Where do we go from here?

NMF proposes more fundamental penetration of TMN principles The industry may have inhaled a collective gasp recently when Keith Willetts and Elizabeth Adams, the leaders of the Network Management Forum, proposed something called TMN 2000. After all, the original Telecommunications Management Network framework of standards already has proved to be more than a handful for carriers, vendors and software developers.

However, the industry need not fear. TMN 2000, discussed by Willetts and Adams at the NMF's recent conference and expo in Long Beach, Calif., is not so new, but rather a proposition for deeper extension and more practical use of TMN principles. It is a call for carriers to abandon high-level thinking about the TMN framework and examine the everyday business drivers behind their network management needs. It is also a call to vendors and software developers to integrate new object-oriented solutions such as the common object request broker architecture (CORBA) and Java into a more expansive and evolving TMN architecture.

The industry too often has talked about TMN implementation in terms of relationships between layers of business models rather than layers of business processes, said Willetts, president of the NMF and senior vice president of marketing at TCSI. The TMN 2000 rally cry is directed at changing that reality.

"We want to expand TMN out of its narrow confines and fill it out with network-facing technologies and customer-facing technologies targeted at business processes and systems integration," he said.

"The question for carriers is, 'What technologies and business processes will we be using in the year 2000 and beyond?" added Adams, managing director and chief operating officer of the NMF.

New and ongoing projects of NMF working groups and members demonstrate the industry's search for answers to this question. Technology protocol translation and establishment of a common interconnection plan for operations support systems (OSSs) were among the most significant topics of discussion in Long Beach.

Protocol translation was the focus of discussion, including talk of several new products and how to integrate CORBA, which allows for faster development of distributed management applications, into everyday business processes. Hewlett-Packard introduced a CORBA/TMN integration solution, while Lumos Technologies demonstrated a server approach that integrates CORBA with Transaction Language 1, the dominant management protocol for Sonet architectures.

Meanwhile, NMF's ongoing OSS interconnection gateway project offers a glimpse at how the agency is trying to align timely industry issues--government-mandated interconnection of carrier OSSs--with different technology options to produce a common management solution that can be deployed universally. Carrier members of the agency network management working group will gather within the next few weeks to define general requirements for establishing a common, automated OSS gateway approach within the next nine months, according to Denis Bagsby, information services technology consultant at Southwestern Bell.

The gateway project also demonstrates how far the NMF and the industry may have to go before finding the answers to their most pressing questions (see page 30). The Federal Communications Commission's original deadline for OSS interconnection passed four months ago. "We're already behind the eight ball," Bagsby said.

Today, information exchange between carrier OSSs leaves most of the control in the hands of incumbent operators. Competitors and vendors find this unfair and confusing for billing purposes.

Two alternatives are electronic bonding and the electronic data interexchange protocol, but neither has received universal support.

VENDOR CHISELS OUT NEW TEST PRODUCT A new product that integrates application baselining, network stress testing and firewall testing into a single, multifunction tool will allow network managers to monitor the end-to-end behavior and performance of applications under varying loads across a network. Chisel, from Network Tools, combines the functionality of multiple applications under a unified graphical interface for comprehensive network, device and application testing.

MANAGEMENT MADE SIMPLER Fujitsu Software Corp. has announced a suite of Web-based tools for network element management and development. NetPrism, a Java-based software suite, provides advanced device management through the use of a rules engine and other elements, which allow network managers to develop an intelligent, automated management scheme for their network devices.

A simulated demonstration Vertel has announced a TMN Agent/Manager Simulator that enables OSS and network element simulation and testing in complex, evolving networks with line or prototype TMN agents and managers. It was demonstrated at the Network Management Forum.