Vendors partner to produce common element management platform
By Keith Dyer, at TeleManagement World, Nice.
For every dollar spent on software licenses in the OSS space, the telecoms industry spends another five dollars on integration. And the raw truth is that much of this is, or should be, unnecessary.
On element that incurs a lot of spend is Element Management Systems, the part of OSS that controls and manages the actual network elements themselves. To address this overhead Cisco Systems and Nokia Siemens Networks’ respective OSS/ network management divisions are combining to produce a Joint Management Platform, which will produce a common way to manage and interact with network elements.
At the moment, with every vendor producing its own system, when one upgrades, or when an operator introduces a new service, the resultant integration is a nightmare. The Cisco/Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) vision is to combine parts of Cisco’s Active Netowkr Abstraction (ANA) with NSN’s Open EMS Suite (launched a year ago at TeleManagement World 2006). The platform uses bits of standards from TMF, ITU-T and 3GPP to define a commone network element mendiation model, with APIs up and downstream to allow whatever needs to be integrated with the element to be done in a common way. Cisco and NSN envisage producing SDKs for other developers to license and use.
Jaako Aho, who rejoices in the job title “Head of industry ecosystem development OBS BU, strategy and portfolio management”, said that the initiative, which also has the support of Amdocs and IBM, was about “changing the economics of OSS, to show the way for the whole industry.” Aho said that even a mid sized operator today would have about 150-200 OSS systems on its books. “That’s very costly to maintain and keep up to date,” he said.
Aho’s point is that the network resource management layer is pretty much a non-differentiator for NEPs, and therefore it makes no sense for them, and their customers, to be diverting R&D budget to it, rather than spending money on non-competitive element management systems.
Cisco’s Director of Marketing for network management technology, Karen Sage, said that the platform was an ideal combination of Cisco’s IP expertise with NSN’s wireless knowledge, and would take much of the pain away from ISVs who could concentrate extra resource on other areas.
But is this dual party approach really the way the industry can reach a common, shared set of interfaces and models for network resource management?
Keith Willetts, chair of the Telemanagement Forum said, “Obviously there will be people who say, ‘Why should I be putting resource into my competitors’ pockets’. And that is why I think it might be wise for NSN and Cisco to distance themselves a bit from the platform, to look at moving it into a neutral position.”
But in general Willetts said he welcomed the approach, especially as it was based on existing TMF standards, and he said that he has been saying since 2000 that the industry needed to work together in this area.
Readers should note that the JMP is not the same as the Telecommunications Platform Initiative, which Nokia started last year with Sun and with Ericsson. The TPI is a middleware IT piece, not to do with element management, Aho said. You could be forgiven any confusion, though, as even Cisco’s Karen Sage had told us that the JMP with Cisco was a fruit from the tree of the TMI.