TMFC15474 - Standards development 2011 - Leveraging effort across the industry.pdf

8/11/2019 TMFC15474 - Standards development 2011 - Leveraging effort across the industry.pdf

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ACROSS THE INDUSTRYLEVERAGING EFFORT

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2 0 1 1 | w w w . t m f o r u m . o r g

STANDARDSDEVELOPMENT 2011

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PREDICTIONSFOR 2011

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Colin Ashford is the founder of OSS Evolution

– a consulting company that specializes in

mentoring on OSS software architectures and

standards management. He is a professionalengineer with over 25 years’ experience

in the computing and telecoms industry,

primarily concerned with the standardization of

distributed systems and telecoms networks.

He has held senior positions in Nortel with

responsibilities for international standards and

project management. Ashford is the co-author

of OSS Design Patterns published by Springer.

He can be reached by email at

[email protected].



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Standards Development 2011Leveraging effort across the industry

©TeleManagement Forum 2011. The entire contents of this publication are protected by copyright. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

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Report author:Colin AshfordFounderOSS [email protected].

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ISBN: 978-0-9838028-5-3

Page 4 Executive summary

Page 6 Section 1

Standards development 2011 – leveraging effort

across the industry

Page 10 Section 2 DMTF – Distributed Management Task Force

Page 12 Section 3

itSMF – IT Service Management Forum

Page 14 Section 4

ITU-T – International Telecommunication Union-

Telecommunications Sector

Page 18 Section 5

3GPP – Third Generation Partnership Project

Page 20 Section 6

OMG – Object Management Group

Page 22 Section 7

MEF – Metro Ethernet Forum

Page 24 Section 8

ATIS – Alliance for Telecommunications Industry

Standards

Page 27 Section 9

OASIS – Organization for the Advancement of

Structured Information Standards

Page 29 Section 10

IETF – Internet Engineering Task Force

Page 31 Section 11

ETSI-TISPAN – European Telecommunications

Standards Institute-TISPAN

Page 32 Section 12

NIST – National Institute of Standards and

Technology

Page 33 Section 13

Broadband Forum

Page 34 Section 14

Conclusions

Page 35 Annex 1

Abbreviations used in this report

Page 37 Annex 2

The standardization railway map





QUICK INSIGHTS

Since our last report in early 2010, there has

been a number of changes in the management

standards landscape: a couple of Standards

Development Organization (SDO) working

groups have completed their work and closed

down; one, considered dormant, has a new

lease on life; and a couple have changed

their focus and scope. Many have delivered

useful standards and support documents, but

the biggest change has been the upsurge

in standards activity with respect to cloud

computing.

It seems every SDO has some stake in cloud

computing standardization: ITU-T, ETSI, and

OMG Telecom SIG in the telecoms aspects;

NIST in the government and security aspects;

IEEE in the portability and interoperability

aspects; ATIS and TM Forum in services

aspects from a service provider’s perspective;

OASIS on the security aspects; DMTF in the

management aspects; and IETF on reference

framework aspects.

(Please see Annex 1 on page 35 for the list

of abbreviations used in this report.)

This, we believe, underlines the assertion

in our last report that standards have been,

and continue to be, an important part of

ensuring interoperability among different

manufacturers’ equipment. Interface standards

(to which equipment must conform to ensure

interoperability) and supporting documents,

such as architectures, information models, bestpractices, and implementation agreements,

have been the ‘bread and butter’ of TM Forum

for the last two decades.

Developing these standards and supporting

documents is an expensive and time-

consuming business. Leveraging the standards

of other SDOs and collaborating with them on

developing new standards are ways to not only

reduce costs, but also to contribute to timely,

useful, and harmonized standards for the

industry as a whole.

Since the creation of the TM Forum, the

number of SDOs – both accredited and non-

accredited – has increased considerably,

making the management of liaisons between

SDOs and TM Forum more difficult, but no less

important. The Forum is a strong believer in

the value of liaison, and has had (and still has)

many important relationships with other SDOs.

Although this report focuses on liaison

opportunities between TM Forum programs

and other SDOs, it is important to remember

that there are liaison opportunities in the

industry as whole. To better understand the

larger picture, TM Forum has started a project

to develop a visualization (see Annex 2 on page

37) of the management standards landscape

in a single graphic supported by an interactive

tool.

Report findings

On behalf of TM Forum, Colin Ashford, founde

of OSS Evolution, examines the work of

12 SDOs with a focus similar to that of the

Forum. These are organizations conducting

important work that in some way intersects

with the work of the Forum. The research

uncovers potential liaison opportunities for

leveraging standards, contributing expertise,

or collaboratively developing standards. The

following were the original ten SDOs selected

by TM Forum’s Liaison Community in 2010:

n DMTF—Distributed Management Task Force

n itSMF—IT Service Management Forum

n ITU-T—International Telecommunications

Union-Telecommunications Sector

n 3GPP—Third Generation Partnership Project

n OMG—Object Management Group

n MEF—Metro Ethernet Forum

n ATIS—Alliance for Telecommunications

Industry Standards

n OASIS—Organization for the Advancement

of Structured Information Standards

Executive summary




n IETF—Internet Engineering Task Force

n ETSI-TISPAN—European Telecommunications

Standards Institute-TISPAN.

This year two SDOs were added to this report:

n BBF—Broadband Forum

n NIST—National Institute of Standards and

Technology.

We found that considerable overlap

continues to exist between the work of the

Forum and that of the larger, communications-

oriented standards bodies such as 3GPP and

ITU-T. Although the Forum takes a business-

oriented approach to its work, focusing on

validation with stakeholders and practical

evaluation, there are considerable opportunities

for liaison of one sort or another. In both

cases, the Forum has strong, historical liaison

relationships and these continue.

Reflecting the convergence between

communications and the enterprise, a good

degree of overlap continues among the work

of TM Forum and that of the DMTF and itSMF.

The Forum can boast strong, ongoing liaison

relationships with the two SDOs.

Since our last report, two important

standardization initiatives have emerged: cloud

computing standardization involving the ITU-T,

NIST, DMTF, ATIS, and IEEE and an initiative to

develop a federated network information modelinvolving the IETF, 3GPP, and DMTF. TM Forum

has much to offer these initiatives in terms of

assets and expertise and is proactive in doing

so. In the area of cloud services, it has a close

working relationship with DMTF and is active in

the NIST discussions; TM Forum is also leading

the federated network information model initiative.

In addition to contributing assets, the TM

Forum has been an enthusiastic proponent

of leveraging standards from other SDOs in

its own work. By using standards on service-

oriented architectures, UML, model-driven

architectures, and WS-* interoperability profiles

developed by OMG and OASIS, TM Forum can

continue that tradition in its advanced programs

and initiatives.

TM Forum has had a long history of

liaison with other SDOs that are using and

developing standards. Many important liaisons

are ongoing, and in this report, a number

of other important opportunities to develop

timely, useful, cost-effective, and harmonized

standards are identified.

TM Forum has a long history ofliaising with other standards bodies

“Many important liaisons are ongoing,

and in this report, a number of other

important opportunities to develop

timely, useful, cost-effective, and

harmonized standards are identified.”





QUICK INSIGHTS

“One of the ways to reducecosts is to identify and act

upon liaison opportunities

with other standards

development organizations,

either by leveraging their

standards or by working

collaboratively to develop

new standards.”

Introduction

Standards have played an important part in

the development of interoperable telecoms

management equipment, but the development

of standards is an expensive and time-

consuming activity. One of the ways to

reduce costs is to identify and act upon

liaison opportunities with other Standards

Development Organizations (SDOs), either

by leveraging their standards or by working

collaboratively to develop new standards. TM

Forum values liaisons with other SDOs to help

develop harmonized, timely, cost-effective,

and useful interoperability standards for the

communications industry, as well as other

industries important to communications (such

as content, mobile advertising, and so on.).

Standards evolution

During the last decade, the number of

organizations that develops standards and

agreements for the communications industry

has increased substantially. This has led to the

increased possibility of overlap and duplication

of effort, not to mention conflicting standards.

Additionally, many of the standards being

developed by SDOs that do not necessarily

reside in the same space as TM Forum are

now becoming increasingly important to TMForum and its members. Standards on service-

oriented architectures (SOA) and modeling

tools are cases in point.

Purpose of the report

The main purpose of this report is to document

the standards activities of the 12 SDOs that

are considered most important to TM Forum

and to identify overlapping or complementary

activities within TM Forum. We hope that the

report will be an important tool for standards

Standards development 2011 – leveragingeffort across the industry

Section 1

managers in member companies, as they work

to allocate scarce resources to competing

standards activities. We also hope to help TM

Forum program managers and project leaders

identify liaison opportunities in their respective

areas of responsibility.

Background

TM Forum has had a long history of liaison with

other SDOs: it has leveraged existing standards

to develop implementation agreements; it

has had its standards adopted by accredited

standards bodies; and it has collaboratively

developed standards with other SDOs.

TM Forum standards engagement

When TM Forum first began its work, liaison

amongst SDOs was fairly easy to manage.

Global telecommunications-management

standards were approved by just a few large

standards bodies, such as the CCITT (now

ITU-T), and implementation agreements were

developed from the standards on a sector-

by-sector basis. During the two decades of

TM Forum’s existence, the convergence

of voice and data, the appearance of new

mobile and broadband technologies, and the

convergence of telecommunications and

information technology (IT) have brought newplayers into the space. This has made the

liaison management more difficult, but no less

important.

Making liaisons work

Liaison and collaboration amongst SDOs

can take many forms, ranging from an arms-

length exchange of working documents,

to collaborative work that can lead to

the publication of harmonized standards.

Collaborative work is often best achieved by




The driving force is the need to avoidoverlap and duplication of work

individuals who are members of both SDOs.

Other forms of liaison are the adoption of

existing standards of one SDO by another and

implementation agreements. In all cases, the

driving force is the need to avoid overlap and

duplication of work and to publish harmonized

and useful standards.

The different working styles, intellectual

property licensing regimes, and required

deliverables of SDOs can sometimes make

collaboration difficult. Most SDOs have

a hierarchical approval process, where a

managing committee of members approves

standards for publication. Other SDOs are

populist in nature and rely on ratification by

the user community. Most SDOs develop

their documents over a period of time from

member contributions; however, there exists

one SDO (the OMG) that issues requests for

proposals (RFPs) to the industry as a basis for

its standards. All SDOs issue their standards in

the form of text-based documents, but some

additionally require software implementations

of interface standards and even test kits to test

conformance.

SDOs develop a number of different types of

standards including:

n Architectural documents that guide theoverall systems design

n Interface standards and data models and

related conformance requirements that

enable interoperability between systems built

by different organizations

n Best-practices guides and auditing guidelines

that set the business framework

n Vocabulary standards to provide clarity

between providers and suppliers.

Roadblocks to successful liaisons

In our experience one of the main roadblocks

to successful liaisons between (and, in some

cases, within) SDOs is simply not knowing

what other SDOs are doing. The TM Forum

has started a project to address the issue by

developing a visualization of the management-

standards landscape. The visualization is a

single graphic in the form of a railway map (see

Annex 2). In the graphic:

n railway lines represent the work of the SDOs

n interchange stations represent a view of the

sectors of management standardization that

would be widely recognized in the industry; and

n stops on the lines (circles that intersect the

railway lines and stations) indicate that anSDO has an interest or activity in that sector

of standardization.

The purpose of the graphic is to try to

give the viewer a clear sense of the scope

and range of management standardization

across the industry. The graphic is part of an

interactive tool that allows a user drill down

into the details of the work, liaisons, and

existing collaborations amongst various SDOs.

The TM Forum is planning to make the tool

freely available to the industry to help identifyareas of potential collaboration.

We also note an increasing openness on

the part of SDOs to make their work plans

generally available. While information on scope

and mission of SDOs is generally available

from their respective websites, details of

work plans, work progress, meeting reports,

and interim deliverables are generally not.

The situation is improving: ITU-T now makes

the work plans of all its Study Groups freely

available (www.itu.int/ITU-T/workprog), and





QUICK INSIGHTS

the proceedings of the Global Standard

Collaboration meetings (www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/

gsc) are similarly freely available. The ITU-T’s

Joint Coordination Activity on Management

makes its all documents freely available.

Examples of other approaches are wikis such

as those at www.cloud-standards.org and

collaborate.nist.gov/twiki-cloud computing.

Clearly the more information that is available,

the better are the chances for collaboration.

What is an SDO?

Standards Development Organizations

(SDOs) vary in size, heritage, accreditation,

and scope. The ITU-T and ETSI for example

are large, international organizations

accredited by supranational bodies and

tasked with responsibilities for a wide range

of telecommunications activities. Along with

ATIS, these organizations develop standards

that, if adopted by national or supranational

governments, become mandatory in those

jurisdictions. These standards are often

referred to as de jure standards. Other

SDOs, such as the MEF and 3GPP focus

on particular technologies while others, like

TM Forum, focus on particular aspects of

communications. These organizations are often

trade associations (like TM Forum) or consortia

(like 3GPP) that provide a legal structure to

reach agreements. If widely adopted, these

agreements can evolve into de facto standards,and through partnering with accredited

standards-bodies these agreements can further

evolve into formal, international standards.

As a rule, SDOs charge membership

fees to help cover their costs. Fees can be

many thousands of dollars, which restricts

membership to just large corporations as

opposed to smaller companies or individuals.

But fees can also be minimal, or even non-

existent, in organizations that require nothing

more than a willingness to contribute.

Study approach

The ten SDOs included in the original

study in 2011 were extracted from a list of

about twenty SDOs that was developed by

consulting the members of TM Forum’s Liaison

Community. The SDOs initially chosen were:

n DMTF—Distributed Management Task Force

n itSMF—IT Service Management Forum

n ITU-T—International Telecommunications

Union-Telecommunications Sector

n 3GPP—Third Generation Partnership Project

n OMG—Object Management Group

n MEF—Metro Ethernet Forum

n ATIS—Alliance for Telecommunications

Industry Standards

n OASIS—Organization for the Advancement

of Structured Information Standards

n IETF—Internet Engineering Task Force

n

ETSI-TISPAN—European TelecommunicationsStandards Institute-TISPAN.

This year two additional SDO were added to

the report, namely:

n BBF—Broadband Forum

n NIST—National Institute of Standards and

Technology.

All of the SDOs included in this report have

websites that we have mined for background

material. All SDOs had mission statements,and most had good material on their history,

structure, working style, and scope. Access to

published standards and working documents

was uneven across SDOs, with some SDOs

making their documents available free-of-

charge to all, while others make documents

available free-of-charge to members only.

Most restrict access to working documents to

members.

We used the websites of the SDOs and

informal contacts to document the work plans,




Technical work is carried out byworking groups or task forces

“Frameworx is now used by 18 of the top 20 communications service providers in

the world. TM Forum standards are developed collaboratively by working groups and

approved by the membership as a whole.”

priorities, and deliverables of the work groups

in the SDOs we investigated, and cross-

referenced the information against similar

information from TM Forum projects. TM

Forum staff and project leaders validated the

cross references, and in many cases elaborated

on potential areas of liaison.

Report structure

The technical work of all of the SDOs we

examined is carried out by a number of

relatively small working groups or task forces

that generally focus on a single document or

a couple of closely related documents. These

working groups report, in some hierarchical

fashion or another, to the parent SDO.

We have devoted a section of the report to

each of the SDOs we examined. Each section

begins with the history, scope, structure, and

working style of the SDO. Depending on the

scope and structure of the SDO, we devote

a number of subsections to the work items

of the working groups or task forces and

identify where there is overlap or synergy.

Each section is completed by a summary of

our findings. The report is concluded with

an overall summary, some administrative

sections, and two annexes.

TM Forum (www.tmforum.org)

TM Forum is a global, not-for-profit industry

association focused on simplifying the

complexity of running a service providers’

business through discussion, collaboration,

innovation and education between its

members. The organization was founded in

1988 and has now grown to include more than

750 corporate members in 195 countries.

The Forum’s best practices and standards

today span topics including business

architectures, interface specifications,

information modeling, tooling, benchmarking,

and security.

TM Forum’s principal standard is known as

Frameworx – a suite of standards covering

business processes, information modeling,

management applications, and systems

integration, with a series of interfaces

covering transport networks, multi-technology

networks, and component-based management

Frameworx is now used by 18 of the top

20 communications service providers in the

world. TM Forum standards are developed

collaboratively by working groups and approved

by the membership as a whole.





QUICK INSIGHTS

Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF),

founded in 1992 and originally know as the

Desktop Management Task Force, is an industry

organization that develops and promotes

standards for systems management in enterprise

IT environments. These standards allow for the

building of systems management components in

a platform-independent and technology-neutral

way. By creating open industry standards,

DMTF helps enable systems management

interoperability among IT products from different

manufacturers. DMTF has a membership of

more than 160 companies, including major

software and hardware vendors, communications

companies, and tool vendors. The DMTF and

TM Forum have had a long-standing liaison

relationship.

The DMTF produces text-based standards

by means of contributions from its members.

It maintains two key standards: the Common

Information Model (CIM) and Web-Based

Enterprise Management (WBEM), as well as a

number of additional management standards,

such as Configuration Management Database

Federation (CMDBf).

CIM defines a conceptual model that

describes how managed resources (for example,

computers or storage area networks) may be

represented as a set of objects and relationshipsamong them. The model is described using

UML and is also available in XML Schema

and CIM-XML formats. WBEM defines two

protocols, XML-CIM and WS-Management,

for communications between management

applications and managed resources.

2.1 DMTF Telecommunications and Networks

Work Group (TNWG)

Since our last report, the Telecommunication

Management Working Group (TelcoWG) has

DMTF – Distributed Management Task Force(www.dmtf.org)

Section 2

revised its charter in response to a changing

management landscape of consolidation of

networks, virtualization, and cloud-based

services. It has also changed its name to the

Telecommunications and Networks Work Group

(TNWG). In addition to completing the work

of the old TelcoWG, the TNWG will seek to

simplify management solutions for network and

systems administration of cloud infrastructure

by developing common management profiles

based on existing work. The objectives of the

WG are to:

1 Augment the existing CIM profiles

addressing the management requirements for

routing and routed protocols and services for

physical, logical and virtual technologies and

infrastructures.

2 Collect and prioritize use cases modeling

resources and services for cloud and virtual

network management.

3 Extend existing CIM profiles to ensure

adequate coverage for the service provider and

carrier markets including NMS/OSS integration

and standard telecoms-grade programmatic

interfaces for hardware and virtual systems

management.

4 Work with peer groups to harmonize CIM with

information and data models developed byother SDOs including: ITU-T, TM Forum, 3GPP,

and IETF.

Currently, the WG is focusing its efforts on: a

survey of SDOs with respect to cloud metrics;

addenda to the work register with TM Forum;

and completion, in collaboration with TM

Forum, of a project to harmonize the CIM and

Information Framework (SID) information models.

All of the cloud work items will be of interest

to the TM Forum’s Enabling Cloud Services




Working together to identify synergies,overlaps and gaps for cloud services

initiative; the cloud metrics work will also be

of interest to the Forum’s TIP Resource and

Service Assurance program.

2.2 DMTF Cloud Management Working Group

(CMWG)

The Cloud Management Working Group (CMWC)

evolved from DMTF Open Cloud Standards

Incubator that was started in April 2009 “…to

develop a set of informational specifications for

cloud resource-management…” In July 2010 the

incubator delivered two important documents:

Use Cases and Interactions for Managing Clouds

and Architecture for Managing Clouds . They will

form the foundation for DMTF’s ongoing cloud

standards work.

The CMWG is chartered to develop a set of

prescriptive specifications covering architectural

semantics and implementation details to achieve

interoperable management of clouds between

service requestors and service providers. Starting

from the work of the incubator, the CMWG

expects to deliver, within the next 18 months:

cloud-service management models; mappings

to existing management models in the industry;

and cloud-management interface protocol

requirements.

The scope of CMWG will mainly be on cloud

resource management aspects of Infrastructure

as a Service (IaaS) and will include policy, SLAs,

QoS, provisioning, and monitoring considerations.

Current work items cover protocol requirements,data models, and use cases.

The TM Forum’s Enabling Cloud Services

Initiative is working closely with the DMTF to

produce a technical report that identifies the

synergies, overlaps, and gaps in respective

specifications for the delivery and management

of cloud services.

Work projects within the TM Forum that

offer value to the CMWG include: cloud SLA

management; cloud security; cloud billing; and

cloud service definitions. A number of Catalyst

projects also offer useful input including those

entitled Managing Cloud Resource, Service

and Revenue, Enhanced Service Management,

Leveraging SaaS and ITIL in End-to-End

Operations, and Cloud Network Elasticity .

The DMTF’s expertise in service and resource

management and TM Forum’s knowledge of

service provider practice in managing, delivering,

and assuring services should continue to lead to a

mutually beneficial collaboration, with each SDO

bringing its particular experience to the table.

TM Forum’s extensive expertise in managing

SLAs will be most useful to the DMTF in its work

around developing specific metrics and service

definitions for managing cloud services.

2.3 DMTF summary

TM Forum and DMTF have had a long and useful

history of collaboration in aligning information

models and developing federated management

architectures to benefit the industry as a whole.

The DMTF was a sponsor of the long-running

Harmony Catalyst project that promoted an

understanding of managing customer experience

That Catalyst helped galvanize the creation

of TM Forum’s current Managing Customer

Experience Program.

The pioneering work of the DMTF in

developing standards and white papers on the

management of cloud computing will be of grea

value to TM Forum Managing Cloud Services

Initiative; conversely, the Forum’s reputation forquality assurance management could be of grea

assistance to the DMTF.

The ongoing work to harmonize information

models is particularly important in the context

of the TM Forum’s initiative on a federated

network information model.

As enterprise networking and telecomms

converge, it is important that the two

organizations harmonize their management

standards and collaborate on any new

standards.

“TM Forum and DMTFhave had a long

and useful history

of collaboration in

aligning information

models and developing

federated management

architectures to benefit

the industry as a whole.”





QUICK INSIGHTS

The IT Service Management Forum (itSMF)

is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to

the development and promotion of IT service

management best practices. Its deliverables

include reports, standards, and qualifications.

One of the major components of itSMF is the

ITIL (www.itil-officialsite.com).

ITIL is a collection of publications focused

on promoting best practices in IT service

management; it is based on a lifecycle view

of managing operations. It was originally

published by the UK government in 1989 and

initially focused on internal IT services and

support, but its scope has been expanded to

address service management more broadly.

ITIL is now maintained by the UK Office of

Government Commerce (OGC), with copyright

owned by the Crown.

ITIL provides a foundation for quality IT

service management through documented,

proven processes that cover the entire service

lifecycle from service design, through service

transition (deployment), to service operation.

The best practice focus means that ITIL does

not tie directly to areas of the business, but

instead provides a ‘template’ for how to carry

out activities such as change management.

This can then be targeted to a specific area

of concern say, resource level changes in theBusiness Process Framework.

ITIL Version 3 was published in 2007, and an

update is planned for the second half of 2011.

The OGC work style is to recruit authors and

reviewers from the industry, but final approvals

rest with an advisory board recruited from the

industry.

3.1 itSMF and TM Forum Collaboration

itSMF and TM Forum have recognized the value

of aligning the Business Process Framework

itSMF – IT Service Management Forum(www.itsmfi.org)

Section 3

(eTOM) that is process-model based, with ITIL

that is based on best practices. This is achieved

by embedding ITIL’s policy approach and best

practices into the Business Process Framework.

This has led to the publication of TR 143: ITIL

and eTOM: Building Bridges , a document

describing how ITIL and the Business Process

Framework can come together.

In particular, TR143 recommendations for

enhancing the Business Process Framework

have been implemented in the recent releases

of the Business Process Framework. The latest

iteration explicitly embeds ITIL best practices

and explains how these processes link with the

existing framework, allowing users to leverage

the two approaches. TM Forum also offers a

training course that gives guidance on using

the Business Process Framework to realize ITIL

best practices.

itSMF and TM Forum have ongoing liaison

activities and have developed a joint roadmap

to include investigations on the use of the

Information Framework as a model for ITIL’s

Configuration Management Database. The

DMTF’s collaboration with itSMF to define a

model for federated configuration management

databases should be of interest to the

Information Framework program.

Since our last report, there has been a numberof activities around ITIL in TM Forum including:

1 iTSMF and Business Process Framework

collaboration in introducing ITIL best practices

into the current work on Level 4 process

elements and process flows.

2 A Catalyst project to leverage Information

Framework data elements, Business

Process Framework process flows and

process elements, and ITIL best practice in a

standards-based integration between a cloud-




TM Forum’s Business ProcessFramework is fully aligned with ITIL

“Although most of the work on the TM Forum side has been with the Frameworx

projects, many government agencies subscribe to ITIL best practices; hence the

TM Forum Government and Defense initiative might want to take advantage of the

liaison arrangements with itsMF.”

based Software as a Service (SaaS) customer

relationship managemnt (CRM) and a product

catalog system.

3 Work on a methodology document to describe

how ITIL best practices can be implemented

using Business Process Framework process

elements and element flows.

4 Emerging interest in aligning Business

Process Framework with ITIL information

security management best practices and

developing security focused interfaces

3.2 itSMF summary

Collaboration between the itSMF and

TM Forum has been helpful in aligning one

of Forum’s key assets, namely the Business

Process Framework, with ITIL, an internationally

recognized library of best practices for IT service

management.

Although most of the work on the TM

Forum side has been with the Frameworx

projects, many government agencies subscribe

to ITIL best practices; hence the TM Forum

Government and Defense initiative might want

to take advantage of the liaison arrangements

with itSMF. The imminent update to version 3 o

ITIL may require further terminology alignment

between the itSMF and TM Forum.





QUICK INSIGHTS

The International Telecommunication Union

(ITU) has a long history of developing standards

for telecoms dating back to 1865. Today, the

ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization

Sector (ITU-T) produces new and revised

standards (ITU-T Recommendations) that cover

everything from core network functionality and

broadband, to next generation services like

IPTV. Among its priority work items is one to

ensure the interoperability of Next Generation

Networks (NGN).

The ITU is a United Nations specialized

agency governed by a treaty among its member

states. ITU-T Recommendations are voluntary

standards, and so not mandatory unless they

are adopted in national laws or specified by

equipment purchasers. Levels of compliance

are, however, high due to international

applicability. Recommendations are agreed by

consensus and consist of textual specifications.

ITU-T membership includes national standards

organizations and a cross-section of the

members of the telecoms and IT industries,

from large manufacturers and carriers, to small

players working in new fields like IP networking.

The work of the ITU

The work of the ITU-T is carried out by a

number of Study Groups (SGs) responsible forspecific areas, such as; security, broadband

cable, multimedia management, and various

aspects of NGN. Study Groups are chartered

for a four-year study period. Their areas of

responsibility are divided into work topics

termed Questions. Answers to the Questions

generally take the form of a Recommendation

that is developed over a period of time by

member contributions. The ITU-T procedures

permit Recommendations to be completed

and published within a number months (the

ITU-T– International Telecommunication Union-Telecommunications Sector (www.itu.int/ITU-T)

Section 4

Alternative Approvals Process or AAP), although

most take a couple of years to complete.

Telecoms management standardization

ITU-T’s long history of standardization of

telecoms management began in 1986. It was

consolidated into SG4 in 1996 and formalized

with a series of Recommendations under

the umbrella title of Telecommunications

Management Network (TMN). Over various

study periods, the TMN series has been

broadened to include standardization of

principles of telecoms management, reference

models, generic information models, and

modeling principles. Other Study Groups use

and elaborate upon these Recommendations to

develop specific data models and protocols for

the management of various telecommunications

technologies (for example, SONET/SDH).

Collaboration between the ITU-T and TM Forum

Historically there has been close collaboration

between ITU-T and TM Forum. In the early

days of TM Forum’s existence, it leveraged

Recommendations such as M.3010 (TMN

Architecture), M.3100 (Generic Network

Information Model), and G.805 (Generic Functional

Architecture) to develop its own agreements.

More recently, the direction has changedand TM Forum has submitted a number of its

agreements that have been accepted as ITU-T

Recommendations, including the Business

Process Framework (eTOM) as M.3050; part

of Multi Technology Network Management

(MTNM) as M.3170; and the Information

Framework (SID) as M.3190.

Together, the two organizations and others

have also worked to establish protocol-neutral

information modeling as the foundation of a

multi-protocol management environment.




TM Forum plans to submit updated versionsof Frameworx elements to the ITU-T

TM Forum plans to submit updated versions

of the Business Process Framework and

Information Framework.

4.1 ITU-T Study Group 2 – SG2

For the current study period (2008–2012),

responsibility for telecoms management has

been given to SG2 (Operational aspects of

Service Provision and Telecommunications

Management). Highlights of the work of SG2

for this study period include: management and

interworking of NGN, disaster recovery, and

climate change.

The groups responsible for individual

Questions collectively have responsibilities for a

large number of telecoms management areas.

Although each Question has developed priorities

for its work items, like most SDOs, progress is

ultimately driven by member contributions.

SG2 has 14 Questions under study for this

study period. Questions that cover the same

general work areas as those of TM Forum are:

n Q5/2 (Network and Service Operations and

Maintenance Procedures)

n Q7/2 (Requirements for Business-to-Business

and Customer-to-Business Management

Interfaces)

n Q8/2 (Management Framework and Architecture)n Q9/2 (Methodology and Generic

Requirements for Management Interfaces)

n Q10/2 (Specialized Management Interface)

n Q11/2 (Protocols and Security for

Management).

4.1.1 Question 5/2 – Network and Service

Operations and Maintenance Procedures

Q5/2 has a number of areas of responsibility that

are similar to those in TM Forum, including:

n Convergence of telecoms and IT

environments – TM Forum Business Process

Framework

n NGN-based services – TM Forum TIP Service

Management

n Next generation mobile networks – TM Forum

Managing Next Generation Wireless-Wireline

Networks (NGWW) initiative

n VoIP metrics – TM Forum TIP Usage Data

Management.

TM Forum has material in all these areas that

could be shared with Question 5/2.

Q5/2 is progressing E.861 (Defining

Operations Competency Metrics). This could

be of interest to the TM Forum Business

Benchmarking program.

Recommendation E.41Corr (Alarm Correlation

and Impact Analysis) is slated for completion in

2011. However there is no base text and the

rapporteur has recently called for contributions.

It has overlap with the work of TM Forum TIP

Resource Management.

4.1.2 Q7/2—Requirements for Business-

to-Business and Customer-to-Business

Management Interfaces

Q7/2 has primary responsibility for business-

to-business (B2B) and customer-to-business(C2B) management, including customer network

management. The Question has a number of

work items that could be of interest to TM

Forum including:

1 M.1402 (Formalization of Data for Service

Management) – of interest to TM Forum TIP

Service Management.

2 M3340.1 (Generic Service Management

Requirements for the B2B and C2B interface)

“Although each

Question has developed

priorities for its work

items, like most

[standards development

organizations] progress

is ultimately driven by

member contributions.”





QUICK INSIGHTS

3 M.3361 (Requirements for Business to

Government Management Interfaces); to

be submitted to AAP – of interest to the TM

Forum Government and Defense initiative.

4 M.pc (Guidelines for the Definition of

Product Catalogue) representation templates

– of interest to TM Forum TIP Ordering and

Activation.

5 M.3345-rev (Self Service Management

Architecture) – a new work item being pursued.

4.1.3 Q8/2 – Management Framework and

Architecture

Q8/2 has a number of areas of responsibility,

including revisions to M.3050 (Business Process

Framework) and M.3060 (Principles for NGN

Management) to reflect the changing telecoms

landscape, the impact of IPTV, and the trend to

user self-management. These pieces of work

would be of interest to the Forum’s Business

Process Framework and TM Forum Managing

Next Generation Wireless-Wireline Networks

initiative respectively. Liaison arrangements are

in place with TM Forum.

4.1.4 Q9/2 – Methodology and Generic

Requirements for Management Interfaces

Q9/2 has three areas of responsibility that are

of interest to TM Forum: generic management

information (including security of management);

protocol-neutral modeling; and support of SOAconcepts.

Two documents are due for completion

in 2011 – Q.ws-xml (SOA Web-service-

based Management Services) and X.ws-xml

(Guidelines for Defining Web-services for

Managed Objects and Management Interfaces).

Copies of the working documents have

been sent to TM Forum (Shared Interface

Infrastructure), 3GPP SA5, ATIS TMOC and

OBF for their comments. Q9/2 is progressing

two protocol-neutral documents: one on log

management and one on test management;

these could be of interest to TM Forum TIP

Resource and Service Assurance program.

In collaboration with TM Forum, Q9/2 has

completed a generic resource model for

transport networks using UML– M.3102 (Unified

Management Information Model for Connection-

Oriented and Connectionless Networks); it was

sent for AAP (Alternative Approval Process) late

in 2010.

4.1.5 Q10/2 – Specialized Management

Interfaces

M.3060 (Principles for the Management of Next

Generation Networks) defines two strata: the

Service Stratum and the Transport Stratum.

Management of these strata is the responsibility

of Q10/2.

Q10/2 has two work items due for completion

in this study period, respectively: M.3348

(Requirements of NMS-EMS Management

Interface for NGN Service Platforms) and

M.3347 (Service Activation and Subscription

Management). There is some overlap between

these work items and those in TM Forum TIP

Services Management and TIP Ordering and

Activation. Exchange of relevant documents

between the two groups could be beneficial.

M.3348 has been sent for AAP.

4.1.6 Question 11/2 – Protocols and Securityfor Management

The main responsibility of Q11/2 is developing

protocol and security mechanisms (especially

those relating to SOA) to support security of

management and management of security in

NGNs and e-commerce.

Q11/2 is developing M.3016.x (2005) Amd.N

(Enhancements to Security Requirements

Services and Mechanisms), scheduled for

completion in this study period (2008–2012).

TM Forum TIP Enterprise Identity Management

“There is some overlap

between these workitems and those in TM

Forum TIP services

Management and TIP

Ordering and Activation.

Exchange of relevant

documents between the

two groups could be

beneficial.”




TM Forum and ITU-T have documentsand expertise flowing between them

and the TM Forum Government and Defense

Initiative might want to review this document

for potential alignment with their work.

4.2 Joint Coordination Activity on

Management – JCA-Mgt

The JCA-Mgt (Joint Coordination Activity on

Management) was established to coordinate

the activities in key international and national

organizations responsible for the specification

of management interfaces. Participants include

leaders of the ITU-T Study Groups, TM Forum,

3GPP, ETSI, and ATIS – all of which meet

electronically on a periodic basis to review

activities in their respective organizations and

to identify projects for harmonization. It is also

chartered to develop a management standards

roadmap. This is potentially an important

activity for reducing overlap and duplication

across the industry.

Although the JCA has received no

contributions recently on the roadmap and the

work may be dropped, the members agree that

the current role of the JCA (that is the sharing

of information on management standards and

harmonization activities) is valuable enough to

continue the meetings.

4.3 Focus Group on Cloud Computing (FG

Cloud)

ITU-T Focus Group on Cloud Computing (FGCloud) was established early 2010 to “…

contribute [to] the telecommunication aspects…

to support services/applications of cloud

computing making use of telecommunication

networks…” The FG is structured into two

working groups:

n WG1 – Cloud computing benefits &

requirements

n WG2– Gap Analysis and Roadmap on Cloud

Computing Standards development in ITU-T.

Of particular interest is Working Area 5 of

WG1 (WA 1-5) – Cloud Services & Resource

Management, Platforms and Middleware.

WG1 maintains a document entitled Overview

of SDOs involved in Cloud Computing which

categorizes the work of ITU-T Study Groups

and SDOs in the area of cloud computing with a

view to identifying gaps.

Contributions to WA 1-5 seem few in number

and the management section of the reference

architecture is very immature. Input from DMTF

and TM Forum could be helpful in ensuring

alignment across the industry.

4.4 ITU-T summary

TM Forum has had a long and useful liaison

relationship with ITU-T with documents and

expertise flowing in both directions. The work of

SG2 overlaps with the work of many TM Forum

projects, including those that are responsible

for security, interfaces and the use of SOA

techniques for management.

The prestige of the ITU-T, the breadth of its

telecomms management activities, and its

importance to many developing countries, make

it an important liaison SDO.

In a wider context, active participation in the

JCA-Mgt and Cloud-FG could be an important

way for TM Forum to identify and influence

those standardization issues that involve a

number of SDOs.





QUICK INSIGHTS

The Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)

is a collaborative standards development

activity among the following national Standards

Development Organizations (SDOs): ARIB

(Japan), ATIS (U.S.), CCSA (China), ETSI

(Europe), TTA (Korea), and TTC (Japan). ETSI

provides administrative support.

The original scope of 3GPP was to produce

technical specifications and reports for a 3G

mobile system based on GSM core networks and

the radio access technologies that they support.

The scope was subsequently amended to

include the maintenance and development of

the Global System for Mobile Communication

(GSM) technical specifications and reports

including those concerned with evolved radio

access technologies (such as General Packet

Radio Service – GPRS – and Enhanced Data

rates for GSM Evolution – EDGE). It also

has responsibility for the development of IP

Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) specifications.

The work of 3GPP

The work of 3GPP is led by a Project

Coordination Group that is responsible for the

overall timeframe and management of the

technical work. The technical specification

development work within 3GPP is carried out

by Technical Specification Groups (TSGs). EachTSG has the responsibility to prepare, approve,

and maintain specifications.

There are five TSGs, namely: TSG GERAN

(GSM EDGE Radio Access Network), TSG RAN

(Radio Access Network), TSG SA (Services and

Systems Aspects), TSG CT (Core Networks

and Terminals). Working Group 5 (WG5) of TSG

SA is responsible for telecoms management.

3GPP publishes text-based standards developed

through contributions from members.

TM Forum has a working agreement with

3GPP – Third Generation Partnership Project(www.3gpp.org)

Section 5

3GPP “…to facilitate the exchange and use

of documents related to the area of Telecom

Management.”

5.1 3GPP SA WG5

SA WG5 of 3GPP is responsible for the

specification of the management framework

and requirements for management of the 3G

system. Deliverables include: architecture

descriptions of the telecom management

network; Interface Reference Point (IRP)

requirements, information services, and solution

sets; specifications of the Network Resource

Model; guidebooks; and feasibility studies.

TM Forum has had a number of collaborations

with 3GPP through individuals that are members

of both organizations.

5.1.1 Service Oriented Architecture for IRP

As with many SDOs, 3GPP recognizes that

service oriented architecture (SOA) is gaining

acceptance in the IT industry to automate

processes, improve flexibility, and facilitate

integration beyond the enterprise. A number of

SDOs is seriously investigating or using SOA

principles for telecoms management. SA5

has delivered a technical report – TR 32.824:

Study on SOA compliant need and additional

capabilities for existing/currently plannedInterface IRPs.

3GPP’s Service Oriented Architecture

(SOA) for IRP work item is based on the

study document, TR32.824, and will update

TS 32.101: Telecommunication management;

Principles and high level requirements; TS

32.102: Telecommunication management;

Architecture; and TS 32.150: Telecommunication

management; Integration Reference Point

(IRP) Concept and Definitions to support SOA

infrastructure.




The work item will also define the

relationship between the SOA infrastructure

and the IRP architecture. There is clear synergy

between this work and that of TM Forum

Software Enabled Services Management

Solution Program and also the Frameworx

Architecture Steering Team (FAST).

5.1.2 Study Items

In the context of standards convergence, 3GPP

is progressing four study items entitled:

1 Alignment 3GPP Generic NRM IRP and TM

Forum SID [the Information Framework]

2 Study on Management of Converged

Networks

3 Harmonization of 3GPP Alarm IRP and TM

F[orum] TIP FM.

4 Study on Alignment of 3GPP PM IRP and TM

F[orum] Interface Program (TIP) PM.

Items (1) and (3) are the subject of

collaboration between 3GPP and TM Forum

under the TM Forum programs entitled

Federated Information Model and Resource

and Service Assurance Resource Alarm

Management respectively.

In response to a strong position paper

presented to TSG-SA (SA5’s parent committee)

by three major European service providers,

TSG-SA requested that SA5 and the TM Forum

analyze the progress achieved in the joint

working group, particularly in relation to the

proposed federated network information model.

Additionally SA5 was requested to report back

on how the working group proposes to meet the

market needs for managing converged networks

based on operator requirements such as

those specified by the Next Generation Mobile

Network (www.ngmn.org). Replies are expected

in early 2011.

5.2 3GPP summary

There has been a good deal of useful

collaboration between TM Forum and 3GPP,

including leveraging the Business Process

and Information Frameworks. Both groups

are working in the areas of SOA, service

delivery, converged networks, key performance

indicators, and the use of Web Services.

The strong statement by service providers

urging 3GPP and TM Forum to work together to

develop common interface standards underlines

the importance service providers attach to

harmonized standards.

“The strong statement by service providers urging 3GPP and TM Forum to work

together to develop common interface standards underlines the importance service

providers attach to harmonized standards.”

Service providers are urging TM Forumand 3GPP to work together more





QUICK INSIGHTS

The Object Management Group (OMG) has

been an international, open membership,

computer industry consortium since 1989. The

OMG develops enterprise integration standards

for a range of technologies and industries. It

focuses on developing software methodology,

modeling, and middleware standards. Its

membership is made up of hundreds of

organizations, half of which are software end-

users in more than 24 vertical markets (such as

health care, manufacturing technology, finance,

and telecoms).

6.1 OMG standards

OMG’s modeling standards include the Unified

Modeling Language (UML) and Model Driven

Architecture (MDA) that together enable visual

design, execution and maintenance of software.

OMG’s middleware standards and profiles

are based on the Common Object Request

Broker Architecture (CORBA), and include best

practices such as SOA and Business Process

Management (BPM) to support a variety of

industries.

OMG maintains liaison relationships with

many organizations, including TM Forum.

OMG’s UML, Meta Object Facility (MOF), and

Interface Definition Language (IDL) standards

are ISO standards and ITU-T Recommendations.

6.2 The work of the OMG

The work of the OMG is carried out by Task

Forces that are responsible to Technical

Committees. The work of the Task Forces

is overseen by an Architecture Board.

The structure of the OMG also includes

Special Interest Groups (SIGs), which are

discussion groups that deal with platform and

infrastructure issues.

The OMG develops its standards by issuing

OMG – Object Management Group(www.omg.org)

Section 6

an RFP to the industry at large on a specific item

of technology. Responses to these RFPs come

from individual companies or ad hoc consortia.

The responses are normally merged into a single

response by the issuing Task Force and voted

on for adoption as OMG standards.

Adoption of the merged response depends

on the supporters committing to deliver relevant

product to the market place within a reasonable

time period. The OMG standards are text based.

Implementations of the OMG specifications

come from private companies or open

source groups. One important source is the

Eclipse Foundation (www.eclipse.org); many

implementations of OMG modeling standards

may be found in the Eclipse Modeling

Framework (EMF) or Graphical Modeling

Framework (GMF).

6.3 Collaboration between OMG and

TM Forum

TM Forum has leveraged many OMG

specifications, such as CORBA and UML, in its

specifications, including TM Forum Interfaces

(e.g., MTNM), Information Framework and

Frameworx. More recently, TM forum tooling

efforts have been built around OMG standards

such as MDA, UML, and MOF. These efforts

include a study of the use of SOAML [SOAML](dialect of UML for modeling SOA) by the

Frameworx Architecture Steering Team (FAST)

and a study of Model Driven Architecture to

implement the TM Forum Software Enabled

Management Solutions.

6.4 OMG Telecommunications SIG

Communications service providers have always

taken a strong interest in the work of the

OMG and use many of its specifications. The

Telecommunications Task Force was formed




in 1996 to develop telecoms specific CORBA

services such as the CORBA Notification

Service. The Task Force became a SIG in 2004;

its membership includes a number of important

service and equipment providers, some of

which are also TM Forum members.

The main responsibility of the

Telecommunications SIG is to “…promote

the use of Model Driven Architecture (MDA),

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and

Event Driven Architecture (EDA) technical

approaches in the telecom Industry.” While

many of the work items identified by the

Telecommunications SIG are not telecoms

specific and are being addressed by other

SIGs and task forces in the OMG, the

Telecommunications SIG is a useful voice for

the sector within the OMG, especially in the

SOA SIG and the MDA Users SIG.

The SOA SIG is responsible for promoting

OMG modeling standards to complement those

from W3C and OASIS; the MDA is responsible

for disseminating practical experience of MDA.

In late 2010, the Telecommunications SIG

took a bold step in the cloud computing arena

with a two-day conference, the Telecom Cloud

Information Day and Standards Workshop. The

goals of the conference were to:

1 Provide a forum for end-users (such as

government, enterprises, and consumers) and

SDOs to discuss standardization requirements

2 Initiate communication and coordination

across multiple open cloud groups.

The meeting was supported by over 20

organizations with representatives from SDOs

such as ATIS, ITU-T, DMTF, TM Forum, and

SNIA; from open-source projects such as

OpenStack, OpenNebula, and DeltaCloud; and

from end-users organizations such as NIST,

Open Data Center Alliance, and TM Forum

Enterprise Cloud Leadership Council.

A number of opportunities was identified

during the conference including: interoperability

demonstrations and end-user education. Future

meetings, both physical and virtual, are planned

with a focus on issues of interoperability,

portability, and security from an end-user’s

perspective.

The SIG is also contributing to the RFI

Using Problem-Specific Views for Information

Federation based on requirements from

the TM Forum network information model

harmonization effort and, in collaboration

with TM Forum, contributing to the revised

submission on Telecommunication SOA

Modeling Language (TelcoML).

6.5 OMG summary

Historically, the use and development of OMG

specifications has been important to many

groups in the Forum. The particular emphasis

on the use of MDA and SOA specifications in

TM Forum TIP Shared Interface Infrastructure

and the Frameworx Architecture Steering Team

(FAST) teams continues this tradition.

The OMG’s MDA and SOA specifications

are inevitably general in nature and it is tobe expected that TM Forum projects will

identify telecoms specific requirements. The

Telecommunications SIG is an important vehicle

for having telecoms requirements addressed by

the OMG and could be an important meeting

point for experts with different perspectives to

define metamodels that can support a telecoms

ecosystem.

An important meeting point to definemetamodels for a telecom ecosystem

“In late 2010, the

Telecommunications

SIG took a bold step in

the cloud computing

arena with a two-day

conference, the Telecom

Cloud Information Day and

Standards Workshop.”





QUICK INSIGHTS

The Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) was formed

in 2001 with a mission to accelerate the

worldwide adoption of carrier-class Ethernet

(Carrier Ethernet) networks and services. MEF

defines Carrier Ethernet as “…a set of certified

network elements that connect to transport

Carrier Ethernet services for all users, locally &

worldwide…”

The MEF characterizes Carrier Ethernet by

five attributes: standardized services, scalability,

reliability, quality of service, and service

management.

The organization has three main objectives:

1 Build consensus amongst service providers,

equipment vendors, and end users on

Ethernet service definitions, technical

specifications, and interoperability

2 Facilitate implementation of existing and new

standards, Ethernet service definitions, test

procedures, and technical specifications

3 Enhance worldwide awareness of the benefits

of Ethernet services and Ethernet-based

metro transport networks.

The MEF’s work plan has moved from an

initial phase of architecture and definition,

through a second phase of implementation

and certification, and is now focused ona third phase – the Global Interconnect

initiative. The MEF defines this phase as “…

the interconnection of autonomous Carrier

Ethernet networks to enable standardized and

streamlined delivery of MEF-certified Carrier

Ethernet services with end-to-end Class of

Service, management and protection...”

The MEF has over 170 members worldwide,

including leading service providers, major

incumbent local exchange carriers (LECs), large

network equipment vendors, test equipment

MEF – Metro Ethernet Forum(www.metroethernetforum.org)

Section 7

suppliers, and enterprise organizations.

The majority of the technical specification

work carried out by the MEF focuses on the

development of implementation agreements

that leverage existing standards from standards

organizations such IETF, ITU-T, and IEEE. During

the course of its work, the MEF can make

recommendations on existing and evolving

standards.

It may also define “…as a last resort…” new

standards within the MEF. The MEF also carries

out extensive marketing, certification, and

education activities.

The technical work of the MEF is carried out

by four technical committees, namely:

Management Technical Committee –

responsible for the development of Carrier

Ethernet operations, administration and

maintenance requirements, models, and

definitions, including multi-vendor solutions, and

integration into legacy network architectures.

Architecture Technical Committee –

responsible for the development of an

architectural reference model and set of

common linguistic tools for the other technical

committees. The reference model includes

multiple base transport layers, a single EthernetServices layer, and application layers that ride on

top of the Ethernet Services layer.

Services Technical Committee – responsible

for the definition of Carrier Ethernet services

models, definitions, and service parameters and

attributes.

Test and Measurement Technical Committee

– responsible for the definition of test

methodologies and test suites that enable




conformance to Ethernet services as defined in

the MEF specifications.

7.1 MEF Management Technical Committee

The MEF Management Technical Committee

(TC) is responsible for the development of

Carrier Ethernet Operations, Administration and

Maintenance (OAM) requirements, models,

and definitions. The TC has already delivered a

number of specifications covering: an EMS-to-

NMS information model (MEF 7); requirements

for network element management (MEF 15);

service OAM requirements (MEF 17); and

Ethernet local management (MEF 16).

The TC has recently published, in collaboration

with the TM Forum TIP Resource Management

project, an update to MEF 7 (MEF 7.1) that

is a mapping between the information model

defined in ITU-T Q.840.1 (Ethernet Services

EMS-NMS Information Model) and that defined

in TM Forum’s Multi-Technology Network

Management – TMF 814 (Connectionless

Network Model). The TIP Resource

Management project has also developed a

mapping between MEF 7.0 to MTNM 3.5

Current work items of the Management

TC include developing implementation

agreements on performance management, fault

management, and delivery throughput.

7.2 MEF Services Technical Committee

The MEF Services TC’s mandate is to

define Carrier Ethernet service models and

terminology. Current work items include

hierarchical bandwidth profile, operator virtual

connection services, and availability.

The Service Management project within TM

Forum Interfaces Program has a sub-project

having specific responsibility for Ethernet

Service Management (TIP Service Management

ESM). It has collaborated with the MEF on the

definition of broadband Ethernet access and

broadband access and aggregation services

using concepts developed in recent MEF drafts

and specification.

As part of its liaison with the MEF, the TIP

Service Management ESM project has a work

item to harmonize the new concepts introduced

in MEF 7.1 defining broadband services with

TMF resource level specifications. The use

cases and architectures defined for broadband

Ethernet services submitted as a liaison

document to the MEF, should be of interest to

the MEF Services and Management TCs.

As a follow-on phase of work, the TIP

Resource and Service Management projects wil

be reviewing Ethernet OAM as defined by the

ITU-T and IEEE standards while leveraging the

service OAM requirements specified in MEF 17

7.3 MEF summary

The collaboration between the MEF and

TM Forum is a good example of efforts to

harmonize standards developed by different

SDOs, namely: MEF, ITU-T, IEEE, and TM

Forum and of the leveraging of standards of one

SDO by another. It also illustrates the need for

continuing harmonization activities as standards

and supporting documents evolve.“Current work itemsof the Management

[Technical Committee]

include developing

implementation

agreements on

performance management,

fault management, and

delivery throughput.”

Hierarchical bandwidth profile, operator virtualconnection services, and availability are key





QUICK INSIGHTS

ATIS (Alliance for Telecommunications Industry

Standards) is an open, standards organization

based in the U.S. It develops a range of

standards for the communications industry,

including those for IP-based infrastructure,

multimedia services (including IPTV), enhanced

OSS (Operations Support Systems) and BSS

(Business Support Systems), and improved

service quality and performance. ATIS is a

founding organizational partner of 3GPP. ATIS is

accredited by the American National Standards

Institute (ANSI).

ATIS membership includes the majority of

U.S. service providers and equipment vendors,

but also some international members. It is

composed of 18 technical committees, which

cover many aspects of telecoms (including

IPTV, billing, numbering, and reliability).

The most important of these committees

with respect to the work of TM Form are:

the Telecom Management and Operations

Committee (TMOC), the Service Oriented

Network Forum (SON), and the Ordering and

Billing Forum (OBF).

8.1 ATIS SON Forum – Service Oriented

Network Forum (soon to be renamed the

Cloud Services Forum)

The mission of the Service Oriented NetworkForum (SON Forum) is to enable the

interoperability and implementation of Service

Oriented Network (SON) applications and

services by the development of standards

and other related technical activities. SON

attempts to offer user-centric services through

a common transport that uses common service

enablers, profiles, and metadata. It is focused

on the data aspects of service architecture. The

SON Forum was chartered in 2009.

In 2010 ATIS recognized the importance

ATIS – Alliance for TelecommunicationsIndustry Standards (www.atis.org)

Section 8

of service architecture in the cloud domain

and the ATIS CIO Council and Technology

and Operations (TOPS) Council initiated an

assessment of cloud services from a service

provider’s perspective to include the definition

of a common framework. As a result, TOPS

has added a number work items with respect

to cloud services. It is expected that these will

constitute a significant work area going forward

for the SON Forum, which is to be renamed

the Cloud Services Forum.

The forum has three task forces to address

the technical work:

1 Policy and Data Models Task Force

2 OSS/BSS and Virtualization Task Force

3 Service Delivery Creation and Enablers Task

Force.

8.1.1 Policy and Data Models Task Force

The Policy and Data Models Task Force is

responsible for the production of standards that

define subscriber and network policies across

enablers and applications using a common

policy information model.

A report covering assessment of the issues

and recommendations was published in 2010.

The TF’s deliverables include a common policy

reference information model and interfaces toenable multiple policy decision actors to arrive

at a single policy decision for a subscriber. In

conjunction the TF will investigate industry

needs for common data models and the need

for common name space to improve integration

of data across multiple services.

8.1.2 OSS/BSS and Virtualization Task Force

The OSS/BSS and Virtualization Task Force is

responsible for standards for service-oriented

infrastructures, including virtualization. Its




deliverables include reports covering the

packaging of OSS/BSS components as service

enablers, and IT infrastructure virtualization.

8.1.3 SDCE – Service Delivery Creation and

Enablers Task Force

The Service Delivery Creation and Enablers

Task Force provides guidance and standards

on service creation and delivery, and the

use of service enablers in a multiple-domain

SON environment. Its main deliverables are

standards and technical reports covering:

a common product-data catalog repository;

common service enabler descriptions;

consistency of third party interfaces; and

standardization of WS-* specifications.

Since our last report, the SDCE has

published a technical report on service enabler

characterization and its report on third party

interfaces is nearing publication.

8.1.4 ATIS-SON and TM Forum Collaboration

The SON Forum has laid out an ambitious

program to leverage SOA principles to promote

an open, service-oriented network that is

consistent with Web 2.0 and IMS interworking.

The work of the three task forces could be of

great interest to a number of TM Forum projects,

including the Information Framework (SID),Application Framework (TAM), and Software

Enabled Services Management Solution.

With recent focus on cloud services by

ATIS, the Managing Cloud Services initiative is

endeavoring to build relations with the Cloud

Services Forum.

Meetings between the SON Forum and TM

Forum have continued with a view to relating

concepts in the work of the SDCE to those

in the work of TM Forum Software Enabled

Services Management Solution.

8.2 ATIS TMOC Telecom Management and

Operations Committee

The Telecom Management and Operations

Committee (TMOC) is responsible for the

development and maintenance of standards

and other specifications related to Operations,

Administration, Maintenance, and Provisioning

(OAM&P) of communications networks,

including OSS and network element (NE)

functions and interfaces.

TMOC focuses on contribution-driven,

text-based standards development related

to U.S. communication networks that can

work in coordination with the development

of international standards. TMOC is the

successor to the ATIS-sponsored T1M1

committee that was formed in 1984. TM

Forum has had a long history of liaison

activities with both TMOC and T1M1.

The current work of the committee revolves

around NGN Accounting Management.

TMOC has recently published an IPTV

Ordering framework to supports the ordering o

advertising space, and TMOC is now defining

XML-based interface requirements along with

a corresponding data dictionary standard; this

could be of interest to the Forum’s IPsphere

program. In 2010 TMOC published two

documents on disaster recovery.

8.3 ATIS OBF – Ordering and Billing Forum

The Ordering and Billing Forum (OBF) provides

a place for customers and providers in the

telecoms industry to identify and resolve issues

that affect ordering, billing, provisioning, and

exchange of information about access services

The OBF is structured into two committees:

the Ordering Solutions Committee and the

Billing and Record Exchange Committee.

Since our last report, the OBF has published

“The Ordering and

Billing Forum provides aplace for customers and

providers in the telecoms

industry to identify

and resolve issues

that affect ordering,

billing, provisioning, and

exchange of information

about access services.”

An IPTV Ordering framework supportsthe ordering of advertising space





QUICK INSIGHTS

a number of documents on access service

request mechanization and an ATIS standard

entitled Next Generation Network Operations

Business and Functional Requirements for

Ordering and Billing/Settlement.

Current work in the OBF is concerned with

XML harmonization and ordering specifications

between IP voice platforms. NGN billing could

be of interest to the TM Forum Revenue

Management initiative.

There has been a continuing exchange

of documents between the OBF and the

Forum including a request from the OBF for

documentation on NGN data exchange, and

commentary provided by the TIP Ordering and

Activation project on the OBF’s IPTV Ordering

Framework working text.

8.4 ATIS IIF – IPTV Interoperability Forum

ATIS IIF (IPTV Interoperability Forum) is

responsible for standards and other technical

activities concerned with the interoperability

and implementation of IPTV systems and

services. The Forum was established in 2005

and consists of four committees responsible

for: architecture; security; metadata and

transaction delivery; quality of service metrics

and testing.

The committees have developed a large

number of technical documents, including

those on IPTV system architecture, QoS

metrics, security, and interoperability. Upcoming

work items include those on authentication

mechanisms, quality of experience

requirements, and content on demand.

The national and international scope of the

Forum and these working items should make

for useful liaison between the TM Forum TIP

IPDR User Group, as well as the TM Forum

IPsphere Program.

8.5 ATIS summary

A number of forward-looking areas of mutual

interest exist between ATIS and TM Forum:

service-oriented networks, cloud services,

NGN ordering and billing, identity management,

and IPTV. There has already been some

useful liaison activities between the two

organizations, including information meetings,

document exchange, and commentary.

Although primarily a U.S. national

organization, ATIS has liaison arrangements

with international bodies, such as 3GPP, TM

Forum and ITU-T SG2. ATIS is, therefore,

important in the general context of

harmonization of international standards.

“Although primarily a U.S. national organization, ATIS has liaison arrangements

with international bodies, such as 3GPP, TM Forum and ITU-T SG2. ATIS is,

therefore, important in the general context of harmonization of international

standards.”




OASIS has more than 5,000 participantsfrom over 600 organizations

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement

of Structured Information Standards) is a

not-for-profit consortium that develops open

standards for the global information society

– mainly standards based on XML. Areas of

responsibility include security, e-business, the

public sector, and application-specific markets.

OASIS has more than 5,000 participants

representing over 600 organizations and

individual members in 100 countries.

OASIS develops text-based standards that

are submitted for public review and eventually

ratified by the membership-at-large after

implementation by at least three organizations.

OASIS prides itself on its transparent

governance and operating procedures;

lightweight process to build consensus; open

ratification procedure; and democratic election

of officers.

OASIS was founded in 1993 under the name

SGML Open as a consortium of vendors and

users devoted to developing guidelines for

interoperability among products that support

the Standard Generalized Markup Language

(SGML).

9.1 OASIS Telecommunications Services

Member Section (OASIS Telecom)

The OASIS Telecommunications Services

Member Section (OASIS Telecom) was an

open community within OASIS committed

to bringing the full advantages of SOA to the

communications industry. OASIS Telecom

worked with other standards development

organizations to pave the way for a new

business model to make telecoms services

simpler to deploy and easier to use.

OASIS—Organization for the Advancementof Structured Information Standards(www.oasis-open.org)

Section 9

OASIS Telecom chartered one technical

committee, namely the SOA for Telecom

(SOA-Tel) Technical Committee. With a special

focus on service providers, the committee’s

responsibilities included identification of gaps

in standards coverage for using SOA and

Web Services standards and techniques in a

telecoms environment. OASIS Telecom had a

formal liaison agreement with TM Forum and a

number of members of the TC were also active

members of TM Forum. The TC issued two

documents:

n

Telecom SOA Use Cases and Issues List 1.0 deals with use cases to illustrate and analyze

possible technical gaps in SOA standards

with respect to their use in communications

n Telecom SOA Requirements V 1.0 , details

requirements needed to address the issues

raised in the former document. It sets out

a number of requirements on with WS-

Notification, security token, SOAP (Simple

Object Access Protocol), and Security

Assertion Markup Language (SAML)

standards.

Both documents were approved by member

ballot and the OASIS Telecom and its TC,

having completed their work, were closed

down this year.

A number of TM Forum projects including

the Software Enabled Services Management

Solution project is planning to make use of

SOA techniques and the two documents will

undoubtedly be of use to them.

Additionally there have been information

requests sent to the OASIS Open Composite





QUICK INSIGHTS

Service Architecture group requesting

information on the specification of service

management metadata.

9.2 OASIS Identity in the Cloud Technical

Committee

Early in 2010, OASIS formed a new technical

committee, Identity in the Cloud (IDCloud), to

“…address the serious security challenges

posed by identity management in cloud

computing…” The TC will identify gaps in

identity management standards and investigate

the need for profiles to achieve interoperability

within current standards.

It will also perform risk and threat analyses

on collected use cases and produce guidelines

for mitigating vulnerabilities. The TC has

documented a large number of use cases that

will form the basis of its work.

The work of the IDCloud TC will be

of interest to the TM Forum Security

Management and Managing Cloud Services

programs in the context of their work on

identity management.

9.3 OASIS summary

OASIS is an important source of specifications,

experience, and expertise for SOA and Web

Services implementation techniques. Anumber of TM Forum projects is investigating

or committed to using SOA and Web

Services, and OASIS is keen to make sure

its specifications are viable in the important

communications sector. The work of the

IDCloud TC will be of interest to security and

cloud services programs in the TM Forum.

OASIS and TM Forum have formalized

arrangements for the exchange of documents.

“Early in 2010, OASIS formed a new technical committee, Identity in

the Cloud (IDCloud), to ‘…address the serious security challenges

posed by identity management in cloud computing…’”




The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)

operates under aegis of the Internet Society

and is responsible for the evolution of the

Internet. The IETF is an open, international

community of network designers, operators,

vendors, and researchers that operates

closely with other standards development

organizations such a W3C and ISO/IEC. The

first meeting of the IETF was in 1986.

The IETF produces text-based standards

published as RFCs (Request for Comment) that

go through a maturity process from Proposed

Standard, through Draft Standard, and finally

to Internet Standard based on completeness

and the existence of interoperable

implementations.

The mission of the IETF is to make the

Internet “…work better…” by producing

high quality technical specifications using

an open process mainly run by volunteers.

Specifications are agreed by means of “…

rough consensus and running code…”.

Work of the IETF is carried out by Working

Groups (WGs) organized into subject matter

areas. The Operations and Management Area

is concerned with management aspects and

is currently responsible for a number of WGs

including:

n Netconf WG that has developed NETCONF

an RPC-based protocol to configure, and

receive notifications from, network devices

n Netmod WG that has developed NETMOD –

a “human-friendly” data modeling language

to support the NETCONF protocol

n OPSEG WG – a WG responsible for network

security.

10.1 Netconf – Network Configuration WG

The main deliverables of the Netconf WG are

IETF – Internet Engineering Task Force(www.ietf.org)

Section 10

a number of specifications for NETCONF, an

RPC-based, XML-encoded protocol for the

configuration of network devices with the

following characteristics: vendor extensibility,

text-based, transaction support (locking and

rollback), transport independence, access

control, and support for asynchronous

notifications.

The key aspects of the specification have

been delivered as RFCs with mappings to

SSH, BEEP, and SOAP transport layers. Since

our last report, outstanding work items that

include fine-grain locking, NETCONF operation

monitoring, device-schema discovery, client

authentication, a with-defaults capability, and

an additional secure transport layer (TLS) have

been published as RFCs.

The acceptance of NETCONF has been

slow: although most vendors now have

implementations, uptake by operators and

tool vendors has been uneven. This has partly

been due to ambiguities in the NETCONF

specification, which is being rectified by the

preparation of clarification RFC.

NETCONF could be of interest to TM

Forum’s Interfaces Program – in particular,

its protocol harmonization work within the

Resource Management and Resource and

Service Assurance projects.

10.2 Netmod – NETCONF Data Modeling

Language WG

The goal of the Netmod WG is the creation

of a readable and easy-to-use data modeling

language (YANG) that defines the semantics

of configuration data, notifications, and

operations. YANG has a compact, C-like syntax

and has a canonical mapping to NETCONF XML

instance documents and ISO/IEC Document

Schema Definition Language (DSDL).

The organization’s mission is simple– to make the Internet work better





QUICK INSIGHTS

Data definitions written in the C-like YANG

syntax can be translated into YIN, an XML-

based syntax of YANG. The Netmod WG

has also published a collection of reusable

YANG data types and guidelines for the usage

of YANG. A YANG module for NETCONF

monitoring has been published as an RFC; a

revision to the NETCONF protocol specification

has been issued that uses YANG to define the

base NETCONF operations.

The Netmod WG is currently working on data

models for system, interface, and routing, due

for submission as proposed standards by the

middle of 2011. Collaboration, in the context of

TM Forum’s Frameworx Architecture Steering

Team’s federated network information model

work, is being pursued by the Forum.

10.3 IETF summary

It is important to track any work in the IETF on

management not only in its own right, but also

because it influences work of other SDOs with

which TM Forum interacts. TM Forum needs

to understand both NETCONF and YANG in the

context of the overall industry harmonization

of management protocols and models and

especially in the context of the TM Forum’s

work on a federated network informationmodel.

“It is important to track any work in the IETF on management not

only in its own right, but also because it influences work of other

[standards development organizations] with which TM Forum

interacts.”




The European Telecommunications Standards

Institute (ETSI) is responsible for the

development of standards for technologies

such as fixed, mobile, radio, converged,

broadcast and Internet. It is officially

recognized by the European Union as a

European Standards Organization. ETSI is a

not-for-profit organization with 766 member

organizations drawn from 63 countries across

five continents. Membership of ETSI includes

some of the most important European service

providers and equipment vendors.

The Telecoms and Internet converged

Services and Protocols for Advanced Networks

(TISPAN) is an ETSI TC responsible for

all aspects of standardization for present

and future converged networks, including:

architecture, service delivery, protocols,

network and service management,

performance, and security.

11.1 ETSI-TISPAN WG8

Working Group 8 (WG8) is responsible for

ETSI-TISPAN – EuropeanTelecommunications StandardsInstitute-TISPAN (portal.etsi.org/tispan)

Section 11

studies and specifications concerning the

management of NGNs, including architecture,

network and service management, and content

delivery. WG8 is contribution-driven and is

responsible for issuing text-based standards.

WG8 has published two parts of a four-part

document on Subscription Management; we

understand that the remaining work is being

moved to 3GPP SA5.

There are two additional WG8 work items

of interest to TM Forum: Network Resource

Model Evolution and the context and

requirements for IPTV Management. However,

due to lack of resources, these items are not

being pursued.

11.2 ETSI-TISPAN WG8 Summary

The work of ETSI-TISPAN WG8 overlaps

with that of TM Forum’s initiatives in the

management of NGN and IPTV, but we

understand that the WG has effectively gone

into hibernation.

Responsibility for standards for fixed, mobile, radio,converged, broadcast and Internet communications

“The Telecoms and Internet converged services and Protocols for Advanced

networks (TISPAN) is an ETSI [technical committee] responsible for all aspects of

standardization for present and future converged networks, including: architecture,

service delivery, protocols, network and service management, performance, and

security.”





QUICK INSIGHTS

NIST (National Institute of Standards and

Technology) was founded in 1901 as a

US federal agency to “…to promote U.S.

innovation and industrial competitiveness by

advancing measurement science, standards,

and technology…” Although NIST provides

standards coordination activities through its

Standards Coordination Office, it relies on

accredited organizations like ANSI and ATIS to

actually develop the standards.

12.1 NIST Cloud Computing Program

NIST has been charged by the U.S. federal

government to “…accelerate the federal

government’s secure adoption of cloud

computing by leading efforts to develop

standards and guidelines in close consultation

and collaboration with standards bodies…”

NIST has responded with an aggressive

program of conferences, workshops, and

working groups with the goal of developing,

by the fall of 2011, a strategy and roadmap

for U.S. Government cloud computing,

emphasizing interoperability, portability, and

security.

NIST has created five working groups that

meet on a weekly basis to: document business

use-cases; define a reference architecture and

taxonomy; jumpstart the adoption of cloudcomputing; address cloud security; and develop

a standards roadmap.

The Architecture and Taxonomy Working

Group are developing a strawman cloud

computing reference architecture that

NIST—National Institute of Standardsand Technology (www.nist.gov)

Section 12

addresses three areas of interest to the TM

Forum: business support, operational support,

and developer support. In [CCR] the TM Forum

Enabling Cloud Service initiative shows how

many of the issues raised in these three areas

can be addressed by Frameworx.

12.2 NIST summary

Given the importance of the NIST cloud

initiative and its openness (there seem to be

no restrictions on who can join and contribute

to the working groups), it would seem natural

for TM Forum Government and Defense and

Enabling Cloud Services initiatives to track the

progress of the working groups and contribute

appropriate Forum assets for example results

from Catalyst projects.

Indeed the TM Forum Enabling Cloud

Services initiative is coordinating the activity

and is expected to contribute TM Forum

Frameworx process-elements and process-

flows, information models, SLA management

expertise, and technical use cases.

NIST also has a security-related initiative

of interest to the TM Forum – the Security

Content Automation Protocol (SCAP).

The initiative proposes standardizing the

communications of security information to help

organizations share, aggregate, measure, andreport security information. We understand

that there has been a recommendation for

collaboration between NIST and TM Forum to

ensure alignment between the SCAP and the

TM Forum Information Framework (SID).

“Although NIST provides standards coordination activities through its Standards

Coordination Office, it relies on accredited organizations like ANSI and ATIS to

actually develop the standards.”




The technical work includes technicalreports, testing and certification

The Broadband Forum is a not-for-profit

amalgamation of four broadband forums:

the ADSL Forum, the ATM Forum, the

Frame Relay Forum, and the MPLS Forum

to “…drive the evolution of the next

generation of IP networks and empower

fixed mobile convergence…” The Broadband

Forum has over 180 members including

equipment providers, service providers,

testing laboratories, and semiconductor

manufacturers.

In the context of a future vision of next

generation network architecture, increasing

numbers of broadband applications, and

home network interoperability, the mission

of the Broadband Forum is to “…develop

multi-service broadband packet networking

specifications addressing interoperability,

architecture and management…”

The Broadband Forum has a formal

collaboration arrangement with TM Forum.

The technical work of the Broadband

Forum includes technical reports, testing, and

certification. Its technical work is carried out

by six working groups: BroadbandHome; End

to End Architecture; Fibre Access; IP/MPLS;

Metallic Transmission; and Operations and

Network Management.

13.1 Broadband Forum Operations and

Network Management WG

The mission of the Operations andNetwork Management WG is to “…provide

recommendations for operational, network

management, and process aspects of

broadband access networks…”

The main deliverable of this WG is a family

of technical reports based on TR-069 (CPE

WAN Management Protocol) – a generic

SOAP-based, RPC protocol for managing

Customer Premise Equipment (CPE). The

family contains a number of supporting

data models and schemata. An ITU-T

Broadband Forum

Section 13

Recommendation, G.9980 that is based on

TR-069, is being reviewed for approval through

the ITU-T AAP process.

Work in progress for the WG includes: test

and diagnostics definitions; a gap analysis of

IPTV performance monitoring and diagnostic

tools; GPON management; and the definition

of object models.

The Broadband Forum and the TM Forum

have exchanged MTOSI-related and TR-

069-related documents. The TIP Service

Management Ethernet Services specification

that will be published in MTOSI 2.1 is based

on a network architecture that is defined in the

Broadband Forum technical reports TR-101 and

TR-056.

The TIP Service Management Ethernet

Services Management project is working to

align the Ethernet service-related layered

parameters in the TM Forum MTNM solution

set with those defined by the Broadband

Forum.

The work of the Broadband Forum in

the area of IPTV might be of interest to

the IPsphere program; the work on GPON

management will be of interest to the GPON

Activation sub-group in the TM Forum TIP

Resource Management program and the

GPON activation Catalyst which will take place

at Management World 2011 in May, in Dublin.

13.2 Broadband Forum summaryThe Broadband Forum is generally recognized

to be the central organization driving

broadband wireline solutions and indeed

its membership includes many important

network equipment manufacturers and

service providers. The Broadband Forum and

the TM Forum have had, and continue to

have, a successful liaison relationship that

is an example of what can be achieved by

collaboration.





QUICK INSIGHTS

In summing up last year’s report we noted

that there are many SDOs, some large and

some small, some accredited and some not,

that are developing interoperability standards

and supporting architectures and information

models for telecoms management. We see no

reason to change that conclusion.

Although some working groups have

completed their work and closed down, others,

especially in the area of cloud computing, have

sprung up. Standards development remains

an expensive and time-consuming activity, and

the potential for duplication and overlap, and

the publication of conflicting standards should

continue to be a concern to the industry.

We note the encouraging trend of SDOs

making work plans and working documents

more freely available. This, and the TMF

Forum’s initiative on standards landscape

visualization, can only help in fostering liaison

and reducing overlap.

TM Forum has had a long history of fruitful

liaison activities with other SDOs in terms of

collaborative working, leveraging the standards

of other SDOs, or contributing its own

agreements to accredited standards bodies.

We see no evidence of this slowing down.

TM Forum projects are currently engaged

in a large number of standardization activities

including the use of SOA and Web Services,

the management of NGNs (including IP

services), the development of software-

enabled services, and the convergence of ITand telecoms service management.

In 2011 we expect the TM Forum to

contribute to two important, multi-lateral

standardization activities: cloud computing and

a federated network information model, with a

view to reducing overlap and duplication, and

to delivering harmonized standards.

ConclusionsSection 14

14.1 References

[CCR] Frameworkx & NIST Cloud

Computing Requirements ,

TM Forum, February 2011

[SOAML] http://www.tmforum.org/

Community/ groups/integration_

framework/wiki/soaml-overview.aspx

[TR143] http://www.tmforum.org/

DocumentLibrary/TR143Building

Bridges/ 35824/article.html

14.2 Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to the following people for

their help in validating the work items and

priorities of TM Forum projects and SDO

working groups and, in many cases, providing

additional information and insight:

Jamil Chawki, Sonia Compans, Martin

Creaner, Nigel Davis, Ken Dilbeck, Matthew

Edwards, Mehmet Ersue, Lucia Gradinariu,

Jenny Huang, Jessie Jewitt, Mike Kelly, Leen

Mak, Anne Meininger, Dave Milham, Marie

Murphy, Laksmi Raman, Ronald Roman, Enrico

Ronco, Juerger Schoenwalder, Rachael Shaver,

Tina O’Sullivan, Laurent Vrek, Andrew White,

and John Wilmes.

Special thanks go to Aileen Smith for

initiating the project and facilitating the

research, and to Rebecca Henderson and her

team for such an attractive presentation.




The following abbreviations are used in the report:

AbbreviationsAnnex 1

Abbreviation Meaning

3GPP Third Generation Partnership Project

AAP Alternative Approval Process (ITU-T)

ADSL Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line

ANSI American National Standards Institute

API Application Program Interface

ATIS Alliance for Telecommunications

Industry Standards

ATM Asynchronous Transmission Mode

BEEP Blocks Extensible Exchange Protocol

BSS Business Support System

CCITT Comité Consultatif International

Téléphonique et Télégraphique

(forerunner of the ITU-T)

CIM Common Information Model

CMDBf Configuration Management Database

Federation

CORBA Common Object Request Broker

Architecture

CPE Customer Premise Equipment

CRM Customer Relationship Management

DMTF Distributed Management Task Force

DSDL Document Schema DefinitionLanguage

EDA Event Driven Architecture

EDGE GSM Evolution

EMF Eclipse Modeling Framework

EMS Element Management System

ESM Ethernet Service Management (part of

TIP Service Management)

eTOM extended Telecommunications

Operations Map

ETSI European Telecommunications

Standards Institute


FAST Frameworx Architecture Steering Team

GMF Graphical Modeling Framework

GPRS General Packet Radio Service

GSM Global System for Mobile

Communications

IaaS Infrastructure as a Service

IDL Interface Definition Language

IEC International Electrotechnical

Commission

IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronics

Engineers

IETF Internet Engineering Task Force

IMS IP Multimedia Subsystem

IP Internet Protocol

IPDR Internet Protocol Detail Record

IRP Interface Reference Point

ISO International Organization for

Standardization

IT Information Technology

itSMF IT Service Management Forum

ITU-T International Telecommunication

Union-TelecommunicationStandardization Sector

JCA-Mgt Joint Coordination Activity on

Management (ITU-T)

JOSIF Joint Open Source Interface

Framework (part of TM Forum TIP

program

MDA Model Driven Architecture

MEF Metro Ethernet Forum

MOF Meta Object Facility

MPLS Multiprotocol Label Switching

NGN Next Generation Network

Standards Development 2011Leveraging effort across the industry





QUICK INSIGHTS


NGOSS Next Generation OSS

NIST National Institute of Standards and

Technology

NMS Network Management System

OAM Operations, Administration, and

Maintenance

OAM&P Operations, Administration,

Maintenance, and Provisioning

OASIS Organization for the Advancement of

Structured Information Standards

OBF Ordering and Billing Forum

OGC UK Office of Government Commerce

OMG Object Management Group

OSS Operations Support System

OVF Open Virtualization Format

QoS Quality of Service

RFC Request for Comment

RFP Request for Proposal

RPC Remote Procedure Call

SaaS Software as a Service

SAML Security Assertion Markup Language

SCAP Security Content Automation Protocol

SDH Synchronous Digital Hierarchy

SDO Standards Development Organization

SDP Service Delivery Platform

SG Study Group

SGML Standard Generalized Markup

Language

SID Shared Information and Data


SIG Special Interest Group

SLA Service Level Agreement

SNIA Storage Network Industry Association

SOA Service Oriented Architecture

SOAP Simple Object Access Protocol

SON Service Oriented Network Forum

SONET Synchronous Optical Networking

SSH Secure Shell

TAM Telecom Applications Map

TC Technical Committee

TelcoML UML profile for SOA services

TF Task Force

TIP TM Forum Interface Program

TISPAN Telecoms and Internet converged

Services and Protocols for Advanced

Networks

TMN Telecommunications Management

Network

TMOC Telecom Management and Operations

Committee

UML Unified Modeling Language

W3C World Wide Web Consortium

WBEM Web-Based Enterprise Management

WS-* Collective abbreviation for Web

Service profiles developed by WS-I

WS-I Web Services Interoperability

Organization

WSDL Web-Services Definition Language

XML Extensible Markup Language




The TM Forum has started a project to address

the issue of ‘not knowing’ what standardization

activities are going on in the industry by

developing a visualization of the management

standards landscape. The visualization is a single

graphic in the form of a railway map (see Figure 1).In the graphic:

n railway lines represent the work of the SDOs;

n interchange stations represent a view of the

sectors of management standardization that

would be widely recognized in the industry; and

n stops on the lines (circles that intersect the

railway lines and stations) indicate that an

SDO has an interest or activity in that sector

of standardization.

The standardization railway mapAnnex 2

Developing a visualization of themanagement standards landscape

Figure 1: The standardization railway map – a visualization of the management standards landscape

Source: TM Forum 201

ITU-T

3GPP

DMTF

TM Forum

MEF

ATIS

itSMF

IETF

ETSI

OASIS

W3C

OMG

IEEE

L i a i s o

n

a r r a n g e

m e n

t s

R e s o u r c e

m a n a g e m

e n t

S e r v i c e

m a n a g e m

e n t

S o f t w

a r e a r c h i t e

c t u r e

a n d p

r o t o c o l s

D e s i g

n a n d

d e v e l o p

m e n

t t o o l s

M a n a g e m

e n t

a r c h i t

e c t u r e

a n d m

o d e l l i n g

M a n a g e m

e n t

s e c u r i t y

C o n s u m

e r a p p l i c a t i o

n s

m a n a g e m

e n t

C l o u

d s e r v i c

e s

m a n a g e m

e n t



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Benchmarking

Training

Standards

Certification

Frameworx

Awards

Publications

Collaboration Community

RevenueManagement

Catalyst

WebinarsConferences

Research

EVERYTHING YOU NEEDTO SUCCEED IN THE WORLD OF DIGITAL SERVICES

BestPractices

ThoughtLeadership

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