Network management

Despite the whirlwind of convergence thrashing around it, Supercomm still is viewed primarily as a network equipment show by many industry players.

Those engaged in the network management aspect of the industry are interested to find out if the growing buzz about the importance of effective network management will help dissolve this notion. The Network Management Forum, the globally focused body of carriers, vendors and software developers that defines sets of common network management processes, will make its first trip to Supercomm this year. "Supercomm has always struck us as an equipment show, and maybe not the best place to facilitate a network management discussion, but we're going to try it out," says Elizabeth Adams, managing director of the Network Management Forum.

There are some network management conference sessions on the Supercomm schedule, but only a handful of network management vendors will exhibit at the show. In contrast, about 26 companies exhibited at the NMF's recent semiannual working group conference in Orlando. It was only the second time an NMF event offered a product expo.

There is certainly no question regarding the effect network management strategy has recently had on the industry. Some trends include the increasing attention being paid to service level management, continuing migration of private networks toward public network management, new demand for object-oriented technology in network management systems, management of multivendor and interconnected networks, and increasing cooperation among carriers to address common network management issues.

Making Promises The move toward service-level management is being driven in part by the increasingly common network operator practice of issuing service reliability guarantees to customers.

These guarantees are intended to help carriers keep existing customers and acquire new ones in the midst of increasing competition. Many of the large corporate customers who are the beneficiaries of these guarantees are, in turn, offering their own end users the same types of guarantees. This situation makes it critical for network operators to maintain efficient management practices.

AT&T is one of many carriers that employ service guarantees across many kinds of services. "We will continue to see more performance guarantees as an industry. They represent a healthy trend. It's a vastly different approach than we used to have as an industry," says Arthur Locke, head of AT&T's network operations center in Bedminster, N.J.

"Of course, you don't negotiate performance guarantees without knowing how well you perform today. You have to confront and understand your problems. You don't just do this on a macro basis but also for particular customers and their particular services," he adds.

"We're seeing more service-level management going on. This change requires information to be translated across carrier environments more efficiently," says Tim Wilson, senior consultant at Decisys Inc.

Much of the NMF's work revolves around the idea of service management. "The NMF has taken the lead in looking at service management issues. That's where the action is," says Adams.

Last fall, the forum released its Omnipoint 2 solution sets, a collection of common processes that helps carriers and vendors streamline the purchase, installation and operation of network management systems, while complying with the Total Management Network framework. The ultimate goal is to offer customers reliable services regardless of the nature of the networks-multivendor, interconnected, legacy, modernized-involved in delivering the services.

The Omnipoint 2 solution sets include common definitions and steps for processes such as leased circuit management, switched service feature administration, bandwidth management across multiple networks, LAN-to-TMN alarm interfacing and other issues.

Later this year, the NMF also plans to establish solution sets for carrier-to-carrier trouble ticketing, order status exchange, billing and possibly performance reporting, says Adams. The group discussed its progress toward these sets when it convened earlier this month.

Multilingual Management Among other trends, the integration of private networks into public network management schemes continues to become more commonplace. This trend is what has drawn many carriers to start talking about service guarantees, says Locke. The integration of networks is leading to the integration of management platforms and languages as well.

Private networks traditionally use the simple network management protocol (SNMP) while network operators are moving toward other standards, common management information protocol (CMIP) and common management information services (CMIS). CMIP and CMIS generally can carry more management information across a multinetwork environment in a more secure fashion. The NMF wants to dissolve the protocol jam by choosing one or two of these protocols on which to build common information modeling tool kits, says Adams.

Object Orientation Another hot network management trend is using object-oriented technology to implement and maintain network management systems.

"Object-oriented technology is an important step, although it will take awhile to manifest itself on a service level," says Wilson.

Currently, network managers have to pull out of applications monitoring interfaces if they want to focus on what is happening with particular element management systems. Using objects to represent different management processes would allow them to more easily track network elements, says Wilson.

Although currently there seems to be great demand for object-oriented technology, it has so far seen only limited use in network management. The Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), devised by the industry's Object Management Group, is still a foreign concept to some network operators.

"We want to take advantage of object-oriented technology because our goal has been to move toward CORBA," says Adams. The NMF's recent Orlando meeting included a session on object-oriented tool kits and how to use them.

The birth of alliances, with traditional competitors working closely together, is also raising new issues and creating some network management complications.

The NMF recently began exploring the potential effects of the changing industry structure on network management.

"What sort of issues are being created? New network management connections are being established," says Adams.

Multivendor or multinetwork environments create particular challenges. Although standards for Sonet exist, network operators and vendors have come to recognize some management loopholes in these standards that can only be addressed through the Sonet Interoperability Forum, the NMF or one-on-one cooperation.

Even among competitors that remain competitors, there is an environment of mutual aid developing that never would have existed just a few years ago. They may be more fiercely competitive then ever, but carriers like AT&T, Sprint and MCI also are finding that sharing information about common network management problems brings these problems to quicker resolution. "That is a healthy situation for our customers," says Locke.

For its part, the NMF is trying to encourage carriers from all segments of the industry to become involved in the network management discussion. Recently, it has been exploring issues related to cable TV and wireless network management.

The industry has begun to realize the importance of keeping up with network management trends. Without an effective network management strategy, even deployment of the most state-of-the-art equipment could end up being an empty gesture.