NOMS 2002 Info for Speakers

Panel Abstracts

Panel 1 Managing 3G and M-Commerce Services Chair: Tom Forsyth, Orange SA, UK Panelists: Tom Forsyth, Orange SA, UK Rich Arthur, Compaq, France Frank Korinek, Motorola, USA Giorgio Castelli, Telecom Italia Labs, Italy	As 3G and Mobile Commerce services begin adding more and more complexity to the mobile network, how will Service Providers increase their OSS capabilities to ensure high service quality? This session examines both the business problem and the current technical state of the industry in advanced mobile services. It aims to inform the participants about what the issues are, what are standards groups doing to help and how service providers are implementing solutions. 1. Introduction and business problem: Why must high service levels be maintained on these new services, what are the business drivers for these services and their management? What role can industry bodies play to solve the business problem. 2. 3G Architecture and Services - Rich Arthur - Compaq Telecom: What does the emerging 3G and M-Commerce architecture look like - how do these services work? What are some example services and management issues raised by them. 3. Status of standards: What standards work has been done to date in 3G OSS What new work will help solve the business and technical issues 4. Resolving the issues: What approaches are service providers taking to resolve the issues? What else needs to be done?
Panel 2 The Business Case for Component Based OSS using OSS/J Chair: Frank Korinek, Motorola, USA Panelists: Philippe Goujard, Sun, France Kari Rossi, Nokia, Finland Paul Buckley, PwC, UK	The telecommunications industry has evolvedslowly over many years. This slow evolution has produced an industry whose operations and management systems are built upon many different non-standard architectures and interfaces. Within this environment, the development of hardware and software allowing service providers to introduce new services and enhance existing services has become extremely complicated and costly to both vendors and service providers alike. Given the current telecom industry conditions, reducing the cost of rolling out new or enhanced services is now a primary need across the industry. Component based Operations Support Systems (OSS) may be the only real solution to this problem. The OSS through Java(TM) Initiative (OSS/J) is one of the few industry efforts producing standard interfaces that can be used by all to produce truly interoperable applications and equipment. Panel: 1. Introduction and business problem overview - Frank Korinek, Motorola Why does the telecom industry suffer from the lack of interoperable software? Why is the cost of developing and introducing new services into a marker so high? What is OSS/J? Why is a component based OSS using OSS/J needed in the telecom industry? 2. The "Mythical Plug & Play" - Philippe Goujard, Sun What does Plug & Play really mean? Does Plug & Play include "unplugging"? What is required to be truly Plug & Play-able? How can OSS/J foster Plug & Play within the telecom industry? 3. Cost reduction via component based software - Kari Rossi, Nokia How will OSS development costs be reduced for vendors? How will OSS operational costs be reduced for service providers? How will new component based software incorporating OSS/J APIs be cheaply integrated into legacy systems? 4. Benefits for all stakeholders (Service Providers, Equipment Vendors, Software Vendors, System Integrators and Middleware Vendors) - Paul Buckley, PwC How do OSS/J APIs connecting components bring real business value? What benefits can industry stakeholders be expected to gain? What risks do stakeholders face in migrating towards component based OSS?
Panel 3 Can we Implement Multi-Vendor Component based OSSs ? Chair: Vincent P. Wade, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland Panelists: Speaker Worldcom, USA Speaker UCL, UK Speaker GMD Fokus, Germany	There are obvious potential benefits in being able to procure robust, high quality multi vendor, management components, which implement and flexibly enhance management processes. However, the dream of such compatible management components has been elusive, with vendor lock-in, technology incompatibility and massive integration effort being commonplace. The issues in mutli vendor Component Based Development for OSSs include: How can we successfully integrate multiple different component platforms or should we just select one? When we develop component-based systems we usually choose a specific technology. Is there a 'best' component based paradigm: e.g. 'DEN based OSSs versus EJB based OSSs? How can we cope the with a mix of different component paradigms: integration paradigms, component granularity, variety of system tiers (e.g 2 tier, 3 tier, n tier...) etc Are we constantly changing the component infrastructure without improving the actual management application functionality? Do Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) really want multi-vendors solutions? How can the Service Providers and System Integrators encourage the ISVs to support easier multi-vendor integration? Is Component Based development for OSS really a special case of Object Oriented Component development? Do we need multiple components modelling languages? This panel session will provide a forum for an open debate of key issues of multi vendor component development and integration being encountered by telecom operators and service managers. Advocates of different approaches will address the panel session for component based management systems development as well as membership of the standards community. Panelists will identify the current difficulties in enabling such component-based management construction and provide insight as to possible evolution of such a marketplace.
Panel 4 Policy management: is it real or just good marketing? Chair: Morris Sloman, Imperial College, UK Panelists: John Strassner, Intelliden, USA Juergen Schoenwalder, TU Braunschweig, Germany Ian Marshall, BTexaCT, UK Emil Lupu, Imperial College, UK	Many vendors claim their products support policy-based management of networks and security in order to provide management strategies that can adapt to user requirements which vary with respect to time or for specific applications. Network component vendors claim that policy based management will enable Quality of Service guarantees. What they mean by this can vary from being able to change a few parameters in routers to being able to execute quite complex 'programs' within network components. However, integrating application-specific policy management across heterogeneous routers, firewalls, databases and operating systems, without conflicts and inconsistencies is a long way off. This panel will discuss the hype relating to policy management and examine some of the alternative approaches to supporting the objectives of adaptive management. Some of the specific issues to be addressed will include: Will the IETF/DMTF standardisation activities ever produce anything more than write-only, incomprehensible schema? Is there a need for a standardised policy specification language? Why do we need specific policy schemas and languages - can it all be done with a scripting language or XML? If everyone is producing policies for their specific applications how do you prevent conflicting policies being deployed? Policies will have to be deployed in internet service provider, customer components and in public servers supporting mobile ubiquitous computing. How do you manage the deployment of policy in very large-scale systems? Are there still fundamental problems to be solved?
Panel 5 e-world/IP management: An Oxymoron? Chair: Anil Prasad, CISCO, USA Panelists: Speaker from BT (EURESCOM Projects), UK Speaker from Sodalia (IST Projects), Italy	A massive dislocation is emerging in the networking technology platforms used to support new multimedia services for both Wire-less and Wire-line realisations. Part of this technology shift is the move towards "All IP networks". The Next Generation "ALL IP" networks have to support Quality of Services (QoS) Guarantees for combinations of services, some delay tolerant, and others such as voice and video, that are delay variation intolerant. The delivery of these guaranteed QoS New Generation Networks depends on network control mechanisms and management capabilities working together. This panel shall focus on: How an "Inter-Operator IP QoS Provisioning framework" for use amongst Network Operators and Service Providers can deliver assured end to end QoS management The importance of providing managed IP QoS services to other operators backed up by Service Level Guarantees that are management monitored and delivered cost effectively The relationship between Control and Management capabilities to deliver QoS The Common Requirements amongst Euro-pean Service Providers for IP QoS solutions The general issues associated with the development of Telecom Service Supply Chains The potential for the Unified Control Plane (UCP) and TMF IP Management initiatives to address these issues.