Toward a vision for network and service management

In this paper, we consider some high-level frameworks for network and service management. This discussion is the result of a survey of the current state of this field. By offering these frameworks, we hope to encourage new system and application design, development, and delivery to fall into these or similar frameworks so that customer demands can be more easily met. As we advance an architecture for network and service management, it is important to review the main requirements of today's service providers: improved revenue via rapid service creation as well as reduced costs via reduced labor and skill needs in all operational areas across service fulfilment, assurance, and billing. Customers are demanding easy-to-run software that takes the complexity out of service and network offerings as the marketplace continues to underdeliver with respect to expectations. A major player in this marketplace, Lucent Technologies is organizing much of its network and service management development around the Telecom Operations Map (TOM) model Essential to the job of providing software for next-generation networks are application-driven frameworks and continued execution of applications that, in the end, simplify and encourage service creation, delivery, and operations for service providers.