Metrics Framework for Big Data and Policy Driven Operations R16.5.1 (IG1146)

The world of digital services is disrupting business everywhere, and communication service provider businesses are no exception. A characteristic of these new businesses is the heavy use of data analytics to monitor and better understand the relationships and communications between consumers and producers of the services being traded, as well as determine any unmet needs or partially met needs of the End User and business models (e.g., performance based dynamic pricing models, leasing solutions, purchase solutions, etc.). Such data analytics require a large amount of consistently represented data to be processed.

Service Providers are transforming their network infrastructure into software-defined components that leverage commodity IT infrastructure that replace purposely built network appliances. They are seeing that this transformation is disruptive to many of the traditional ways that they monitor and manage the network, and a need to move to a data analytics based approach.

A primary example of this challenge, and the subject of this paper is: ‘how metrics should be collected, analyzed and actioned’. A design goal of each software component is that they must be customizable and configurable to meet the needs of a specific application/business context, and therefore their capabilities and thresholds become much more pliable. They cannot be rigidly defined up front by Standards Organizations in the traditional manner.

This document describes the Common Metrics Framework developed by the TM Forum as the result of the Multi-SDO Metrics Liaison activity ‘Harmonization of Standards Metrics for Virtualization Supply Chain Management & Procurement’. This activity has been carried out in collaboration with QuEST Forum, NIST, and other related projects under the ZOOM and Customer Experience programs. The liaison agreement sets out additional Rights and Obligations associated with this document, its use and distribution by the participating SDOs.