Service management of diverse networking infrastructures is a key function of Network Centric Operations (NCO). Many scenarios require fast, efficient management, including rapid deployment for disaster relief, reconnaissance, and combat search and rescue. When there are multiple providers, service management and situational awareness are challenged by disparate operational policies and management protocols. Standardization helps to bridge these differences, thus improving overall mission success.

A team of providers, integrators and vendors assembled a multi-vendor technology demonstration, a Catalyst, utilizing standardized frameworks produced by the TM Forum, an industry association focused on solving end-to-end service management challenges. The “Rapid Communications Deployment - Federated Service Level Management to Support Multi-National Preparedness in Crisis” Catalyst Project, aka Federated SLA Catalyst, was developed across three phases in 2010 and 2011. The project used crisis situations, such as the Haitian Earthquake response effort, as reference scenarios to demonstrate rapid establishment of communications services across a multi-national coalition – focusing on the agile and rapid build out of the end-to-end information and communication technologies (ICT) service chain and security. The project was championed by the NATO C3 Agency (NC3A) and the UK MOD Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL).

Primary requirements for the multi-vendor team included dynamic discovery of services and creation of complex service value chains based on discovered elementary national contributions; secured information exchange across the coalition partners on a multi-lateral basis, and automated end-to-end service management. In addition to delivering this Blueprint, the team produced a live demonstration of the Federated SLA Architecture.

Requirements of all TM Forum Catalyst projects are the use of Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Products along with industry standards and best practices. In addition, TM Forum’s Frameworx Integrated Business Architecture, Business Process Framework (eTOM) and Information Framework (SID), Service Level Agreement Handbook, Active Catalog and Policy Information Exchange Standards, and IPsphere Framework were applied to the solution.

In the type of scenario demonstrated, a quick response force would arrive on the scene, a command structure would be established, and there would be little or no communications infrastructure available. Execution of the mission plan requires a well-coordinated response effort – making certain that the right resources are available at the right time in the right locations – all of which is dependent on the rapid establishment of communications services.

Bandwidth is often constrained, and when problems arise, a well-coordinated response ensures minimal mission impact. A flexible architecture which applies configurable policy and enables cross operator domain communication makes managing services across a federation much more efficient.

The paper will introduce readers to the business problem, requirements, and functional description (Use Cases), along with key architecture and design considerations (application of standards and best practices, role of COTS, and important concepts such as sharing data across coalition boundaries, securing information exchange, and dynamic policy based management). It will show how Frameworx provides a practical means to streamline and automate the service management lifecycle, and make federated management possible

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