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Background
Since 2008, the TM Forum’s Government/Defense Market Support Center has collaborated on Policy Management as a means for more flexible, efficient, secure and resilient networks. Their intention is to produce standards-based automation capable of translating commander’s intent into network behavior. A set of contributions made to the TM Forum in May 2010 has prompted the launch of a project aimed to deliver a Policy Information Exchange Interface.

Policy Information Exchange Defined
A Policy Information Exchange Interface facilitates the exchange of policy-related information amongst the various domain-specific OSSs thus enabling a distributed Policy environment. High-level functions and associated capabilities include: Request and Response Correlation, Event Reporting, Heartbeat, Acknowledgements, and Policy Exchange, Synchronization, and Negotiations.

Business Benefits
It is believed that a Policy Information Exchange (PIE) model, coupled with robust capabilities for complex event processing and distributed policy execution, and applied in the context of the TM Forum Frameworx – can be a key enabler to achieve intended mission outcomes under the constrained and often volatile operating conditions associated with Defense networks.

Examples of Policy Management needs:
  • The rapid build-out of 4G and satellite networks brings new management challenges.
  • Competition for the limited spectrum resources requires technologies for increasing efficient use.
  • Increased number of autonomous devices necessitate balance between human control and network automation.
  • Security policies provide network defense against vandalism, theft, and information espionage.
Download the Policy Information Exchange Prospectus here.

Current Deliverables

Ultimately, the aim is to enhance the TM Forum Frameworx with Policy Information Exchange concepts, so that they become the de-facto standard for vendors to incorporate into their products.

It is anticipated that the deliverable-based approach will involve multiple projects, or a multi-phased project.  The pace of the project(s) will be dependent on Subject Matter Resource availability. 

The current project is to create a Policy Information Exchange Interface (See PEI presentation, Ron Roman, Telcordia from Management World Americas 2009 Policy workshop for additional information.) Details of the Phase 2 PIE Interface project can be found in the Project Interface Charter. 

    A future project for consideration is enhancing the remaining Frameworx (Business Process and Application Map) with Policy Information Exchange concepts

    History

    The PIE Phase 1 Project which incorporated the Policy contribution (model) into the Information Model (SID) was completed.  Below is related documentation for this project:  Click here to download contributions.