Agilent puts TIBCO inside, positions test tools for "nuclear spring "

Proving that when it comes to operations support systems, integration is still the key ingredient, Agilent Technologies announced today it will embed TIBCO’s enterprise application integration (EAI) interface into its OSS product suite.

Agilent hopes to take advantage of TIBCO’s established position in the OSS market to expand its interoperability capabilities. Agilent will incorporate certain components of TIBCO’s ActiveEnterprise integration solution, which include Rendezxous, a messaging system for application-to-application integration; Hawk, a monitoring and management tool for distributed applications and systems; and adapters that facilitate the addition of new network components.

Agilent’s OSS platform is built around the Unified Management Architecture platform developed by Objective Systems Integrators (OSI) before Agilent acquired the company in January of last year. The UMA platform provides a model for managing converging wireline, wireless, and IP-based data networks and services.

On the testing side of the house, Agilent introduced several new products last week the company says will help bring about a thaw in the current nuclear winter under which telecom is mired.

“We don’t know what nuclear spring will look like but to stay competitive carriers will have to find a way to make packets profitable,” said Werner Huettemann, vice president and general manager of Agilent’s communications network division.

While new services are the most obvious revenue generators, network effectiveness enabled by test tools at both the manufacturing level and the service level helps lower the cost structure of new and existing services, Huettemann said.

Agilent introduced the OmniBER OTN 40 Gbps performance analyzer, an integrated multi-rate Sonet/SDH and OTN test set for developing line cards, modules and subsystems. The test set validates device operation and does conformance testing for Telcordia/ITU-T standards.

For service providers as well as network equipment manufacturers, Agilent also introduced new RouterTester tools for metropolitan area networks and network equipment. The new tools stress test metro network services in order to identify performance limitations on services before they are deployed in the network. They also include the first point-to-point protocol testing capabilities for VPN and IP multicast services.