g out business-focused technology devel- opment. With the advent of the converged network, the service providers, con- tent providers and network equipment providers have to rapidly conceptualize, evaluate, and integrate their service offerings. Also due to increasing competition, there is additional pressure to deliver the "right" product/service "on time, every time." It should be kept in mind that any focused development outside the realms of pure research needs to have a supporting business case and technical roadmap evaluating the value add it will offer to both technology and business. In com- ing up with a proper business case and technical roadmap, the customer space, service space, and network space need to be considered even when the actual Fundamentals of EMS, NMS and OSS/BSS Customers Assurance and billing Fulfillment Sales (12A) (12B) Order management system Service Inventory provisioning and management configuration management Network Network/element provisioning and manager and configuration network elements Figure 20.6 Fulfillment process flow. development is restricted to one of these entities/spaces. For example when a new security router is envisioned, the services that can be offered on this router and the change in end customer experience should be evaluated to develop a product that can generate business. The different steps in a fulfillment process can be summarized as follows (see Figure 20.6): 1. First the sales and the customer have an interaction on the various service offerings. In this interaction, sales will provide details on available services and answer the queries raised by the customer. The result of this step is that the customer will be ready to place an order if there is any service that meets customer requirements. 2. In this step the customer places an order, either directly with the order man- agement system (2A) or places the order from sales (2B). After clarification of queries with sales on a phone, the customer places an order for a service pack- age with sales on the 