A new framework, Platform gives management applications center stage >BY DAN O'SHEA, Technology Editor

Multivendor networks may finally be more fact than trend, but telecommunications carriers, especially new wireline and wireless operators, are just beginning to confront the challenges of managing them.

An extension of Hewlett-Packard's widely deployed OpenView distributed management platform may shorten the leg work. The OpenView Element Management Framework software system, introduced at PCS '96 earlier this month, can pull together information from several vendors' network elements and element management systems so users can easily access it.

"The emergence of multivendor aspects in networks is what drove this concept. We're taking the core products of third-party software developers and implementing them as fault management applications," said Alain Lefebvre, OEMF solutions manager at HP's telecommunications systems unit in Grenoble, France.

Accugraph, Cambio Networks, Metrica and Remedy are among the developers integrating their applications with OpenView EMF. In fact, it was first on display at Supercomm '96, where Accugraph showed that its Bay and Cable Management System and Equipment Bay Management software tools worked within the EMF architecture (Telephony, July 1, page 18).

By integrating such third-party tools, OpenView EMF can deliver management applications focused on trouble ticketing, performance reporting, service inventory and asset management, and equipment provisioning, said Lefebvre.

As of last week, five carriers had signed to deploy OpenView EMF, including Comcast Cellular, Canada's Clearnet, Helsinki Telephone in Finland, MobileLink of Singapore and Italy's Omnitel. EMF is infrastructure-independent, accommodating high-speed Internet architectures and even Motorola's integrated digital enhanced network architecture, which Clearnet is deploying.

OpenView EMF is also targeted at new wireline and wireless carriers because it is easy to install and its platform is scalable, said Lefebvre. "The old wireline network management platforms were implemented over three or four years. We did the Clearnet deployment in a month and a half," he said.

"That makes service introductions much easier," said Allen Cantwell, senior industry consultant at HP's telecommunications industry solutions center. "Carriers must keep their launch dates or lose money."