Joint Emanics / IRTF-NMRG Workshop on Future Direction of Network and
Service Management Research

19-20 October 2006, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Being an Integrated Operator gives France Telecom with opportunities
to offer new services in a seamless manner and thus to be an important
player in an ubiquitous world. In contrast, we have to face
challenging issues to guarantee interoperability between our various
networks and services, as well as to interwork with other
operators/providers, being able to to ensure Quality of Service as
well as trust to our customers.

Networks and Service Management is thus an important domain that must
be mastered by the Network Operator/Service provider.  Hereafter are
some overall issues that we might wish to consider in the joint
Meeting about Future Directions of NSM:

1. The various areas that are concerned (home networks, access
   networks, Backbone networks and the many service platforms) that we
   are managing include a number of various technologies that have a
   huge impact on our OPEX. One major business objective is to take
   advantage of this many resources to use them as best as can and to
   be develop agile management.

2. The heterogeneity of our networks and technologies is an
   opportunity to deliver services through different ways but requires
   additional features that may increase CAPEX. Therefore a trade-off
   must be found between flexibility between the various technologies
   available and the cost of implementation.

3. Scalability of procedures and mechanisms become of utmost
   importance as the number of terminals, devices and network elements
   increases.

4. Complexity might highly be increased and limit the role of human
   operators for management tasks usually carried out by NMgers, thus
   calling for increased automation.

5. The need for automation signifies that a kind of autonomic and
   self-management tools and mechanisms must be developed in order to
   make the systems more intelligent regarding the constraints and the
   environments. Learning and decision-making architecture have to be
   developed in order to account for change of context and
   Applications requirements on QoS.

6. Since networks and services have to interwork via different service
   providers, it is requested that architecture, models and
   procedures, protocols be standardized through ad hoc SDOs.

7. Finally, QoS and Trust/Immunity/Security must be considered as key
   objectives and methods and related protocols need to be developed
   accordingly.


Prosper Chemouil
France Telecom R&D