Network Management – Steps in the right direction

If you’re looking at the image above and you’re confused…..you’re not alone…..

Network Management Systems can (and do) make or break a project at any stage.  We need them to ensure uptime for our customers, to zero-in on faults in the network and to see the overall health of the network at a glance.

Now, add three new dimensions to this;

1. Every Telecommunications Vendor has their own Software
2. Provisioning Systems are at least as valuable as the Network Management System
3. How do we bill for everything?

Unfortunately it’s a very complicated affair but there have been some very solid approaches to using the flexibility of software (in general) to solve this problem.  For this Blog entry we will focus on the approach of having an over-arching, multi-vendor system.

I have seen three different companies who have a system like this and then couple it with API’s which enable the vendor to build a “module” in the system for their own gear.

For example:

Telco X has 5 different vendors in their network:

1. Huawei for DWDM
2. Accedian for Ethernet Demarcation
3. EMC for Video storage
4. ADVA for Metro Networking
5. ADTRAN for Ethernet Access.

Telco X has also started a project to simplify their Network Management by purchasing and installing Nakina Systems Domain Control and Intelligence (DCI).  With this software, a single software system, the Operations Department can manage all of the above Vendors gear.  This is due to the fact that all of these vendors have used the Nakina Vendor API to build modules for their equipment.

This isn’t limited to Element Management either, this approach (and corresponding API’s) allow for configuration of Network Elements, Network Provisioning and Northbound Interface for that ever-important Billing.

There are other companies solving this issue such as Net Admin and Metasolv (purchased by Oracle, Oct 2006), but their approach is slightly different.  Both of these systems don’t concentrate as much on the Vendor APIs as much as they try to integrate all protocols necessary for communication to the Vendors gear under one management system.

Tagged as: Business Operations, OSS/BSS