Asset Management in action
This initial project conducted an industry survey, as well as delivering a Catalyst project, showcasing Network Asset Management (NAM). The survey results highlighted the seriousness of inadequate industry-wide NAM practices, while the catalyst demonstrated several advanced use cases that had been implemented in operators with tremendous results.
The Asset Management team began to define the “fit” of Network Asset Management in 2 primary arenas:
- Frameworx: How does a NAM program interface with, and add value to, other functions operating under Frameworx protocols?
- ZOOM: As operators move toward SDN and Virtualization, there is a significant need for NAM to successfully support current-state, hybrid (transformative) state, and target state SDN/NFV architectures. Initiatives to this point have assumed orchestration and catalogs are accurate, current, and sufficiently agile in their maintenance, validity, and anticipation of expansion. The NAM team knows this is not the case, and in fact, control and knowledge at physical and logical layers will be paramount to any successful transformations.
The emphasis has been on developing a NAM guidebook GB993 – first version produced in January 2016. This is a ‘live’ document and there are many areas still to fill out. In parallel the ideas and best practices are being tested and demonstrated in Catalyst projects. The first, “Dynamic Asset Management for SDN/NFV Transformation” was successfully shown at TM Forum InFocus Catalyst event in Dallas, 2016 and the team demonstrated the latest iteration of the project at TM Forum Live! in Nice in 2017.
