Today, there is a growing demand for automation of business processes at service providers, especially in the area of network/service operations to improve operational efficiency. This leads to the need for improved integration of operational support systems. The integration of Service Fault Management Systems on the Element Management Layer and Network Management Layer with other OSS components, such as Service Monitoring is a common demand from various service providers.

Most of the existing integrations between Fault-Management systems and other OSS systems are based on proprietary point-to-point interfaces although vendors offer “standard” interfaces such as SNMP, CORBA, etc., which are adapted to their applications. In a real integration scenario these interfaces need a lot of customization to fulfill the business requirements and to allow the communication between different proprietary OSS systems because each of these applications follow its own business process, internal logic and semantic. Usually application A needs to know a part of the business logic of system B (and vice versa) to be able to implement the interface. This situation ends with the implementation of very specific interfaces with dependencies on the integrated OSS systems. This means, re-use of interfaces or dedicated parts of the interfaces in other integration scenarios is not possible. So, there is a need for a standardized interface, which delivers the semantic connectivity and not only the underlying transport mechanisms, which helps to provide out-of-the-box interoperability and more flexible integration.

The Fault Management Integration Solution Package shows a standardized way to integrate Fault Management systems with Service Management (Monitoring) systems and other Fault Management systems on different logical layers by using the OSS/J QoS (FM – Part) API. It allows publish, subscribe and query Alarms from and to Fault Management systems. Using this API improves the cost efficiency by delivering a standard facade for any other OSS application, which needs Fault Information. The OSS/J (FM – Part) API itself re-uses the commonly accepted X.733 standard for Fault Information (new API versions also support the 3GPP extension) and delivers the needed technology specific API specification to enable the deployment of the interface solution in a real, physical environment.

Beside Fault Management, the OSS/J QoS API (JSR 90) V1.0 supports also Performance Management and Thresholding. The FM Integration Solution Package is focused on the FM part of the API only. The new OSS/J Fault Management API (JSR263), which is available since summer 07 represents the extraction of the Fault Management functionality into a standalone API. (see specification of the new Fault Management API Overview 1.0 : “This was done to enable software vendors that deliver fault management systems to implement and be fully compliant with the API. Previously, the vendor would have been “partially compliant” to the OSS/J Quality of Service API, in particular the fault management portion”)

Implementation of a standardized, re-useable “Fault Management Integration solution” which offers a standard Fault Management Interface for the integration with other Operational Support Systems (OSS) acting as clients to the Fault Management (server) system.

Typical clients of the Fault Management systems are Service Monitoring Systems as well as other Fault Management Systems on different layers, Change or Workflow Management systems

The solution package can be used as a logical link between the generic TMF specifications in the Fault Management domain and the real world implementations (the OSS products) in that area. It shall help to understand the way from abstract specification work to concrete projects, using the deliverables of the TMF programs. The intention is to offer a starting point for these projects, by the description of the business scenario, things to consider, needed artifacts and potential contact partners which can be helpful to start further, more detailed work.

This solution package uses the OSS/J QoS (Fault Management – Part) API as a core component to reduce the cost and complexity of integrating FM components with other OSS components. The API provides a solution for the transfer of Fault Information between OSS systems, which is a complex task in a typical OSS system, due to incompatible APIs and different information models.