Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management (Oracle BRM) is the telcos industry´s leading solution intended for communications service providers. This post encourages to know BRM starting with the basics.

History

Portal was a billing and revenue managament solution to communications industry created by Portal Software. In 2006 Oracle acquired Portal Software and the solution was renamed BRM. Today Oracle BRM is the first end-to-end packaged enterprise software suite for the communications industry, however BRM is just one more product in the catalog of OSS solutions that Oracle offers.

BRM can bill and manage all communications services including wireline, wireless, broadband, cable, voice over IP, IPTV, music, and video.

BRM Architecture

BRM´s architecture consists of 4 layers or tiers. Through these layers are the data, bussines logic and interfaces to connect graphical client tools.

Application tier

This layer provides GUI client tools enabling communication to other layers through open APIs. Some BRM client applications are:

• Customer Center

• Pricing Center

• Universal Event Loader

• Web Server

• BRM Billing Application

• Collections Center

• Permissioning Center

Furthermore, this layer is where are provided real-time external events.

Bussines Process Tier

Although all layers are equally important, I think it deserves more atention because in this tier BRM functionality is implemented.

All functions that give life to BRM are in this layer coded in C language called Opcodes (System Processes in the image). Any changes or additional functionality should be made here, so when we try to customize the product, we will most of the time programming in this layer (Business Policies in the image).

Bussines Process Tier Features:

• Implements Portal system functionality
• Validates data from the application tier
• Modifies Portal behavior through business policies. Business policies can by customized.
• Triggers external systems using event notification.

Object Tier

This layer is responsible for transfer the BRM requests into database language and translate BRM requests into external system requests. Without it, the business logic (data from Bussines Process Tier) could not be understood by the relational database.

Data tier

Data tier is responsable for the storage of BRM database and other external systems databases. External systems include credit card, tax, and directory servers.

Finally, It's important to note that BRM is designed to easily integrate with the following solutions:

• AIA 2.4
• Siebel CRM
• E-Business Suite - G/L only
• Communications Services Gatekeeper
• Oracle BI Publisher.

Personally, I think that BRM could improve migrating client-server architecture to a fully web platform that works with Oracle Middleware like any product of the Fusion Middleware family. Hopefully there are already initiatives in this area.