Gartner defines communications service provider (CSP) service design and orchestration (SD&O) solutions as a component of the operations support systems (OSSs) to enable CSPs to design, fulfill and orchestrate services. These solutions are for use in physical, virtual, containerized and hybrid network environments for their clients in various market segments, such as consumer, enterprise and wholesale. These solutions include service design tools; policy tools; service and resource orchestration solutions; automation tools; and inventory management, provisioning and activation tools.
An operational support system (OSS) is a set of programs that help a company in monitoring, controlling, analyzing and managing a computer network. OSS software is specifically dedicated to communications service providers and mainly used for supporting network planning, network provisioning, service fulfillment, and service assurance from a common core of service and resource management. Other functionality includes embedded analytics, correlation and aggregation, reporting, product life cycle management, multichannel support, resource and asset planning. OSS data is of strategic importance to measure the impact of operational technical processes on customer and business goals.