. By clicking on a particular Sector or Carrier in the list, your web browser
will pop up
the appropriate CROME Variance Detail page, like the one shown on the previous page of
this
document.

Note that with this Mapping display you can filter on/off the different OMCs, the
different
configured variances, whether or not the map shows all sites or just those out of
variance, and
whether or not to show just sites known to be "On Air" or all sites.

Summary of Features:

View the current location of all sites against a geographical map background
Pan and Zoom

View/Hide Sites associated with any given OMC
Ability to see, based on the icon and color of the site, whether it has one, two or three
sectors.

Ability to see, based on the color of the site icon, whether or not it is currently out of
variance
(as near real-time as is available -- usually 90 minutes old)
Ability to select from one or more configured variances.
View/Hide Sites based on Out of Variance or Operating Normally
Ability to view all variances at once or automatically "rotate" between them (rotation is
typically
used to drive a single large Network Operations Display).
View/Hide Sites based whether or not the site is On Air or Off Air (this per site
indicator is
imported from a foreign data source via the generic CROME open API)
By simply moving the mouse over a site, you can see the site name, the number of sectors,
the
number of BRs (configured), the number of Working BRs (i.e. having forward transmit
power),
the lat/lon position, the OMC, and a textual description of the violated variances, if
any.
By simply clicking on a site in the geographic display, all the sectors and/or carriers
that are out
of variance associated with that site will be loaded into the "out of variance list box".

By simply double clicking the sector and/or carrier in the "out of variance list box", you
can view
the standard CROME Variance 24-hour detail page for that variance item. This will link and

invoke another Web page (refer to: Java Servlets/CromeVariance). This WEB based linking is

setup via the CROME open API.
The following section shows yet another way to consume CROME data using an iDEN phone, all

utilizing the same open data source and all relying on the same base CROME reports.

HDML and WAP

CROME's open Report API directly supports the new HDML and WAP standards. Applications
can easily be written to concisely and efficiently disseminate data to current generation
wireless
phones and/or pagers.

Below is an actual fully functional HDML application suite created by Quantum to highlight
both
CROME and iDEN phone packet data features. This software suite also includes the same
CROME variance reports (previously shown and discussed) but displays the results in the
small
limited display window of a wireless phone.

A simple "two state" example is shown below. CROME's daily processing completion time
stamp
(also other metrics) can be quickly accessed via an iDEN phone via various server menu
items
such as the "Server Status" selection.

The only user action required in the above example is to select [OK] for menu choice "3"
or
"Server Status" and to select [OK] to return back to the main CROME HDML wireless phone
menu.

The important point is any data such as key statistical performance data and even near
real-time
variance data can be viewed from anywhere at anytime via CROME's Open Report API, which
allows data to be coupled from CROME to standard web servers or specialized wireless
application servers.

Shown below are actual screen shots of the live wireless "RT variance" application
(started by
selecting main menu choice "2" in the left screen below).

Once the "RT variance" application is selected, a list of all variance reports that have
at least
one item (typically a sector) is presented to the user.

This list that is initially displayed has the following grammar: <menu choice #> <# items
out variance>
<network element type> <variance report name>. For example, menu choice "2" shows 39 CELLS
(or
sectors) out of variance as reported by the CROME report "High Int Blocking".

The above example (middle screen) shows a total of three variance reports that had a
positive
number of CELLs (i.e. sectors) that exceeded the threshold limits for each of the
displayed
CROME reports. If no out of variance items were found for a particular report, that report
will
automatically be excluded from the menu. Currently there are five different CELL level
variance
reports running in this application as deployed for this customer.

It should be noted that the middle and right screens are the same screen but at different
moments
in time as the iDEN phone will scroll LINE data back and forth so that a user can read the
active
line (as marked by the ">" character). This feature allows longer lines to be displayed
within the
limited screen of the iDEN phone.

We select list choice"2" via the iDEN phones  navigation buttons and the [OK]
prompt. At this point the "RT variance" application will display the first twenty (20)
items that
exceed the threshold of the "High Int Blocking" report.

Each line contains the full name of an EBTS followed by the esmir_cell_id associated with
the
actual CELL (or sector) that was out of variance. If you select "INFO" you will get the
second
and third screens above, showing the complete details of this CELL (type of variance, OMC,

BSC, EBTS, SECT (ESMR Cell ID), the Motorola-assigned "network ID" and finally the numeric

value of the variance in question -- in this case the I_BCR (Interconnect Block Clear Rate
value)

Selecting the [Next N] prompt (where N in this case is 19 or the remaining items in the
list) will
scroll through the out of variance CELLs (or sectors) until the [Next N] prompt is
replaced by the
[Done] prompt (the Done prompt indicates no more items).

At this point (or any time previous) the user can "go backward up the HDML stack" to
previous
screens via the [OK] prompt - or - select the [Done] to return to the main CROME HDML
menu.

Countless other modes of operation and key performance statistics can be added to the
CROME
HDML application suite to meet you specific needs.

To access the HDML CROME pages you will need a HDML/packet data capable iDEN phone
and you must direct it to the URL http://wap.quantumsi.com. You can also visit this site
via a
standard PC Web Browser, and read further information on use of this feature.

Summary

Your organization may not make use of all possible outputs of the CROME system, but just
think
of the benefits that can be achieved by running one standard generic report and feeding
the
many different outputs that have been introduced above.

CROME has proven to be highly adaptable and flexible in integrating to other third party
tools,
allowing the creation of new custom tools, simple publishing to office suites or the Web.

Note if a standard CROME report is updated (or even one formula) all down stream data
consumers will reflect the improved reporting situation. Also due to the object oriented
building
block nature of the data flow, each new variance report will automatically affect every
subsystem:
NetExpert, Netcool, the CromeVariance Servlet, and the iDEN phone HDML application. Each
will
see the and correctly process the new data or variance report.

Report and Formula Creation Flexibility

CROME allows the user to build up formulas and reports at his or her preferred desktop.
There is
not an expensive hard-to-access central server running an operating system the end-user is
not
skilled with.

The CROME client, which is a JAVA application that runs on every major computing platform
and OS, is the only tool needed to design and implement every CROME formula and CROME
report. In addition CROME formula syntax parsers can extract formulas from PDF and WORD
documents and automatically create and install "canned" full scale formula sets direct
from the
system vendors documentation.

Ad-Hoc Formula Creation:

1.Simple --- a wrapper for any single statistical item measured
2.Complex --- including mathematical functions and operators
3.Logical --- formulas that return 1/0 for true/false based on a threshold function set
4.Hierarchical --- formulas that consist of combination of other formulas
5.Constants --- e.g., the number of seconds or minutes in the reporting period

Ad-Hoc Report Creation:

1.Reports are built up with formulas or "raw" primitive data items
2.Reports can have a default look and feel (i.e. graph or grid)
3.Reports can have a default sort, limit or threshold
4.The same reports run at every physical level against every possible group.

Empowerment and Standardization

The system admin only controls the "standard approved and revision controlled reports."
The
end-user is free to clone, modify, or create from scratch any required formula or report
at any time
to get his or her job done.

With CROME, end users are empowered - there is no developer or corporate data analyst that

becomes a bottle neck, yet your organization maintains control of the standard approved
report
sets via completely traceable reporting items.

Report Generation Flexibility

The key aspect to understanding CROME and its capabilities is that a report is generic and
can
be applied across any dimension (time, range, filter, or custom group) on any type of
network
element.

For example, for a typical small Wireless provider having 16 BSCs and one MSC, there are
thousands of permutations or different outputs that can be generated from one (1) generic
CROME report definition, via either the CROME GUI and/or batch Unix style crontab
scripting.

Typically one CROME report will replace four to seven (4-7) full custom reports in any
organization where CROME is deployed. The flexibility of CROME reports is due to advanced
system design in which a rich end user filter can be applied to any basic reporting
template. Any
existing report and formula can be copied and adjusted for fast alterations or quick "what
if"
analysis.

The physical dimension:

1.On a single sector
2.A custom group of sectors
3.A single site
4.A custom group of sites
5.A single BSC
6.A custom group of BSCs
7.A single OMC or OMCR
8.A custom group of OMCs or OMCRs

The time dimension

1.Fifteen minute intervals
2.Half Hour intervals
3.One hour intervals
4.Daily intervals
5.Weekly intervals
6.Monthly intervals
7.Yearly intervals

Any definable range (from a half hour to a decade)

Reports are generic and designed to run across any time range. Consider a Minutes of Use
(MOU) report. The end-user (or automated process) uses the same report to show the half
hour
data for a single sector as displaying the weekly MOU statistics for all OMCs in a
national
region.

With or without weekends or holidays

Weekends and holidays can be excluded or forced to NULL/0 to facilitate trending and
analysis.
In fact special report filters like "Friday's Only" can be quickly constructed by turning
off the
other six days of the week and running the report.

Special defined service periods or busy hours

1.Multiple service periods, like a production window from 6am to 6pm, can be made as per
your
organizations needs.
2.Multiple busy hours generated from any formula for the day of analysis, across a sliding

business week, or across a fixed set of weekdays.
3.Multiple busy hours generated from foreign systems i.e. applying the busy hour from one
or
more DMS switches to OMC RF performance data.

Customized thresholds, sorts and limits

1.Any value (raw statistical data (pegs) or formula) can be tested against a threshold to
limit the
amount of data displayed and/or exported. Any threshold can be made a default.
2.Any value (peg or formula) can be made the current or default sort (ascending or
descending)
3.Limits can be applied to reports to show only the top "N" (i.e. top 5, top 10, top 20)
items.

Generic, System Independent and Extensible

CROME can be applied to many different types of diverse network elements or system types.
This document highlights ESMIR or iDEN technology, however the CROME software is so
generic the same software supports a wide range of telecommunication equipment.

In the event that your organization's
equipment is not currently supported, depending upon complexity Quantum typically charges
between $25K to $50K USD to build custom data interface gateways for a new system type.

iDEN OMC system support

This OMC Reporting capability has been deployed since 1997, featuring reporting
capabilities for
multiple OMC management devices utilizing direct high speed database replication
collection
from the OMC into the CROME system. The current version of CROME supports eight different
network elements in the iDEN OMC system: OMC, BSC, EBTS, Sectors, Channels, PCCH,
Carriers, and MTL

In addition, selected provisioning data is also maintained in the CROME system.

iDEN DAP system support

This DAP capability has been deployed since 1998, featuring reporting capabilities for
multiple
Dispatch Application Processors (or DAPs) utilizing direct high speed database replication

collection from the DAP into the CROME system.

iDEN MDG system support

This MDG capability has been deployed since 1998, featuring reporting capabilities for
MDGs
utilizing direct high speed database replication collection from the MDG into the CROME
system.

Nortel DMS family system support

This MSC capability has been deployed since 1998, featuring reporting capabilities for
MSCs
utilizing TCP/IP, X.25 or serial data collection from the Switch into the CROME system.

Nortel GSM OMCR family system support

This OMCR capability has been deployed since 1998, featuring reporting capabilities for
OMCRs
utilizing FTAM Q3 interfaces for statistical data collection into the CROME system

Other TBD System Types

CROME is flexible enough to be extended to other systems WITH NO CHANGES to the Client or
the server. The only requirement is that a specific plug-in gateway be developed for the
new
system type.

Of course, for every system type Quantum develops the generic mapping rules that allow the

CROME system to report with ease on any needed statistical value reported by a given
network
element (NE) under any given major system type.

Typically performance reporting raw statistical data (i.e. pegs) are generated from and
associated
with a particular physical layer in a network hierarchy. For example the low level "peg"
set or
available statistical measures for an iDEN MDG are shown below:

The above "peg" set will be vastly different than those found on an iDEN OMC or other
systems
by other system vendors.

Summary

It should be apparent that CROME is very flexible in the wide range of top level systems
(and
associated sub-elements) it can support. This is accomplished by a normalized data
interface as
defined by the CROME open Gateway API that all custom gateways adhere too in order to feed

data into its internal RDBMS in a standard generic fashion on the CROME server.

Corporate/National Reporting

Another powerful feature of CROME is its ability to quickly provide management and
corporate
reports. CROME’s unique and efficient database organization and flexible user interface
make it
possible to provide not only low-level engineering analysis, but also high-level corporate

summaries.

CROME’s database is organized in a hierarchy of network elements, such that corporate or
market data is already "summarized" in the database, making access to this national data
extremely fast. For example, viewing EBTS performance data across multiple OMCs at a
bouncing-busy-hour accesses less than 1/100th of the data required by competing systems.

CROME also provides a means to design a custom corporate organization, be it geographical
(e.g., by city, county, state) or by management-assigned areas.

Geographical Organizations

For example, one customer assigns "clusters" to appropriate engineers, and the clusters
are
geographically summarized within cities and states. Using CROME, the customer organizes
these
clusters:

For this particular market, New Mexico and West Texas define a combined set of clusters,
and
Las Vegas is organized as part of "SoCal" region. But the customer could just as easily
organize
(and at any time change) the cluster grouping to be completed separated by state. They
could
also maintain multiple trees of different organizations, if so desired. For example, a
local market
could organize their reports by engineer-assigned clusters and custom geographical groups,

while a corporate manager could organize reports based on city, county, and state.

Any CROME report can optionally run against any corporate or market organization, such as
these geographically based clusters. The following report was run and summarized by each
of
the folders shown above. Using standard Microsoft Excel point-and-click functions, we can
further summarize based on any grouping. For example, by changing "level" to "2", we can
see all
data summarized by state:

The following example takes the same information and, using standard Excel point-and-click

functions, shows the detail down to the city or sub-city region:

Automatic Maintenance of Geographical Groupings

A wireless infrastructure is constantly growing and changing. For this reason, CROME
provides
a means to automatically keep geographical data organized for market and national
reporting
needs. CROME removes the need for a corporation to constantly manually maintain grouping
information every time a site moves or goes on-line.

CROME does this through an Open API for Site Grouping, where a set of simple rules can be
defined to trigger automated organization. For example, since CROME automatically
determines
the latitude/longitude of each Site, it can automatically build city/county/state
organizations.
This means that market and corporate reports can show any and all data summarize by city,
county or state. Another organization may be based upon a pre-defined naming standard, or
via
a lookup to another database for mappings between site names and engineer-assigned
clusters
(or some combination of all of those).

Thus, CROME can automate any desired market or corporate organization, such that
summarized
reporting can be easily and quickly maintained with little effort and little maintenance
of the
organizational information.

CROME Designed for National Scalability

CROME is a client-server based technology, where database management and data
summarization is managed on a server or set of servers. User report processing, which may
include some high-computational number crunching, is properly delegated to individual user
PCs
(though the use of JAVA technology). In this manner, CROME can easily grow to national or
international scales without affecting the speed in which users can generate reports.

This is an important distinction between CROME and other PM solutions -- more data does
not
mean slower reporting. CROME actually has the ability to run more efficiently in a
nationally-scaled system, because its design can make use of multiple servers as
replicated
database repositories for instantaneous hot backup. For example, CROME can be organized to

store the same data (or most recent data) on more than one server, which requires more
disk
space but provides a means to circumvent downtime in the event of equipment or network
failures, or scheduled maintenance. CROME was designed to explicitly manage "hot failover"

databases, where the user is completely unaware that the software has transparently
shifted to a
database on another backup server -- it simply works.

Advanced Analysis Features

CROME can be used to perform many advanced analysis of the elements in your network
including but not limited to:

Migration Tracking

MIGRATON, finding and properly tracking network elements that migrate across time or
undergo
name changes:

CROME can track sites (EBTSs) and their associated sectors as they are migrated across
base
station controllers (BSCs). CROME is the only PM today system that is capable of this
level of
low level migration tracking and filtering.

When reporting on a specific site (or EBTS) CROME will accurately follow the site even if
it is
moved across several BSCs over the range of the Query.

When reporting on a specific BSC, CROME will accurately include a migrating EBTS for only
those days that the BSC owned the migrating site.

Grouping

GROUPING, is the process of a system administrator or end-user creating an add-hoc set or
group via individual items (or network elements) to make custom sets (or clusters) to
report
against.

The CROME system allows both traditional (i.e. element based) grouping as described above.
In
addition CROME supports advanced pattern match based grouping which simplifies the
maintenance of cluster sets through the application of regular expressions (REs) against
existing
names.

Shown below is a traditional group (i.e. individually selected items):

One of the downsides of traditional groups is that if an element (such as 2TS5SIG/2W) is
renamed (or migrated) the group will become "stale" and out of date. Any report run after
this
change will typically fail to find the item.

Quantum's exclusive regular expression pattern matching solves the above problem and can
be
used to create "always current" groups. Shown below is a special "US state based RE set"
that
will always extract all Arizona EBTS sites from the Phoenix OMC.

No matter how many new sites are added the above RE will always include any EBTS that
begins
with the two characters "AZ" thus if the naming standard is always followed the group is
always
current.

Note if Arizona sites are served by three OMC's say phx01 (as above) phx02 (future?) and
tex02
(future?) the RE-set can be updated as follows:

Shown below is a special "route based RE set" where trunks are named based upon the
function
and destination of the route. This set of RE set is currently used in a CROME deployment
in
Taiwan that comprises eight (8) Nortel MSC switches.

The symbols used by CROME in the group editor are as follows:

white Item available for selection or item included in a group

red Item excluded from a group

pink Item in group but is stale, i.e. this item doesn't exist on the current date.

white RE in group as denoted by the letter 'R'

red RE is excluded from group as denoted by the letter 'R'

Thus in the above "route based RE set" example we first include everything than we exclude

specific patterns, in this fashion very complex RE-sets can be constructed to meet nearly
any
organizational need.

Erlang and GOS support

For "On the Fly" ERLANG and Grade of Service (GOS) support, the CROME application
calculates and applies Erlang functions and Grade of Service functions on demand to
eliminate
the use of manual table lookups.

Please refer to the section on "Resource Analysis and Capacity Planning" in this document
where two fairly detailed examples are shown.

Note CROME is extensible in that it can support other distributions and equations, for the

purposes of clarity the some of the built-in Erlang-B and Erlang-C base mathematics are
described below.

Erlang B

The Erlang B formula is based on the assumptions that there are infinite sources, blocked
calls
are cleared, and constant or exponentially distributed holding times.

where

A=Total traffic offered in Erlang

N=Number of servers in a full availability group

P=Probability of loss

Erlang C

The Erlang C model is based on following assumptions: infinite sources, blocked calls are
queued, and holding times are exponentially distributed. Another assumption is that
waiting calls
are served in the order in which they arrive in the waiting line (first-in-first-out).
Exponentially
distributed means that the number of calls having increasingly longer duration is
proportionately
decreasing. This means that the number of people making longer calls (e.g., 30 minutes) is
much
smaller than the number of people making shorter calls (e.g., 5 minutes).

In queuing systems, several terms are used to designate the grade of service.

Average delay of all calls -- Indicates the average time that offered calls must wait for
a
connection to be established. This includes those calls that have zero delays.

Average delay of delayed calls -- Indicates the average time that delayed calls (delay
greater than
zero) must wait for a connection to be established.

Probability of delay -- Indicates the probability that an offered call is not handled
immediately.

Probability of delay being exceeded -- Indicates the probability that an offered call must
wait
longer than a specified time for establishment of a concern.

where

A=Total traffic offered in erlangs

N=Number of servers in a full availability group

P(>0)=Probability of delay greater than 0

The probability of delay greater than t is:

The average delay, D1, on all calls is:

The average delay, D2, on calls delayed is

Heterogeneous System Support

Flexible system support, CROME does not require that all top level systems be homogeneous
(i.e. at the same system revision) and will not only report on the differences (i.e.
missing pegs or
uniformity of schemas) but will also generate correct reports in such situations.

In large deployments it is unlikely and sometimes rare that all available statistical sets
are
identical. Unlike other PM systems that simply stop working until all selected sources are

identical in the data schema, CROME allows statistical reporting to continue in mixed data
sets
environments taking advantage of every piece of available data and always reporting the
correct
results.

For example the below information available from the "View/Schema Info" menu shows that
two
of the four database tables used to generate the report are missing in one database,
swo_05.

The important point is that CROME will continue to run and generate correct results even
in the
event that you are reporting across mismatched system software from your equipment vendor.

The formulas that can not complete due to a missing table or column simply resolve to
blank or
null data in the CROME report. Of course if all the reports formulas use pegs from missing
tables
your report will be completely empty.

Scalable

CROME was implemented from the ground up as a scalable distributed system. Unlike other
centralized solutions as your business grows to national or even international scope CROME
will
easily scale (at much better than the typical best case linear performance trend line!)
and maintain
quick responsive reporting speeds across tens of thousands of network elements (NEs). This
is
accomplished via the following design tenants:

1.Each CROME serves runs independent and in parallel to support scaling via parallel
operation.
2.Only the minimum amount of data that can satisfy any given report is queried from a
CROME
server.
3.Each CROME clients perform all intensive mathematical calculations locally to minimize
any
loading on the server.
4.The server only server data it does not perform expensive summaries or number crunching.

As a timing example, a typical full custom CROME report showing various minutes of use
(MOU)
metrics at the sector level run against 1/8th of all subscribers (2,366 sectors) takes a
mere 23
seconds. Due to adaptive caching algorithms in the CROME client application the same (or
similar) reports will run even faster the second or third time (i.e. 10 seconds). Contrast
this typical
performance to the number to the hours required by our competitor’s product to produce a
similar ad-hoc report.

As your network grows another CROME server can be added to handle a portion (typically 1/N

where N is the number of CROME servers) of the overall load. When a report requires more
than
one CROME server all data from only those CROME servers required to satisfy a report are
queried and fetched in an optimal space/time efficient parallel fashion by the CROME
client
application. The bottom line is that CROME can handle massive network infrastructures and
unlimited future growth.

Fault Tolerant for 100% uptime

CROME system deployments can be configured to be fully redundant and fault tolerant, in
the
event of failure another CROME server will seamlessly and transparently take over and all
client
requests will be satisfied with at most a fifteen (15) second delay to work around the
failure.

Of course fault tolerance has an associated cost, to create a high availability CROME
additional
hardware and storage infrastructure is required to complete a circular mirror or "CROME
ring" of
all your company’s vital performance reporting data.

Zero Client Administration

Installation of the CROME application

For optimum performance and functionality, the full CROME application can be installed
with a
single click from a Web page (an image from such a page is shown below). Note when running
as
an application, CROME requires a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) to be locally installed on
your
desktop computer.

Thus for a Win95/98/2000/NT installation you will need to first install a JVM (which
provides a
runtime base for many different programs much like visual basic) and next install the
actual
CROME application, both steps are accomplished via wizards started by a simple web click.

Upon installation, CROME is fully integrated into your work environment. For example, a
standard startup icon is added to your "Programs" menu on a Win95/98/2000/NT platform.

This means you can start mining data to your specifications and seamlessly transfer the
results
into office productivity tools such as Microsoft Excel or PowerPoint via built in bridging

capability built into the CROME client.

NetworkUpdate

CROME contains an extremely useful feature for maintaining the latest version of your
software:
it automatically updates itself over the network whenever it is out of date!

If CROME determines that the software you are running (i.e. CROME itself or any related
support
file) is out of date, your CROME client will notify the user with the following pop-up
screen. At
this time you will have the option to "Update Now" or "Skip Update"

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