Interface Program

Enterprise Identity Management News

Basma Driss — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 19:01:55 GMT

The Enterprise Identity Management team of the Interface Program made a lot of progress to enable interoperable, consistent, reliable and efficient network management security and enterprise identity management.

We are happy to inform you that we just released Operator User Management (BA and IA) and Single Sign-On (BA) (see download center). For more details, see Antonio’s Blog.

We are currently working on

Single Sign-On Information Agreement (TMF614)
EIM Catalyst in Nice "MW10 - Enterprise Identity Management"
Alignment of our object model with SID
TIP EIM webinar is planned in May 2010

In order to progress in our work and support our activities, we are looking for the following:

Single Sign-On, SAML or general security expertise from a service provider, network infrastructure vendor, software vendor or system integrator point of view.
SID and TIP Framework knowledge
Experience in using TM Forum tools supporting the creation of specifications.
Case studies, white papers about EIM deployments

To learn more about EIM team:

Join us in the online interface program community
Refer to our overview slides

Operator User Management, Release 1.1. Now Available!

Antonio Plutino — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:37:19 GMT

The Enterprise Identity Management team of the Interface Program just released the Operator User Management Rel. 1.1. Check it out!

Multi-vendor networks in typical Service Provider environments are managed using multiple proprietary management systems. In order to ensure a secure and consistent management of the network there is a need for provisioning operators working on these management systems in a uniform and central way. It is also needed for Service Providers to be able to implement specific authorizations based on their local situations.

This release specifies an interface that enables Service Providers to consistently provision operator’s access rights and authorities across the system. It also deals with auditing the results of the provisioning operations.

The Operator User Management Release 1.1 consists of:

TMF520 Operator User Management Business Agreement (BA): describes all requirements and use cases
TMF615 Operator User Management Information Agreement (IA): describes the data and operational model
TMF873 Operator User Management IIS as a package consisting of:
- RN317 Release Notes
- Operator User Management Update Document: describes the changes done in this release compared to release 1.0
- TMF615_wsdl_xsd.zip file: contains the WSDL and XSD files related to TMF615

The Member Evaluation for this set of documents will be announced shortly. Your feedback as always is more than welcome!

Thanks,

Antonio Plutino

TM Forum

aplutino@tmforum.org

Interfaces: "Golden Nuggets"

Antonio Plutino — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:10:14 GMT

The Interface Program online community is probably the most active community in TM Forum: a lot of exchanges have been taking place there, on strategic or tactical issues concerning interfaces, technical solutions, business requirements, logistics, meetings, announcements, and more. All this results in hundreds of posts that are added every month to the community. This is great and shows how hard the Interface Program teams are working.

Quite regularly it happens that after several posts exchanged in a thread, the people participating to the discussion come up with a decision, or an answer to a specific question, or a clarification of an issue. This information would be of general interest, but because of the amount of posts in the community it is often difficult to find it. For this reason some time ago we introduced the “golden nuggets”, which are bits of information extracted from post threads and made available as a wiki in the community.

Here you have the pointer to the Interface Program “golden nuggets” wiki page: please give a look and let me know what you think! Also, until now I have added golden nuggets to the wiki page, but please feel free to add yours whenever you think some information coming up from the discussions in the community is worth publishing.

Thanks,

Antonio Plutino

TM Forum

aplutino@tmforum.org

Interfaces: Updated Program Overview

Antonio Plutino — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 00:53:21 GMT

This week the Interface Program team released an update of the general Interface Program overview. Check it out!

This overview describes: the scope and history of the program, the teams and work process, the participants, the technical directions, the released and planned deliverables, the relationship with the other TM Forum teams and industry liaisons, and provide information on how to get involved.

This presentation is complementary to the Interface Program roadmap and statement of direction slide set published recently. Both presentations are available from the About the Interface Program page of the TIP website.

We plan to update the document every 6 months. Your feedback, as always, is more than welcome :)

Thanks,

Antonio Plutino

TM Forum

aplutino@tmforum.org

Resource Alarm Management Business Agreement now Available

Antonio Plutino — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:02:39 GMT

I am glad to inform you that the Resource and Service Assurance team of the Interface Program has recently released the Resource Alarm Management Business Agreement Rel. 1.0. Check it out!

The document provides requirements and use cases for the management of alarms generated by resources. It defines the concept of a resource alarm and describes several dynamic requirements in the areas of:

· Alarm notification

· Alarm handling, i.e., the directives applicable on alarms such as acknowledge

· Alarm subscription

· Alarm retrieval

The requirements are followed by several use cases: each of them covers one or more requirements. Requirement - use case traceability matrices are also provided. The document starts with several “end-to-end” alarm scenarios.

This document is currently in Member Evaluation (until March 11). It will be used as one of the main input to the work on Fault Management in the context of the joint TM Forum + 3GPP activity on new generation wireless-wireline networks and services management.

Your feedback is more than welcome!

Thanks,

Antonio Plutino

TM Forum

aplutino@tmforum.org

What an amazing Team Action Week!

Antonio Plutino — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:15:56 GMT

Team Action Week is not finished yet for the Interface Program, our last meetings are on Friday, but for sure the teams made a lot of progress! Here below a summary from the wrap-up session.

Interface technical framework (JOSIF): finalized Rel. 1.0; joint meeting with TIP Ordering & Activation concerning Orders; Detailed plan for JOSIF Rel. 1.1 and 2.0
Resource and Service Assurance: continued work on Service Problem Management (SPM) and Resource Alarm Management (RAM) and Performance Management work including alignment with 3GPP
Resource Management: progressed work on Connection-Connectionless Convergence and Termination Point modeling, Equipment and External Plant related CRs, and MTNM migration to DDPs
Service Management: significant progress concerning the definition and validation of use cases for broadband Ethernet access, aggregation & backhaul
Resource Management/Service Management joint meeting with Broadband Forum concerning joint work
Enterprise Identity Management (EIM): progressed work on Single Sign On (SSO) and Operator User Management (OUM)
Inventory Management: meeting to restart work, significant progress on the OSS/J – MTOSI inventory comparison document
TIP Technical Coordination moved to new overall Architecture & Technical Coordination (A&TC) team
Usage Data Management team (IPDR) did not meet but team leader had meetings with MCE probes sub-team, Cables Interest Group & IPsphere, all three of which have interest in the IPDR work.

Goals for next six months:

Interface Framework: Deliver JOSIF Release 1.1 (common operations, versioning, filtering, file transfer and Java generator with review of output for fit OSS/J)
Resource Management: progress MTOSI alignment with SID Logical Resources/Physical Resources models (beyond alignment in SID 9)
Service Management: restart IP management sub-team; plan to complete TIP-SM1 and TIP-SM2: Define Ethernet Service Specifications for Triple Play (EVPL, EVPTREE), and Enterprise (EVPLAN); Start work on TIP-SM3: Look at changes required for interfaces to support activation of Ethernet Services (decide to use MTOSI or JOSIF); Need to get started on associated TIP-RM1: MEF harmonization and TIP-RM2 Ethernet OAM activities. In order to support the Ethernet service scenarios, it is necessary to update DSL, add support for GPON, and define SM to RM interface
Trouble Ticket: complete the BA if possible by June; submit suggested improvements for SID; migration to JOSIF is still on the long-term roadmap
Usage Data Management (UDM): IPDR maintenance release (pending charter approval)
Resource and Service Assurance: Service Problem Management specs, RI and CTK; Resource Alarm Management specs and 3GPP harmonization; Performance Management BA
Enterprise Identity Management (EIM): SSO: work on object model and interfaces based on SID and JOSIF; SSO IA should be ready by Q3 2010
Inventory Management: finish OSS/J – MTOSI inventory comparison

The minutes of the Interface Program meetings at Team Action Week are or will be available here.

Thanks so much to all the participants, it has been an amazing week!

Antonio Plutino

TM Forum

aplutino@tmforum.org

TAW Lisbon: Come and visit the Interface Program at the Team Gallery!

Antonio Plutino — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:27:47 GMT

Team Action Week is behind the corner, it will start in just four days, and it will be a week packed with meetings and events. I wanted to draw your attention on one cool event that you may find quite interesting: the Team Gallery, on Monday evening 18:30 - 20:00.

We will set up an area where each team will feature a poster highlighting the team activities, team leaders and TM Forum staff will be available to answer your questions. This is the occasion to learn more about our teams and meet the participants. It will also help you to figure which meetings to attend during the week. And I shouldn’t forget to mention that drinks will be served: I am sure that a glass or two will help in starting the conversation with the other attendees! :)

If you are curious about the poster for the Interface Program, you have a preview here. The current schedule of the Interface Program teams meetings for the week is here.

Thanks, and I look forward to meeting you next week!

Antonio Plutino

TM Forum

aplutino@tmforum.org

Interfaces: What is Next and User Guidelines

Antonio Plutino — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 00:39:15 GMT

Quite recently the Interface Program released a presentation describing the roadmap of the Interfaces for the next 6 months and guidelines for users. You may want to check it out!

It includes the list of deliverables for MTOSI, MTNM, OSS/J, and new Interfaces with planned dates of availability. It also describes the convergence plans for the interfaces to the new Interface Program technical framework and its rules of adoption. It describes how MTOSI and OSS/J will be migrated to this new technical framework and when. And it provides guidelines to users on what interfaces to use and when.

The presentation is available from the About the Interface Program page of the TIP website. Here you have the direct link.

We plan to update the document every 6 months. Your feedback is more than welcome!

Thanks,

Antonio Plutino

TM Forum

aplutino@tmforum.org

Team Action Week Lisbon: Choose your Interface Program Meetings!

Antonio Plutino — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 02:48:08 GMT

Team Action Week Lisbon will happen soon, in little more than two weeks! The Interface Program will have many meetings there: I am sure there will be several of your interest. Below the current list of meetings and highlights of the agendas. And don’t forget to register :)

Plenary + Steering Team: Program Overview; Goals for the week and for next 6 months; Guidelines for building interfaces: next steps
Joint Framework + Implementation: Finalize Release 1.0 of the Interface framework SOAP generator; Discussion of test case: Service Problem Management; Determination of features for Release 2.0
Resource Management: Logical Resource: connection-connectionless convergence; Impact on Resource management for Ethernet services; Information Framework (SID) – Interface Program (TIP) Resource management Alignment; Physical Resource: changes proposed in the equipment & external plant study
Service Management: Business Use cases: Ethernet services for broadband access, aggregation, and backhaul for Triple-Play; Ethernet Service Specifications (EVPL) for Broadband Access Provider - GPON with VLAN per subscriber/service; joint meeting with SID - CSSU to discuss alignment of customer/subscriber/subscription/user concepts
Enterprise Identity Management: EIM introduction session; OSS Single Sign-On; OSS Telecom Operator User Management
Inventory: presentation of the OSS/J – MTOSI Inventory comparison document; Next steps for TIP Inventory
Resource and Service Assurance: Service Problem Management and Resource Alarm Management; Next Steps for Performance Management; Potential restart Test & Diagnostics
Product Delivery: status and plans for MTOSI 2.1, MTOSI 3.0/MTNM 4.0; Review of planned deliverables for the next 3 months; RFx template
Joint meeting with 4G Wireline-Wireless Network Management Team about 4G management by using TIP interfaces
Architecture & Technical Coordination: Framework teams joint session; meeting with Architecture Contract Experts - positioning Contract and SDF interfaces and metadata

For more information please check the detailed schedule of the Interface Program meetings and the complete event agenda webpage.

Thanks, and see you in Portugal!

Antonio

TM Forum

aplutino@tmforum.org

Single Sign-On Business Agreement now Available!

Antonio Plutino — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:52:06 GMT

The Enterprise Identity Management team of the Interface Program just released the Single Sign-On Business Agreemenr Rel 1.0. You may want to check it out!

This Business Agreement on Single Sign-On/Off (SSO) for the OSS world describes current and future-oriented business scenarios and use cases related to OSS SSO. This covers standard client-server SSO business scenarios and use cases as well as those addressing Service Oriented Architecture and cloud computing environments.

Requirements on the SSO solution, which the OSS SSO Information Agreement and Interface Implementation Specification are to specify, are derived from those business scenarios and use cases. Alongside intrinsic SSO functions, this Business Agreement considers the logging, reporting and auditing functions needed for proper operation of OSS SSO systems as also being in scope of this SSO Business Agreement and its subsequent specifications.

This document is available from the Interface Program Download Center under New Interfaces as well as from the Business Agreement section and the Member Evaluation section of the Document Library.

This document is currently in Member Evaluation, which will end on Jan 22. Your feedback is more than welcome!

Thanks,

Antonio Plutino

TM Forum

aplutino@tmforum.org