Migrating Millions to IP: A Mission Impossible?
Not with a Migration Control Center

By Alcatel-Lucent

Published 2007, Posted February 2008

Abstract:

A Migration Control Center (MCC) program provides a systematic approach to scale and automate a service provider’s transformation of its legacy infrastructure to an IP structure. This methodical approach is required due to the scale and scope involved in the migration of millions of subscribers. In the face of this mass migration, traditional project planning and management disciplines are too costly and cumbersome.

From a historical point of view, most providers would consider a large change program - say for system deployment - to be one that would involve around 50 sites. A deployment of this size can generally be handled by five project managers.

However, for a migration program supporting IP transformation, it may be necessary to migrate 5,000 sites. Using managers accustomed to traditional processes, the migration would require 500 project managers for the three to five year program duration! And these project managers do not represent all the resources that would be required - for example, resources needed to manage internal and external stakeholders, perform the "night-of" migration management, and fallback management.

Transformation also reaches beyond the network operations organization to many functions within the company, such as sales, marketing, customer service management, and legal and supplier management, to name just a few. Each of these disciplines may want to use their own project management approach to the transition. However, this is untenable for a large-scale transformation program and can only lead to cost overruns, slipped schedules, and unhappy end-users.

These demands, coupled with the need to maintain customer service levels and the "time is money" reality of any project, drive the need for adopting the MCC approach. A centralized MCC assists the service provider in selecting methodologies and tools early in the project and can be used across disciplines to help the service provider reach its goal of consistency of method throughout a complex change program.