By Tara Seals

Cramer Systems Inc. rolled out the culmination of two years of research and development at Billing and OSS World 2004: Cramer5, the latest version of its telecom back office automation and inventory management suite. Cramer5 represents an adoption of Web architecture across the Cramer product set, along with a new configurable user interface to fit various levels of personnel.

Cramer5 is the next step, says Steve Plain, vice president of product development. These arent whole new components. This is about new architecture for better usability and functionality in addressing the same business problems.

The user interface, MyCramer, is now Web-based instead of a C++ thin client, and uses portal technology to integrate a range of applications into a single view relating to job function. Navigation can be fully keyboard-driven and shortcuts can be configured; tool tips are available on any item; each tool has its own history cache; graphics controls are configurable; and the portal layout itself can be customized. Cramer5 also has full localization capabilities, including multilingual labels and messages, time zones selectable at log-in and the ability to mix and match languages within the same deployment.

The fragmentation of applications data is the biggest issue facing the industry, says Don Gibson, CTO, noting that Cramer5 brings active inventory, network process automation, implementation control and data-integrity management across OSS together in one system. Future developments will include cable management, equipment vendor management and asset/financial management.

Cramer5 is on the market now. Japan Telecom is deploying the solution, and its available as a standard upgrade to Cramer customers.