Integrated approach to open distributed management

Abstract

Due to the liberalization of the telecommunications market, we expect public and private organizations to compete in an open market of basic and value-added services. Broadband networks, high performance multimedia and mobile end systems, distributed information systems, open distributed applications, user and terminal mobility, and multimedia tele-services with different qualities will form the basis for various services to be provided at different costs and with various modalities of use. The provision of such services in a way which meets the users' requirements can be guaranteed only if all the required resources, including the underlying network and the available end systems, are supervised and controlled effectively by an adequate open distributed management system. In addition, the size and scale of future networks, the openness of applications, and the global use of tele-services will require management systems which cross the boundaries of different autonomous management domains. The coordination and cooperation between autonomous operators and managers will be inevitable. This paper describes an integrated approach to open distributed management. It is based on an inter-domain management concept, and comprises an architecture which provides a framework for the development and operation of management services. The architecture includes a development and a run-time environment. The run-time environment consists of an administration platform, an inter-domain management information service and a trader. The development environment comprises a tool-box and construction kits for management services and management user interfaces. Open distributed management applications used for the validation of the architecture and its components are outlined. An overview of future activities concludes the paper.