Using lifecycles and contracts to build better telecommunications systems

Abstract

Currently, network operation is divorced from how a business running the network operates. Concurrently, the complexity of both system design and business operation keeps increasing. Current approaches using best-of-breed applications present tremendous integration problems due to a lack of common information and an inability to share and reuse management data. This paper will describe a new approach in building next generation telecommunications components, systems and their management applications. It has three important parts - representing managed entities using the DEN-ng models, using contracts as the unit of interoperability, and modeling the lifecycle of the system and its components. © Springer-Verlag 2004.