 OPERATING PROCESS TRANSPARENT TO USERS COMPARTMENTALISED RESOURCES SHARED BY USERS AMONGST USERS DEFINED BY SUPPLIER PRODUCT SPECIFIED BY USER SYSTEM ORIENTED FOCUS ENTERPRISE ORIENTED USER DETECTED MALFUNCTIONS OPERATOR DETECTED AFTER DETECTION FAULT REPAIR PRIOR TO DETECTION OF OF FAULT FAULT (PREVENTION) PROPRIETARY INTERFACE STANDARD Figure 16.6 Trends in network management The OSI model 16/7 sources on the network are also currently available to relatively some owned by public operators, so that it will be important to be small groups of users, but in the future they will be shared by much able to share tasks. Currently the management of a network is wider groups, and will often be a mix of privately owned and treated as separate from the management of services carried on the publicly owned resources. Currently it is the supplier who deter- network (intelligent networks), but in the future the two will be mines what the product will do, a case of having a car of any colour managed as one entity. provided that it is black. In the future it will be the sophisticated user who will determine which product, out of the many standards based systems available, meets his requirement. 16.6 The OSI model At the present time the focus of network management is on system management, whereas this will gradually change to be more clearly In the area of network management the standards activity with the focused on managing the overall enterprise. The management sys- greatest long term impact is that based on the ISO Seven Layer, tems will also be much more intelligent, being able to detect faults Open System Interconnect, Basic Reference Model, often called the before the user has found them, and often monitoring trends and OSI model. The International Standards Organisation (ISO) started taking actions autonomously, so that breakdowns are prevented. work on the OSI model in 1977. The aim was to allow computers The key evolution, however, will be the change from proprietary from different manufacturers to talk to each other