Pipeline Publishing, Volume 5, Issue 4

	This Month's Issue:
	Enabling Innovation

The co-Evolution of Networks and Devices: Autonomics and Device Management

article page | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |

known features and functions of service control points in order to behave in a predictable and secure fashion, even faced with the potential chaos of complex networks.

Sometimes a service which is resident on a device will be owned or well known to the networks and companion devices, and at other times it will be novel. The networks need some way of trusting the device as it connects: that the device is who and what it claims to be and that the services it offers or loads are secure.

We have a lot of tools. For example, 3GPP optional onboard element agents are a start towards self management. RDF and the semantic network is a strong start on identity. But for a unified Device Management Framework, autonomic agents will be necessary. And to resolve the different management network groups to which devices can belong during their service life, collaborative interconnect architectures, such as the service aggregator, the rendezvous service, and persistent queue pipes are required.

The scope of what we mean by management will continue to expand....

The number of devices will continue to grow...

The capability of devices will continue to evolve in many different ways...

Device management as traditionally conceived seems inappropriate for the scale and diversity of the problem.

We must stop thinking of (i) product services, (ii) network software, (iii) network & service management, and (iv) device management as separate disciplines with differently skilled practitioners using very different reference architectures and their "only-invented-here" approaches. Convergence is occurring and must accelerate. The TMForum Device Management team understands this and needs help reaching a collective solution.

Yahoo's Fire Eagle is a harbinger of what is happening in the OTT service providers. "Fire Eagle is a network service that gives users a place to store and manage information about their location, and offers developers protocols

Each device can really only know itself, but the network can collect state and data from all the plurality of interconnected devices.

for updating or accessing that information. Yahoo! said its goal with Fire Eagle is to help developers create Internet experiences that are geo-aware. For users, Fire Eagle acts as a simple interface for managing location information and deciding how -- and with whom -- to share it." [Yahoo release reported in Techmeme]. Today's natural advantage of the network service provider is fast eroding. With it might go most opportunities for revenue from providing new services on devices. As Apple shows with the iPhone, it is certainly clear that management of devices will allow for advantage in selling services to device owners.

Service providers have a natural advantage, a bigger context to put it all together. We propose a composite Service and Device Management Framework that provides for (A) autonomic devices which connect to (B) a series of network-resident, server-hosted active models that virtualize the many interactions and groups in which the device, and its user/customer, is participating. Each device reports its image of the world about it to this virtual, composite model. There this information is matched to, and combined with, all the reports from all the other devices about it. Each device can really only know itself, but the network can collect state and data from all the plurality of interconnected devices: sometimes directly, sometimes trading for it through collaborative interfaces to other service providers. We call this network resident model the "Operational Consciousness" of the device. It can be used to apply broad management context to policy and behavior of the network and of the device - so that together, they reach efficient interactions. The fish can keep schooling and the birds keep flocking because the sonar image and the photo reside in the hosted virtual model. Someone will eventually provide the ultimate management service. We feel it goes beyond looking at components and frameworks. We see the opportunity to completely reinvent the Service Provider for the 21st century.

article page | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |

© 2006, All information contained herein is the sole property of Pipeline Publishing, LLC. Pipeline Publishing LLC reserves all rights and privileges regarding
the use of this information. Any unauthorized use, such as copying, modifying, or reprinting, will be prosecuted under the fullest extent under the governing law.