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TMF 814 Agent

In today's standards-driven world, any vendor's Element Management System (EMS) must support standard interfaces. The TeleManagement Forum (TMF) recently released Version 2.0 of its standard for the NML-EML interface. This TMF 513/608/814 set of standards supports network management of multi-technology network elements including SONET, SDH, DWDM, and ATM. The major Service Providers and equipment vendors, including AT&T, Lucent, Ciena, NEC, and Fujitsu, support this standard.

Utilizing our network management expertise and experience with the TMF 814 standard, QCOM has developed a TMF Agent which can be integrated with any vendor's EMS to provide a TMF 814 standard northbound interface. The Agent converts between the TMF CORBA interface and the backend EMS internal interface.

TMF 814 Agent Architecture
Fig. 1: TMF 814 Agent Architecture
Click to enlarge.
Key Features
TMF Northbound Interface
Flexible EMS Integration
The challenge for any off-the-shelf software component is accommodating the variety of EMS architectures and implementations. The TMF Agent is designed to handle this variety using its flexible design architecture. The data required by the Agent for providing the TMF-814 interface is available from one or more of the EMS's internal servers. The Agent can be configured to retrieve this data using standard interfaces such as CORBA and Java RMI. For other interfaces (e.g. socket-based), the user can build a plug-in using the Agent's Java-based API.
Off the Shelf Solution
The TMF Agent design minimizes the amount of development required to integrate it with your EMS. This is accomplished using XML configuration files, which define the operation and parameter mapping hooks for each TMF operation. The Agent can also be configured to support only a subset of the 130+ TMF-814 operations that your EMS needs to support.
Platform Independent
Implemented in Java. Allows support of any Java-enabled Platform, including Solaris, HP-UX, and Windows.
FasTrack EMS Compatible
Fully compatible with the QCOM's FasTrack EMS and ComponentSuite.