Symphony SMS' EMS Platform is a standards-based, object-oriented, multi-technology business management platform based on proven telecommunication standards promoted by organizations like OMG, ITU-T and others. EMS is a robust platform which enables rapid development of J2EE compliant multi-tier web-based applications.  Applications built on EMS Platform offer an EJB based open service oriented interface for easy integration with external systems. The system supports any size deployment for telecommunication and IT assets. EMS 11 is a patented enterprise class Expense Management Application. The following diagram depicts the EMS 11 Product Portfolio.

 EMS 11 Deployment Architecture

EMS 11 is a highly distributed and scalable system which can be deployed in numerous flexible configurations depending on the load of the system. The system is configurable by resource group for maximum scalability. The following diagram depicts one of the possible deployment configurations. 

The EMS platform offers the ability to deploy the application in a Multi-Tenant mode. This feature offers a single consolidated interface to manage multiple customers in a managed services environment.  Symphony SMS offers this  in a SaaS and Partnership model.  Supported databases include Oracle 10g / 9i and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition and earlier versions.

 

EMS Generic Services built on top of EMS Platform is a set of standards-based services which facilitate optimal functioning of various EMS capabilities.

Security Service: Based on concepts derived from ITU-T X.741 and Telcordia GR-1253, EMS Security Service offers a comprehensive set of features which enable security life cycle management, authentication and authorization of users accessing EMS.

EMS authentication capabilities include:

·        Flexible native authentication scheme with highly configurable password complexity policies.

·        Ability to seamlessly integrate with corporate single sign on platforms like Microsoft Active Directory, JOSSO, Ping Federate, CA Site Minder, etc.

EMS authorization capabilities include:

·        Field Level Security which controls visibility of various EMS modules and contents of each module at a very granular level based on configurable roles and policies.

·        Data Level Security which controls visibility of application data based on configurable roles and policies

Notification Service: Based on concepts derived from ITU-T X.733 and X.734, EMS Notification Service is a publisher-subscriber type messaging service, which enables external applications to subscribe and receive unsolicited events from EMS. These events include status change notifications, job completion notifications, alarms etc. EMS Notification Service is also used as the communication backbone between EMS core and Electronic Bonding Gateway applications used to communicate with external applications like Order Management, Trouble Administration, Financial Systems, etc.

Logging Service: Based on concepts derived from ITU-T X.735, EMS Logging Service provides ability to persist various notifications and alarms raised by the Notification Service.

Audit Trail Service: Based on concepts derived from ITU-T X.736 and X.740, EMS Audit Trail Service provides ability to log all the activities performed by users on the system. Audit Trail logs captures detailed information, which includes user, type of operation and details about the operation performed.

ETL Service: EMS ETL Service offers a comprehensive Extract, Transform and Load engine, which enables rapid customization of EMS to perform different kinds of data transformation activities. EMS ETL Service provides capabilities to process different types of data sources, which include fixed width files, delimited files, external databases, LDAP servers, XML data and others.

Reporting & Dashboard Service: EMS Reporting and Dashboard Service offers a solid platform for various reports and business intelligence dash boards offered as part of EMS 11. Some of the key features of this service include ability to generate reports in multiple formats, scheduled and real-time execution of reports, ability to dispatch reports via e-mail and report bursting.

Workflow Service: EMS Workflow Service offers the ability to configure, customize and deploy complex business processes which are compliant with corporate policies of end customers. The key feature of this service is a workflow sensitive user interface which enables workflow task owners to perform activities of the system in an intuitive manner.

Globalization Service: Another noteworthy aspect is the globalization capability of the application. It provides support for multiple languages, currencies and time zones. The languages supported as part of EMS multi-language capability include and are not limited to English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Chinese and Portuguese. EMS multi-currency support includes a very flexible currency conversion rate tracking module built into the system. EMS I18N capabilities enable extremely flexible personalization of language, currency and time zones by end users of the application. EMS ETL and Reporting Services are highly I18N sensitive in terms of handling multiple input/output currencies, EMS 11 (Standard & Enterprise) languages, date formats, etc.

Built on top of EMS Platform and EMS Generic Services layer is the EMS 11 application which offers an extremely robust and feature rich Expense Management System. The feature set of EMS 11 is typically distributed in two configurations

·        EMS Standard: A minimal configuration of essential modules specifically tailored to cater low-medium size customers interested in Call Accounting and Asset Management functionality of the system

·        EMS Enterprise: A configuration which offers full spectrum of Expense Management and is targeted to cater the needs of large enterprises.

The following diagram depicts entire gamut of functionality offered by EMS 11.

Included in the EMS 11 Product portfolio are 2 satellite products which enable best-practice oriented processing of electronic invoices received from service providers and subsequent audit of these records.

EMS Data Processor: EMS Data Process is a highly versatile tool, which enables automated processing of different kinds of electronic feeds received for service providers and carriers. EMS Data Processor includes sophisticated rules based data transformation and normalization engine. The formats processed by EMS Data Processor include and are not limited to EDI, CD, ASCII and Web Downloaded text. EMS Data Processor can be run as a stand-alone Java application or as a daemon which can constantly poll for incoming electronic vendor feeds and automatically load the data into EMS 11. Also included is configurable error handling and alert mechanism to report any processing errors.

EMS Auditor Toolkit: EMS Auditor Toolkit is a must have for auditors trying to reconcile billing exceptions and recover overpaid funds from service providers. Auditor Toolkit offers a consolidated online repository of contracts, CSRs and other information critical for audit of expenses. Also included are several reports which raise red flags when discrepancies are detected during audit. EMS Auditor Toolkit is well integrated with EMS 11 and can take full advantage of the data managed within EMS 11.