ding rapidly, but that does not mean cable companies have their OSSs well sorted out. On the contrary, cable companies face a big transition as they shift from television providers to multi-service providers. This shift does not necessarily end with Internet services. Cable conglomerates are being bought by, and are acquiring more traditional communications service providers to offer bundled cable television, Internet, voice and data services. The cable providers' OSS environment is not generally ready to handle all of this change. Most of their OSSs, if they even have them, are stand-alone systems designed only for cable television services. For example, their inventory management applications, if they use them, are meant to track systems like head end transmitters and network amplifiers. Provisioning, billing and customer management are often housed in a single system and are not designed to handle multiple product offerings, bundled discounts or complex customer histories. It is not generally possible to alter such systems Chapter 3 - Automating the Internet Infrastructure Supply Chain to handle telephony or Internet services without unjustifiable expense. In the meantime, cable providers seek OSSs that can handle multiple service environments, but there are few, if any, that handle the entire spectrum of cable, Internet and complex telephony and data services. Furthermore, as cable providers have added services, such as pay-per- view, they often have installed stand-alone platforms to manage them. As they upgrade their networks to handle two-way Internet traffic, cable providers rely on equipment manufacturers to supply the element and network management systems they need bundled with the new equipment. These systems are rarely, if ever, centralized, requiring technicians to work with different interfaces for each equipment type. These OSS challenges are sometimes compounded as cable companies expand their telephony and cable holdings through a merger or acquisition. To make a long story short, cable provider