Telecommunication management; Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) Federated Network Information Model (FNIM)
On-going industry convergence and pressure to reduce cost is placing an ever-increasing emphasis on the need to rationalize and align various network management aspects across boundaries of standards/specifications producing organizations. The cost, resulting from integration and management challenges, of the lack of a coherent treatment of the whole network has becoming increasingly apparent to the point where operators of networks are demanding action.
This document provides key concepts and principles for the Federated Network Information Model covering all key aspects of a solution to the on-going industry convergence challenge. The proposal focuses on Information Model federation and is constructed to best deal with the various contradictory pressures of the current environment providing a pragmatic and realizable approach. The structure proposed will be called the Federated Network Information Model (FNIM).
The proposal set out in this document:
Explains:
- How, from a technical perspective, a number of standards and specifications generated by different organizations can function together to bring greater coherence to the management of converged networks and hence reduce operations costs.
- Specifically how TM Forum and 3GPP can work with each other and with other industry groups in a Standards Federation to develop a Federated Network Information Model drawing on insights from the broad community (including the TM Forum SID [7], TM Forum MTNM/MTOSI [8], 3GPP SA5 IRPs [14], DMTF CIM [15]).
- How the Federated Network Information Model can be used from a technical perspective (with the focus here being the Network Model).
Recognizes:
- The network is “always on”, therefore changes in management solutions should not impact networks in operation.
- There will always be on-going change.
- That this is only a start on a very long journey.
Allows and enables:
- Decoupling of concerns across the industry whilst growing industry coherence.
- Differing delivery pace across the industry whilst aiming for industry convergence.
- Variety from innovation whilst removing unnecessary variety in management infrastructure.
- Temporary divergences and overlaps during the convergence process.
Ensures:
- Change is made only as a result of understanding of specific market needs.
- Progress by providing coherent solutions to satisfy the needs of all participating industry partners in order not to be blocked by the slowest laggard.
Highlights:
- The challenges of dealing with differing methodologies/tooling used across the standards arena and points out that methodology/tooling differences if ignored will significantly slow progress towards the target.
- The need for development of a new governance regime and points to some of the attributes of such a regime.
- An approach of gradual restructuring and a controlled converging coherence starting small and growing step by value-justified step.
- The challenge of presenting the models so all can have an identical understanding.
- The challenge of interpreting models from different origins, with their different terminology and viewpoints, to arrive at a shared understanding through a federated model. This leads to recognition of the need for a deeper uniform semantic analysis of the area covered by the umbrella information model (UIM) and the navigation points among concrete models which may further lead to the need for the development of information architectures and patterns.
This document focuses on the Information Model aspect of the problem as it is clear that the lack of an agreed-upon, coherent information model across organizational boundaries to support the FMC aspects of the industry that defines the things to be managed and the way they should be expressed is one of the first aspects that need to be tackled.
Editor’s note: Prior to embarking on a further summary of the proposal and its benefits, it is important to emphasize that the definition of the term “model” has to be carefully considered. A model is comprised of parts that themselves can be seen as models. As a consequence whether this activity results in a single model or a set of models depends upon perspective. The critical consideration is whether the parts of the solution can be interrelated and from the perspective of the problem highlighted above whether the parts can be interrelated across what were previously un-navigable barriers. The solution offers this navigability. Conversely it is critical that the solution offers appropriate decoupling of concerns and of governance. Whether this is considered one model or many is not relevant as long as the solution offers the properties, such as those noted above, that are critical for industry success.
This document proposes a Federated approach to model development and emphasizes the need for the development of an Umbrella Information Model (UIM) and its relationships with the other domain specific models. The document also deals with direct relationships between domain/technology specific concrete models.
It is proposed that:
- The work will be published and expressed in UML and will also be published in formats appropriate for each of the participating bodies to absorb (this may require nothing more than the UML format in some cases). The output form required by a particular body will be generated by resources contributed by that body.
- As necessary the model will be embellished using stereotype to express all aspects/properties of the model.
The proposal recognizes that the TM Forum Information Framework (SID) [7] and the TM Forum Integration Framework (MTNM/MTOSI) [8] work provide an enterprise-wide structure and model that can be used to seed the converged model. The proposal recognizes that the 3GPP SA5 group work [14] provides models relating to mobile networks (including RANs, CNs and IMS) that can be used to seed the converged model.
The proposal:
- Ensures on-going reduction in cost of integration and improvement of degree of integration for the purpose of End-to-End management;
- Enables models from many organizations to be used together for the purpose of End-to-End management (recognizing that there are a number of critical governance issues to be overcome to enable this);
- Provides structure for the alignment on a deeper understanding of the semantics and for the development and maintenance of an information architecture and associated patterns;
- Provides both an initial pragmatic solution form and a longer term target;
- Recognizes that the model will evolve in stages, but will never be “completed” and hence this is an on-going activity;
- Recognizes the importance of providing solutions that are backward compatible to existing standards. See [13, 17]
This content of this document has been jointly developed by 3GPP and TM Forum as part of the Joint Working Group on Resource Model Alignment [18].