[opennms-discuss] OpenNMS Demonstrates SOA Management in the UK

[Tarus B. <ta...@op...>]

Gang:

I hope it's okay to post stuff like this to the lists. We're pretty  
excited about the possibilities.

-T

FOR IMMEDIATELY RELEASE

The OpenNMS Community Demonstrates Network Management Based on  
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Technologies

PITTSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA - 17 May 2006: The OpenNMS Project recently  
participated in a proof-of-concept to demonstrate a network  
management solution based on Service Oriented Architecture  
technologies. Arqiva, a major broadcast communications company in the  
United Kingdom, requested a demonstration of a combination of both  
open source and proprietary technologies working together under a  
standard management framework.

The Next Generation Operational System Support (NGOSS) framework was  
created by the TeleManagement Forum (TMF) to provide for the  
development and deployment of easy to integrate, flexible, easy to  
manage applications. Users of NGOSS tools can choose the best  
management applications for their current needs, and as they grow  
replace just those pieces that need to be changed without having to  
replace the whole management solution.

Craig Gallen of the University of Southampton has founded the OpenOSS  
project to develop a reference solution of the NGOSS framework using  
open source tools. His project uses OSS/J, a set of Java APIs to  
implement NGOSS.

This demonstration used the new alarms subsystem in the development  
branch of OpenNMS to provide events to OpenOSS. Using JBoss as an  
application server, those events could be made available to any  
application that also implemented the standard interfaces implemented  
by OSS/J. In this case, the events were received by StateWise, an  
event correlation, root cause and impact analysis system created by a  
company called Sidonis, which makes use of the Drools open source  
Rules Engine.

OpenNMS monitored a number of broadcast communication devices, and  
when faults were detected alarms were generated. OpenOSS would take  
those alarms and make them available via JBoss to StateWise.  
Statewise could then suppress sympathetic alarms and generate a  
single event - whether it was simply a subsystem that stopped  
functioning or an entire site that was down. This eliminated the  
"wall of red" experienced by many network operation centers and  
provided information that could be used to quickly identify and  
resolve the problem

"Our clients are tired of having to revisit their management  
solutions every five years," said Tarus Balog, OpenNMS project  
maintainer and CEO of the OpenNMS Group, Inc. "Those of us in network  
management have been wanting to build a framework to allow for the  
options our clients demand. Craig came to us and pointed out that one  
already exists: NGOSS".

Don Keir, managing director of Sidonis said "use of OpenNMS with OSS/ 
J proved itself as a compelling end-to-end environment in which we  
could use StateWise to cut immediately to the root cause of a network  
problem - a crucial capability in a world of increasing network  
complexity and alarm volume".

While others are talking about implementing SOA-based management  
solutions, there is a small group of people leveraging open source to  
deliver on them.

Contacts:

For information on The OpenNMS Project (http://www.opennms.org) or  
The OpenNMS Group, Inc. (http://www.opennms.com) please contact Tarus  
Balog via email at ta...@op..., or phone +1 919 533 0160.

For information on The OpenOSS Project (http://sourceforge.net/ 
projects/openoss), contact Craig Gallen via e-mail at  
cg...@ec....

For information on StateWise, contact Don Keir at Sidonis (http:// 
www.sidonis.com) via email at in...@si..., or phone +44 (0)7748  
155457.

-----

Tarus Balog
The OpenNMS Group, Inc.
Main  : +1 919 533 0160   Fax:   +1 503-961-7746
Direct: +1 919 647 4749   Skype: tarusb
Key Fingerprint: 8945 8521 9771 FEC9 5481  512B FECA 11D2 FD82 B45C