So far, yet so close: An integrated vendor approach to service management systems development overcomes the complexities of TMN interfaces

Telco executives confront a dilemma. They must transform service management systems and launch new systems while overcoming a web of technical issues woven throughout the layers of the Telecommunications Management Network.

Perhaps the most critical barrier is inertia. Operations support systems (OSSs) remain predominately mainframe-based and are too large and important to change.

Yet because customers are becoming as accustomed to telecommunications services as they are to running water, most service providers are prompted to look again for more feasible strategies to automate and improve their service management systems.

A case in point-even before deregulation-is telcos' periodic bundling of their mainframe systems with front-end devices to provision new services. While these systems generally succeeded in the operational sense, their development proved arduous and expensive.

New systems, which were designed for one purpose, could be equally difficult to integrate with other internal systems or with competitors' systems as retailer and wholesalers inked deals for ordering, provisioning and billing.

The private trials that most telcos have experienced when linking billing systems, consolidating regional monitoring systems or enfolding wireless into wireline management systems underscore the risks facing technology managers.

Little wonder then that the drawbacks-risk to existing operation, hidden development costs, extended development cycles and deployment delays-convince many in the industry that the earlier implementations are false starts. But if telcos can overcome these significant software development-related issues, then viable, long-term service management systems aren't far off.

Experience paints a new picture The picture of frustration within telco development groups is changing now that tools, developer environments and outsourcing practices for developing core functionality have been refined.

The source of the groups' consternation is the solution framework for data interfaces. While common management information protocol provides a serviceable network management protocol and interface between heterogeneous networks, it takes time and money to implement.

The common object request broker architecture (CORBA) alternative lets applications interoperate between retailers and suppliers, but again, the framework takes time because internal development groups must learn new methodologies.

In both cases, development platforms introduced within the past two to five years simplify the job and shave months from development cycles that ordinarily take one to two years.

For equipment providers and system integrators, commercially available platforms enable standards-compliant network applications to be developed quickly.Th e first such platforms sought to streamline development by using graphical user interface-operated tools to shield developers from much of the line-by-line coding effort. In contrast, today's TMN and CORBA platforms encompass much more functionality-letting technology managers monitor network devices and fix problems long before they affect network users. Platform suppliers gained increasing proficiency with industry concepts and operational parameters that confront telco developers (Table 1).

At the same time, telco developers recognize that software, not hardware, accounts for a much larger portion of their OSS solutions.

The doors seem to be opening for telcos to import needed expertise because the new standards and software development approaches result in more flexible, "future-proof" solutions that safeguard long-term operations.

Telcos are changing their spending habits for OSSs-reducing dollars spent in-house from 50% to 35% from 1995 to 1996 and lowering outsourcing development costs. Last year, vendor-supplied software accounted for 72% of telcos' OSS outlays, according to a 1997 Dataquest report (Figure 1).

The trend has its rewards. Vendors are making platforms increasingly specialized for telcos. For example, to extend the platforms' utility to support company-specific or proprietary functions for all process areas and Q adapter interfaces, the HP OpenView Telecom Group recently established the industry's first formal alliance with Vertel Corp. The alliance affords telcos a full-scale telecom development infrastructure to more completely automate the TMN approach.

This means that TMN and CORBA applications develop faster with greater certainty. Original platform tools are extended with Vertel's tools so core management processes are implemented as if off the shelf, while the complexities on the lowest tier of the TMN architecture, such as agent/manager development and Q adapters, are also masked.

These are the most troubling components to develop for integrated systems. It's not unusual for a carrier project aiming to consolidate previously independent regional network operating systems into a single monitoring platform to require a team of 10 to 20 developers to produce and test deployable code modules for 12 to 24 months.

But the deregulation mandating open service management systems is pushing carriers to embrace a technology that they've understandably mistrusted. Outsourcing their OSS components and solutions-especially to vendors whose systems evolved and were proved in the enterprise-shouldn't seem as perilous as doing business the old way.

Taking the next step Yet telcos have to be cautious about outsourcing their OSS solutions. Their own service performance levels far exceed anything required by enterprise networks.

Some carriers may believe that enterprise vendors don't know the telco business-they may know management, but they can't scale to handle telecom management. Those on the front lines say that while the network may be mission-critical to the business for most other industries, the network is the business in the telecom industry.

Given this dilemma, telcos should carefully examine the new solutions in terms that address their special requirements, including eliminating the need to program interfaces for new tools. This will help make the difficult decisions about OSS standards easier.

One of the bigger changes the HP OpenView/Vertel alliance has made is that the management application on the enterprise side can exchange messages with Vertel's key components for the back end-agents, development toolkit, and planning and validation tools, which have an often underestimated value to successful projects.

Collectively then, telcos are getting more of the individual elements they need to assemble OSSs with assurance that the pieces will work in harmony. It's now possible to move into the real integrated voice and data management that the industry has been working toward for years. Telcos have had an integrated strategy for element management and network management, but this also adds service management.

OSS standards are the only logical way to ensure that your network management system is flexible enough to meet the fluid demands of the future. This is important-OSS spending is predicted to rise from $12 billion in 1996 to $23 billion in 2000, and telcos must assure themselves and their investors that those dollars aren't going toward short-lived solutions requiring high support costs.

Using vendor-integrated platforms makes the whole process easier and gets the company's information experts-not the programmers-into the process. This fundamental change enables the one person in the phone company who knows about a certain switch to easily take the information, process it and build it into the management system. These new "software adapters" do the job that programmers used to do.

The tools side of the equation has its own set of requirements.

Heavy vendor research and development overhead costs are associated with creating TMN interfaces for operating systems and network elements. And implementing the full seven-layer open system interconnection (OSI) protocol stack is complex.

Where alliances make sense is in providing as much as 80% of the pre-built TMN core functionality that is needed to equip OSSs in process areas, including operations, planning and engineering, service provisioning, and customer care and billing.

The alliance also incorporates user-oriented functionality to reduce cycle time from years to months for these intense development projects.

In evaluating product bundles for developers, carriers should ensure that certain tools are included that expedite the creation of blocks for all levels of the TMN functional model and Q interfaces (Table 2).

Developers need these kinds of pragmatic tools to overcome traditional barriers to developing new solutions for five management functional areas. The Network Management Forum identifies the areas as accounting, configuration, fault, performance and security management.

An integrated vendor approach that facilitates development for TMN's five-layer architecture should prove more successful because it also supports the seven-layer OSI stack and lets network devices from many vendors interoperate.

Consider how important it is for vendors to integrate development products. The integrated vendor approach and platform can serve a large telco wrestling to consolidate five statewide network management systems left over from the original operating area before deregulation. While previous development programs aimed to move data between systems and provide a window into each system from another, the result was not truly integrated. Another telco is planning to roll management and monitoring for wireless services into a system with wireline services so that management is centralized and uniform.

Light at the end of the tunnel Early users such as Telecom Italia, BT and NTT are leading the pack in their efforts to coordinate trouble ticketing, billing and service provisioning, as well as integrate planning, engineering and even human resources. As a result, many vendors are setting aside partisan marketing strategies in favor of cooperative, jointly developed solutions. This lowers the bar for feasibly constructing systems envisioned since the mid-1990s that integrate databases and network devices from vendors around the world.

In perhaps the most widely publicized U.S. TMN implementation, MCI chose Digital Equipment Corp.'s TeMIP product to craft a new TMN-compliant OSS called Impact that manages its Sonet transmission network. The deal may be remembered as the one that opened the doors to TMN.

Yet as crucial as the deployment is, it addresses only the element management and network management layers of TMN. A framework that can unify TMN deployment across multiple OSS process areas is what MCI and other service providers need to deliver on the promise of TMN and their OSSs.

Some carriers have resisted the temptation to outsource, first developing their own software and selling it to other carriers to recoup the considerable development costs. Support becomes an ongoing consideration.

Some vendors, too, have latched on to this concept by selling their systems on a cost-plus basis of new services and new revenues. But most probably will resist this approach, which tends to develop solutions that, while standards-based, remain somewhat proprietary. A bona fide solution is emerging with the newest joint solutions, tightly integrated products that bridge gaps between process areas. Telcos need more off-the-shelf products replete with full-scale telecom development infrastructures.

Fortunately, we're already seeing one of the best ways to make this a reality-vendors officially collaborating for the long-term on solutions and projects, leveraging each other's R&D and service organizations, and better serving their ultimate target market-the telcos-with on-target solutions.