ase. This is evident in Figure 8.31 where labor cost for service management processes is reported per professional group. Normalized OPEX Sales and marketing Project management Network operations Trad. ASON/ Trad. ASON/ Trad. ASON/ GMPLS GMPLS GMPLS FIGURE 8.31 Service management labor cost for processes per professional group. (After Pasqualini, S. et al., IEEE Commun. Mag., 6, 28, 2005.) Convergent Network Management and Control Plane Normalized OPEX ASON/GMPLS Normal fault free operation Traditional Routine operations SerOff: Service offering SerPro: Service provisioning SerCan: Service cancellation Seroff Serpro Sercan Marketing Planning FIGURE 8.32 Global result for the overall OPEX of an incumbent carrier. (After Pasqualini, S. et al., IEEE Commun. Mag., 6, 28, 2005.) Taking into account all the changes, labor cost related to service management decreases about 52% with the introduction of ASON/GMPLS. A similar analysis can be carried out with North American costs deriving a reduction of the labor cost related to service management of about 42%. This is due to the fact that the difference between high-level and low-level employees in terms of compensation is much more evident in North America. The spared personnel in the network operation area is mainly con- stituted by technicians, warehouse workers, and similar professional figures that are located in the middle or lower part of the organization while the number of managers is less affected. Thus the percentage OPEX spared is smaller. However, the result is in any case impressive, taking into account that we have considered the most critical part of the carrier OPEX. The global result, obtained considering the overall OPEX of an European carrier, is shown in Figure 8.32. The overall sparing related to the introduction of ASON/MPLS is 24% (20% with U.S. numbers). This is an important result if we consider that the annual OPEX of an average incum- bent carrier is around 70% of the overall carrier expenditure, a figure of the order of €3 billion for a medium 