y offer, excelling with customer, network, or service focused applications. There are functional categories, into which competitive vendors and applications are grouped. Selecting the "best" application from groups of vendors in each functional area is a practice generally called "best-of-breed" or "best-in-breed" package selection. The following table looks at the major OSS application "breeds" related functions, and some of the application vendors in each area. In Chapter 2, we discussed these functions and how they relate from a process perspective. This table gives a view of how vendor products tend to break up various processes and functions while grouping together other related functions, often as components, within their overall application. This list of vendors is by no means exhaustive. Furthermore, given the fact that almost all OSS vendors are constantly expanding their functional coverage, we have based the following table on each vendor's primary focus areas. S. Jain et al., Broadband Infrastructure C BusinessEdge Solutions Inc. 2003 The Ultimate Guide to Building and Delivering OSS/BSS Table 2. Examples of OSS Breeds, Functions and Vendors BREED FUNCTIONS VENDOR EXAMPLES CRM/eCRM Call center CRM Nortel (Clarify), Siebel, Sales force automation Cygent, Vantive, Calico, ADC eCRM Cygent, Siebel, Nortel Trouble ticketing (Clarify), Daleen EBPP BlueGill, eDocs SLA/Network reporting Order Management Order entry, decomposition, Order Management MetaSolv, and workflow Oracle, Architel, Eftia, Ceon, Provisioning and inventory ADC/CommTech Design and assign, inventory Provisioning management MetaSolv, Nortel (Architel), Eftia, Visionael, Sigma, Telcordia Inventory Management MetaSolv, Nortel (Architel), Eftia, Granite, Fulcrum, Telcordia, Cramer Activation Network activation, service Network Activation activation, order fulfillment, Nortel (Architel and Preside), CPE activation Harris, Syndesis, AI Metrix, Emperative, HarmonyCom, Telcordia, Lucent, Compaq Application/Server Activation Xevo, Ensim Gateways LSR