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WebLogic Network Gatekeeper’s Partner Relationship Management module gives operators a set of Web Services interfaces that can be used to incorporate the Service Provider and Application management parts of the Network Gatekeeper into their CRM/PRM systems, intranets and extranets.
Administering service provider and application accounts for Network Gatekeeper can be a work-intensive task for operators. Using CRM/PRM applications that are built using the Partner Relationship module can allow operators to shift some of that work to the service providers themselves, as well as giving those service provides a defined and structured channel both to communicate any changes they desire and to monitor their own usage statistics. The operator’s task is reduced to simply approving the pre-entered changes, dramatically reducing administration overhead. Using simple Web Service calls, the integrated PRM application can manage a wide range of Network Gatekeeper service provider account services.
Using these CRM/PRM applications, Network Gatekeeper’s functionality can also be integrated with back end systems and network nodes such as SMSCs, MMSCs and pre-paid systems to create and update accounts. The PRM interfaces support Network Gatekeeper’s service provider and application administration model, which is described more fully in The Partner Management Model..
The PRM Web Services module uses WS-Security to ensure the security of the Web Services based interaction between the PRM and its CRM/PRM application clients. Each request is authenticated using a username token or X.509 certificate that is included in the SOAP header. For more information on how this works, see the “Interacting with Network Gatekeeper” chapter in the Application Development Guide, another document in this set. Although the context in the Guide is the SOAP headers of traffic requests, the mechanism described is identical to the one used in with the PRM module.
| Note: | For backwards compatibility purposes, a session ID-based login mode is also supported. |
The Partner Relationship Management module consists of two parts:
In the example above, there are two CRM/PRM applications, one supporting the Service Provider set of interfaces and the other supporting the more comprehensive Operator set of interfaces. Each of these applications uses Web Service calls to communicate with the host(s) running the PRM Web Services. The PRM Web Services module can be deployed either be in a separate server or co-located with a Network Gatekeeper AT or NT Tier.
The PRM server(s) in turn use JMX to communicate with the cluster of Network Gatekeeper servers that actually handles the telecom traffic. The traffic cluster can either be deployed in the same cluster as the PRM servers, in which case the connection is a local one or, as in the case above, the two can be deployed in separate clusters, in which case the connection is remote..
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