Pipeline Publishing, Volume 3, Issue 2

	This Month's Issue:
	Time for a Check Up

Supercharging Inventory Management

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Clearly then, service providers need a more effective, manageable approach to tracking equipment and facilities in their networks if they seek to reduce their operating and capital expenditures while extending market share.

Network Discovery -
Finding the Right Solution
Network discovery engines are gradually going mainstream, for all the reasons explained above. But what constitutes a good discovery engine? That is, what characterizes an engine that provides relevant and accurate data to an inventory database reconciliation process in a way that meets the operational needs of the service provider?

The following are key characteristics that differentiate true network discovery solutions from the pretenders.

1. True Discovery, not “Give-Me-Data-and-I’ll-Confirm”. Some discovery solutions offer good reconciliation capabilities but in truth require the network operator to provide the majority of IP or OSI addresses in the network before checking the accuracy of data provided and digging deeper for lower level attributes. A true network discovery engine takes in some minimal data (e.g, gateway node addresses) and discovers the physical and logical attributes of the network.

2. Multi-technology, multi-vendor capability. A handful of network discovery engines work well within some areas of the network, such as IP networks, but fall short when it comes to the optical network layer, for example. Others only discover next generation networking equipment in optical networks, dismissing more than 75 percent of deployed legacy networks (especially in the optical layer, where older vintages don’t provide data on relationships with neighboring nodes). A good discovery engine offers the capability to cover most of the deployed network that the service provider is looking to discover and track.

3. Scalability and Robustness. Enterprise-level solutions do not adequately meet the needs of Tier 1 carriers for scalability (with tens of thousands of network devices) and robustness. Most discovery engines built specifically for carrier networks handle this requirement quite well, with tiered architectures and server redundancies enabling load-balancing, etc., to maximize availability and prevent failures.

4. Leverage Existing Standards, but Look for Flexibility Foremost. Standards are important – but the reality is very few are universally adopted by all service providers. Therefore, a network operator needs to consider whether its chosen discovery engine supports the interfaces it has implemented. For example, if a TMF814 or MTOSI interface has been

"A true network discovery engine takes in some minimal data (e.g, gateway node addresses) and discovers the physical and logical attributes of the network."

adopted, then the discovery engine selected needs to accommodate those particular interface requirements. In truth, a well-designed discovery engine will have a service-oriented architecture and should be easily customized to interface with the applications requiring the discovery data output (e.g., the inventory management reconciliation process).

5. Flexible Usage Parameters. Network operators need flexibility in configuring the usage parameters of the discovery engine. For example, how often a network discovery sweep should be activated, or how much of the available network resources the sweep should be allowed to consume (e.g., bandwidth).

Conclusion

In its latest market report on Inventory Management, Dittberner Associates, a leading OSS market research firm, wrote that it “… sees some opportunity for inventory vendors to partner with or acquire network reconciliation and discovery vendors. Network discovery is an important inventory verifying technology that makes the inventory solution all the stronger.”

In the same study, Dittberner suggested the inevitability of network discovery’s emergence by way of relating how expensive it is for telcos to physically audit their network assets: The study noted one example of the “… one telecom CIO [who] estimated that it cost him about $10 million to audit his network facilities, comprising 34 switches across 40 markets”.

Network Discovery will be a true differentiator for inventory management solution providers and independent software vendors moving forward. Choosing an inventory management solution with a robust discovery engine will enable service providers to build competitive differentiation into the level of service they provide to their customers, through markedly improved turnaround times on requests for service activation and an improved ability to properly engineer their networks, based on accurate network data.

Discovery is the key. And it’s happening now.

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