Experiences in Integrated Multi-Domain Service Management

Increased competition, complex service provision chains and integrated service offerings require effective techniques for the rapid integration of telecommunications services and management systems over multiple organisational domains. This paper presents some of the results of practical development work in this area, detailing the technologies and standards used, the architectural approach taken and the application of this approach to specific services. This work covers the integration of multimedia services, broadband networks, service management and network management, though the detailed examples given focus specifically on the integration of services and service management

Inter-Domain Integration of Services and Service Management

The evolution of the global telecommunications industry into an open services market presents developers of telecommunication service and management systems with many new challenges. Increased competition, complex service provision chains and integrated service offerings require effective techniques for the rapid integration of service and management systems over multiple organisational domains. These integration issues have been examined in the ACTS project Prospect by developing a working set of integrated, managed telecommunications services for a user trial. This paper presents the initial results of this work detailing the technologies and standards used, the architectural approach taken and the application of this approach to specific services

A Generic Network and System Management Framework

Networks and distributed systems have formed the basis of an ongoing communications revolution that has led to the genesis of a wide variety of services. The constantly increasing size and complexity of these systems does not come without problems. In some organisations, the deployment of Information Technology has reached a state where the benefits from downsizing and rightsizing by adding new services are undermined by the effort required to keep the system running. Management of networks and distributed systems in general has a straightforward goal: to provide a productive environment in which work can be performed effectively. The work required for management should be a small fraction of the total effort. Most IT systems are still managed in an ad hoc style without any carefully elaborated plan. In such an environment the success of management decisions depends totally on the qualification and knowledge of the administrator. The thesis provides an analysis of the state of the art in the area of Network and System Management and identifies the key requirements that must be addressed for the provisioning of Integrated Management Services. These include the integration of the different management related aspects (i.e. integration of heterogeneous Network, System and Service Management). The thesis then proposes a new framework, INSMware, for the provision of Management Services. It provides a fundamental basis for the realisation of a new approach to Network and System Management. It is argued that Management Systems can be derived from a set of pre-fabricated and reusable Building Blocks that break up the required functionality into a number of separate entities rather than being developed from scratch. It proposes a high-level logical model in order to accommodate the range of requirements and environments applicable to Integrated Network and System Management that can be used as a reference model. A development methodology is introduced that reflects principles of the proposed approach, and provides guidelines to structure the analysis, design and implementation phases of a management system. The INSMware approach can further be combined with the componentware paradigm for the implementation of the management system. Based on these principles, a prototype for the management of SNMP systems has been implemented using industry standard middleware technologies. It is argued that development of a management system based on Componentware principles can offer a number of benefits. INSMware Components may be re-used and system solutions will become more modular and thereby easier to construct and maintain

Telecommunication Services Engineering- Definitions, Architectures and Tools

This paper introduces telecommunication services engineering through a definition of services, of network architectures that run services, and of methods, techniques and tools used to develop services. We emphasize the Intelligent Network (IN), the Telecommunication Management Network (TMN) and TINA architecture

A Unified Accounting Information Framework To Modeling Bank Accounting Systems

This paper discusses the use of distributed middlewares as essential tools for facilitating electronic exchange of standard business document between managers, financial institutes, and trading partners in the banking sector. Internally, companies can benefit by creating information architectures that allow systems to easily exchange data. One less expensive and disruptive option that applies to most banks/financial institutes is used traditional mainframe (legacy) system with an array of distributed middlewares to overcome the aforementioned limitations. This paper focuses on developing a new distributed processing architecture based on client-server technology called UAIF – Unified Accounting Information Framework. UAIF is designed to assist managers/financial institutes with a transparent access to information anywhere on the LAN or WAN from any desktop and to meet management specific needs so that some of the accounting and financial works can be widely used for World Wide Web (WWW) applications via Internet or Intranet.  For concept verification, we utilize UAIF to modeling a bank accounting system, which is based on an industrial standard CORBA architecture, XML and OMG General Ledger Facility. This methodology integrates enterprise accounting information system (AIS) with distributed systems via Internet, Intranet, and Electronic Commerce

Klausurtagung des Instituts für Telematik. Schloss Dagstuhl, 29. März bis 1. April 2000

Der vorliegende Bericht gibt einen Überblick über aktuelle Forschungsarbeiten des Instituts für Telematik an der Universität Karlsruhe (TH). Das Institut für Telematik ist in einem Teilgebiet der Informatik tätig, welches durch das Zusammenwachsen von Informatik und Kommunikationstechnik zur Telematik geprägt ist. Es gliedert sich in die Forschungsbereiche Telematik, Telecooperation Office (TecO), Cooperation & Management, Hochleistungsnetze und Netzwerkmanagement sowie dezentrale Systeme und Netzdienste. Die Schwerpunkte des Forschungsbereichs "Telematik" (Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. G. Krüger) liegen in den Bereichen "Dienstgüte", "Mobilkommunikation" und "Verteilte Systeme". Gemeinsames Ziel ist die Integration heterogener Netze (Festnetze und Funknetze), Rechnersysteme (von Workstations bis zu PDAs) und Softwarekomponenten, um damit den Anwendern eine Vielzahl von integrierten Diensten effizient und mit größtmöglicher Qualität zu erbringen. Das "Telecooperation Office" (TecO, Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. G. Krüger) ist ein Institutsbereich, der in Zusammenarbeit mit der Industrie anwendungsnahe Forschungsthemen der Telematik aufgreift. Im Mittelpunkt steht die innovative Nutzung von Kommunikationsinfrastrukturen mit den Schwerpunkten Softwaretechnik für Web-Anwendungen, neue Formen der Telekooperation sowie tragbare und allgegenwärtige Technologien (Ubiquitous Computing). Die Kernkompetenz des Forschungsbereichs "Cooperation & Management" (Prof. Dr. S. Abeck) liegt im prozessorientierten Netz-, System- und Anwendungsmanagement. Es werden werkzeuggestützte Managementlösungen für Betriebsprozesse entwickelt und in realen Szenarien erprobt. Ein wichtiges Szenario stellt das multimediale Informationssystem "NEXUS" dar, das als Plattform eines europaweit verteilten Lehr- und Lernsystems genutzt wird. Der Forschungsbereich "Hochleistungsnetze & Netzwerkmanagement" (Prof. Dr. W. Juling) befasst sich mit Technologie und Konzepten moderner leistungsfähiger Netzwerke sowie darüber hinaus mit sämtlichen Aspekten des Managements dieser zumeist ausgedehnten Netze. Um eine enge Abstimmung zwischen Forschungsaktivitäten und betrieblicher Praxis zu erzielen, werden insbesondere auch Synergien zwischen Institut und Rechenzentrum angestrebt. Die Arbeiten des Forschungsbereichs "Dezentrale Systeme und Netzdienste" (Prof. Dr. L. Wolf) befassen sich mit der Unterstützung verteilter Multimedia-Systeme, auch unter Berücksichtigung von Komponenten mit drahtlosem Zugang und den dafür geeigneten Architekturen und Infrastrukturen. Dabei werden vor allem Aspekte der Kommunikationssysteme wie Protokollmechanismen, Ressourcenverwaltung und adaptive und heterogene Systeme untersucht

Integrating legacy mainframe systems: architectural issues and solutions

For more than 30 years, mainframe computers have been the backbone of computing systems throughout the world. Even today it is estimated that some 80% of the worlds' data is held on such machines. However, new business requirements and pressure from evolving technologies, such as the Internet is pushing these existing systems to their limits and they are reaching breaking point. The Banking and Financial Sectors in particular have been relying on mainframes for the longest time to do their business and as a result it is they that feel these pressures the most. In recent years there have been various solutions for enabling a re-engineering of these legacy systems. It quickly became clear that to completely rewrite them was not possible so various integration strategies emerged. Out of these new integration strategies, the CORBA standard by the Object Management Group emerged as the strongest, providing a standards based solution that enabled the mainframe applications become a peer in a distributed computing environment. However, the requirements did not stop there. The mainframe systems were reliable, secure, scalable and fast, so any integration strategy had to ensure that the new distributed systems did not lose any of these benefits. Various patterns or general solutions to the problem of meeting these requirements have arisen and this research looks at applying some of these patterns to mainframe based CORBA applications. The purpose of this research is to examine some of the issues involved with making mainframebased legacy applications inter-operate with newer Object Oriented Technologies

LEVERAGING SOA IN BANKING SYSTEMS INTEGRATION

There is no doubt that the systems integration is one of the most important and complicated tasks in software filed especially for complex applications like banking systems. Complexity in integrating banking systems often comes from continues changes in both technical and business features provided by them to meet customer needs. Banking systems always come from different software vendors which mean using platforms and different design and architecture patterns, and this for sure adds extra complexity for integrating them. Serviceoriented architecture (SOA) is a promising method in software filed that aims to build or restructure software systems in a manner that makes their maintenance and integration easier. Agility is the most important goal that should be achieved when building and integrating banking systems. Simply, agility is needed to meet market needs quickly and efficiently and SOA is the way that could provide itSOA, SOI, P2P Integration, Web Services, and Legacy Code