Provisioning software: Pulling it together

Corporate customers are relying more and more on network services, and carriers with more services are attracting more customers, so carriers with more services are making a lot more money. Flawless logic, except that something happens to simple if-then relationships in the otherworldly realm of network services. Far from cashing in on demand, carriers are staggering under its weight. But vendors selling multiservice provisioning software say their packages match the different types of software that track customers orders with various network management programs. And that could help carriers not only fill orders, set up services, and simplify billing, but also on top of the service technologies they're implementing.