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Conference azur::mcc

Title:DECmcc user notes file. Does not replace IPMT.
Notice:Use IPMT for problems. Newsletter location in note 6187
Moderator:TAEC::BEROUD
Created:Mon Aug 21 1989
Last Modified:Wed Jun 04 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:6497
Total number of notes:27359

4824.0. "OSI NMF & POLYCENTER - any future? " by OTOOA::OTOP77::T_ROSS (Networks Integration Services) Mon Apr 05 1993 17:04

	How does POLYCENTER match up to the OSI NMF specs?

	I'm working a RFP for network management that calls for relatively 
strict OSI NMF compliance for coding design (i.e. object-oriented), 
communication between entities (manager/agent comms, mgr-mgr comms), and 
overall layout (5 functional areas of mgmt, etc.). POLYCENTER 1.3 docs don't 
say much about OSI at all. DECMCC EMS 1.2 General Description talks about OSI 
management and (effectively) says that EMA is a superset of OSI... but many 
components are missing. Meanwhile, the heavy emphasis for net mgmt. standards 
is on OSF's DME - except for Telecom applications, where TeMIP follows the 
OSI standard, but is not a complete implementation. 

	Please, can anyone tell me:

	- Does (or will) POLYCENTER comply with the OSI NMF specs?
	- Will OSI NMF continue to be a line of active development, or has 
	  OSF DME become the target to attain?    
	- Does anyone have knowledge of other net mgmt. platforms
	  (AT&T Accumaster, etc.)? 

	Any assistance would be appreciated greatly..

Thanks,

Todd. 
T.RTitleUserPersonal
Name
DateLines
4824.1Digital's OSI CommitmentDELNI::FERREIRAMon Apr 19 1993 21:42888
Todd,

Not a direct answer, but the following is the statement that
Digital will release tomorrow at the "International Symposium on
Network Management" (previously IFIP) on our support of OSI Management:
(also attached below is a statement from Bellcore on OSI Management).
Overall, we have a much stronger message than IBM or HP.


Digitals Network Management solutions deliver a level of integration and
extensibility unmatched by other vendors.

Digitals strategy represents a new direction for network and systems
management. Unlike "point solutions" that lack integration or can address 
only a few types of network elements, Digitals solution can be expanded 
in a progressive, modular fashion to meet your ever-changing environment 
and business needs. Digital provides the scope and functionality to manage
the enterprise environment, and conforms to the spirit of DME today.

Digital delivers OSI and OMNIpoint 1 compliant management..... 

- OMNIpoint 1 compliant Alarms and Event Log was released in TeMIP v1.0
  based on POLYCENTER Framework in December 1992.

- OMNIpoint 1 compliant trouble ticketing will be included in TeMIP v1.1 now
  in field test and will be released later this year.

- An OSI Access Module using IS CMIP through the XMP/XOM interface is currently 
  under development and will be available later this year.  It will provide 
  access to all OMNIpoint objects through a GDMO compiler and will integrate 
  with the POLYCENTER Framework.

- The DME API's are already implemented by Digital: 
    - XMP is available today for both U*IX and VMS, and will soon be provided 
      in the POLYCENTER Framework (the basis for TeMIP).

    - CORBA API is already available from Digital (ACA Services) on 9 platforms
      and has been prototyped on the POLYCENTER Framework.

    - Digital is committed to provide a DME compliant product within
      6 months of DME General Availability from OSF.



From:	US1RMC::"[email protected]" "Lisa Phifer"  1-APR-1993 15:50:57.58
To:	[email protected] (OSITC)
CC:	
Subj:	ASCII Text File


  




INCORPORATING OSI MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY 
INTO THE MARKETPLACE


L. Phifer and P. Brusil


Bell Communications Research, 331 Newman Springs Road, Red 
Bank, New Jersey, 07701-7020, USA


The MITRE Corporation (LOA), 35 Brackenbury Lane, Beverly, 
Massachusetts, 01915-3821, USA



Abstract
Mature ISO/CCITT system management standards and accompanying 
internationally accepted implementation and testing 
specifications have set the stage for wide spread introduction 
of OSI management technology into the marketplace. Procurement 
recommendations for several organizations and countries are 
adding impetus to the marketplace. Since its inception, many 
users and vendors have been committed to OSI systems 
management technology to provide a major piece of their 
strategic management solution. Accordingly, such users and 
vendors should now turn their attention towards orderly 
deployment of this technology into management environments 
currently dominated by proprietary management products. This 
paper examines the strengths of OSI systems management 
technology and indicates areas in which OSI management should 
be critically considered as part of the overall management 
solution. The paper assumes that OSI management technology 
must coexist with other management solutions, cooperating with 
and complementing other technologies. This paper identifies 
the criteria and conditions under which it makes best business 
sense to introduce OSI management technology.


Keyword Codes: K.6.0; K.6.4
Keywords: Management of Computing and Information Systems, 
General; System Management;




1. INTRODUCTION


Over the past decade, several industry-agreed management 
approaches have been developed. All these approaches, while 
defined fairly independently of each other, were developed to 
overcome common problems attendant with traditional management 
solutions. Such problems arose from the functional model 
approaches adopted by earlier, often proprietary, management 
solutions. In such earlier functional model approaches, the 
management protocol typically included a wide and ever growing 
variety of message types. Managing new resource types, or 
incorporating new management functionality, often required 
adding new message types to such a protocol.

Due to this common heritage, more recently-developed 
management approaches all have somewhat similar conceptual 
philosophies, and all have a certain amount of functionality 
and applicability in common. For example, recent management 
approaches are not based on a functional model, but rather 
have adopted the fundamental concept of an object model. An 
object model permits a small, well-defined number of 
operations to be performed on all managed resources. Protocols 
which utilize the object-oriented paradigm are designed to 
foster extensibility.

Today, three "object-oriented" management approaches have 
emerged with a broad base of industry support. Management 
protocols and objects developed by the Internet Engineering 
Task Force have focused primarily on management of TCP/IP-
based networks. Object request broker technology developed by 
the Object Management Group (OMG) provides support for 
distributed client/server applications in a homogenous 
environment. OSI systems management developed by the ISO/CCITT 
community was designed with a broad range of resources and 
capabilities in mind, and can therefore span management of all 
kinds of technology resources in both OSI networks and non-OSI 
environments.

In light of the similarities among alternative contemporary 
management approaches, this paper focuses on the strengths and 
appropriate uses of OSI management technology. This discussion 
may be considered by network administrators and management 
system vendors as they make their own independent 
determination of how best to incorporate OSI management 
technology into their plans, products and procurements. 

Section 2 of this paper begins with an overview of the OSI 
systems management model, its key components, and supporting 
activities, services, and tools. Some of the strengths of OSI 
management technology are presented in section 3.  Section 4 
identifies environments within which deployment and 
integration of this technology into to overall management 
solution may be best suited.



2. OVERVIEW OF OSI MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY


The OSI Systems Management Model described in CCITT X.701 
(ISO/IEC 10040) [1] defines management as interaction between 
managing and managed systems. System administrators, network 
operators, and other end users interface with management 
applications to monitor, manipulate, and control managed 
resources. Managed resources are made visible to systems 
management as managed objects (abstract definitions that 
define the syntax and semantics relevant to management). For 
example, a network operator might configure a transport 
connection by using a management application to set values 
associated with a "transportConnection" managed object. In 
this example, the management application is taking on a 
manager role, sending a message to request the management 
operation (configure a connection). The system that receives 
this request is said to be taking on the agent role, and is 
responsible for interfacing with the managed resource to carry 
out and respond to the management operation. Many managed 
objects are defined to emit notifications when events occur 
pertaining to the managed resource (for example, a connection 
failure). When a notification occurs, the agent forwards event 
reports to the managing system or logs them locally, depending 
on configurable parameters set by the manager. This model is 
shown in Figure 1 below.

<the traditional figure from 10040, basically>

Figure 1. OSI Systems Management Model

There are several key components to this model.

Managed Objects encapsulate the attributes, operations, 
notifications, and behavior which represent resource 
properties made visible to management. In the OSI management 
information model [2], all managed resources that have the 
same properties are considered members of a common object 
class. A managed object class is defined using templates and 
ASN.1 syntax (the abstract data notation commonly used to 
define OSI protocols). This approach allows management 
applications to deal with many different resources through 
their common object class definition. For example, each 
vendor offers a different (usually proprietary) interface to 
configure networking software. Using OSI management, a 
management application can use the same standard managed 
object to perform this operation, avoiding the need to 
customize for each vendor interface. Common definitions may 
be reused in multiple managed object classes, so that common 
management applications can be developed to perform the same 
operation on many different kinds of resources which share 
the same properties.

Management Communication provides the protocol interface 
between the managing and managed systems. The OSI Common 
Management Information Service (CMIS) [3] defines the common 
procedures and parameters that can be used by management 
applications on all managed objects. CMIS includes the 
simple services found in other management approaches: a 
"get" service that can be used to retrieve management 
information, and a "set" service that can be used to 
configure managed resources. Unlike other management 
technologies, CMIS also defines "create" and "delete" 
services that can be used to invoke or discard instances of 
managed objects (for example, to update inventory when new 
equipment is added to or removed from an existing network), 
and an "action" service that can be customized to request 
any other type of management operation (for example, 
requesting an X.25 connection reset). Finally, CMIS includes 
reliable "event report" services that can be used to notify 
management applications of asynchronous events occurring 
about the managed resource. These common CMIS services can 
be supported by many different protocol stacks, as 
appropriate for the management environment. In an OSI 
network, CMIS is supported by the Common Management 
Information Protocol (CMIP) [4] over two common OSI 
application layer protocols for application association 
control and remote request/reply operations. Other defined 
protocol stacks include CMIP over LLC [17] and CMIP over 
TCP/IP using RFC 1006 [16] (replaces the earlier, now-
deprecated approach identified by RFC 1189).

System Management Functions go beyond basic management 
communication to provide standard definitions for common 
management capabilities and control mechanisms that can be 
used by many management applications. System Management 
Functions build on services offered by CMIS to provide 
value-added functionality. For example, the State Management 
Function [5] defines several status variables that can be 
included in any managed object definition, allowing a single 
management application to be developed to monitor and 
control the status of any managed resource. Other functions 
define common event report formats, or "support managed 
objects" which control the management service itself. OSI 
management technology is unique among contemporary 
management approaches in defining such common capabilities 
and control mechanisms, thereby avoiding emergence or 
proliferation of application- and vendor-specific methods 
that provide functionally-comparable, but divergent or 
redundant, features. The set of System Management Functions 
is open-ended, allowing new, feature-rich functions to be 
developed over time as management applications become more 
sophisticated, as new requirements surface, and as the 
industry gains experience with this technology.

Figure 2 depicts a single management system, showing the 
relationship between these major components of the OSI 
management model.

<a figure that shows alternative transports, CMIP/CMIS, all 
existing SMFs>

Figure 2. Management System Model

All of the features shown in Figure 2 are defined in existing, 
stable ISO/CCITT standards and recommendations. 
Internationally-agreed profiles developed by users and vendors 
help to ensure that implementations of these standards will 
interoperate with each other in a multi-vendor management 
environment.   These profiles identify combinations of 
standards which should be implemented together, select options 
within those base standards, establish pragmatic limits, and 
clarify how differences in vendor implementation are to be 
handled without error. For example, a vendor offering CMIP for 
an OSI network can choose between two "flavors": basic 
management communication or enhanced management communication. 
These two flavors interoperate, at the basic level of 
functionality, ensuring that all CMIP implementations will be 
able to communicate with each other. These CMIP profiles were 
finalized in mid-1992 and provide a highly-stable foundation 
for OSI management. Additional draft function profiles are 
sufficiently stable to serve as the basis for implementation.

In order to communicate in a meaningful way, there must be 
agreement on the managed objects as well as the management 
protocol. Collections of standardized managed object class 
definitions are commonly referred to as "MIBs" (Management 
Information Bases). Many stable, standard MIBs are currently 
available to manage a wide variety of managed resources, 
including OSI lower layers [6-9], telecommunications networks 
[10-12], local area networks [13], security services [18], and 
even computing system resources [14]. Because the OSI 
management information model allows existing classes to be 
refined into new classes, new standard MIBs tend to build on 
existing MIBs, sharing many common properties and avoiding the 
wasted effort and redefinition associated with non-object-
oriented definitions. This reuse will tend to preserve 
existing investment in management applications.

In addition to base standards, profiles, and MIBs, OSI 
management offers a number of infrastructure features which 
assist in deployment of this technology. These include:

Conformance and Interoperability Test Tools and Services: to 
help ensure that products faithfully implement the features 
they claim to support, and to help ensure useful 
interoperation in multi-vendor management environment.

Application Programming Interfaces: to provide not only a 
common abstract service interface (CMIS), but also a 
consistent programming language interface which allows 
management application portability.

Managed Object Catalog and Registration Services: to 
facilitate procurement, implementation, and definition of 
new managed objects.

Open Management Roadmap: represents a working arrangement 
among numerous standards-making bodies, user groups, and 
consortia to support specified sets of base standards, 
profiles, APIs, test tools, and procurement guides which 
function as a common basis for implementation of OSI 
management technology. This helps to ensure that the 
separate piece parts provided by each Roadmap participant 
will all interwork together to form a composite, total 
systems management solution intended to meet user 
requirements. The first of these sets, called OMNIPoint 1, 
was published in August 1992.

OSI management technology deployment has been slow. Many 
factors have contributed to this, including the persistence of 
legacy management systems in a soft economy, competition from 
other standard and proprietary management technologies on the 
market, the delayed emergence of consistent stable OSI 
management standards (no longer a factor), and the limited 
availability of OSI-based agents to be managed (this factor 
should diminish over time). As of mid-1992, IBM SNA/NetView 
continues to be the dominant management technology ($1040 
million), trailed by other proprietary technology ($690 
million) and standard management technologies like Internet 
management ($350 million) and OSI management ($20 million) 
[15]. Insight Research Corporation predicts that protocol 
converters and parallel stacks will be offered over the next 
2-5 years, culminating in a $4.6 billion network management 
market split 2:1.5:1 between SNA, OSI, and Internet 
technologies [15]. Growth of the OSI management market can be 
attributed partly to stimulation provided by major user groups 
in the US [19, 20], Europe [21], and the Far East [22]. As 
noted in the Insight report, "it is clear that the vendor that 
manages a customer's enterprise network will have a 
competitive advantage and thus maintain a good deal of account 
control [and] there is a substantial market for vendors to 
control." Given this, it seems wise to consider carefully 
strengths that each management technology has to offer.



3. OSI MANAGEMENT STRENGTHS


There are numerous management problems for which OSI 
management technology may be considered as the technology of 
choice. The following paragraphs describe the major strengths 
of OSI management technology, and identify the criteria and 
conditions under which it is advantageous to introduce and to 
integrate OSI management technology into the overall 
management solution.

Aggregate Cost Savings for Application Developers:
OSI management technologies will provide a set of common, 
sophisticated tools (most notably the system management 
functions described previously) which go beyond the basic, 
raw management communication services offered by other 
management technologies. Since such tools will be 
implemented and tested once (by the OSI management vendor) 
rather than by each management applications vendor, there is 
cumulative downward pressure on the total cost of the OSI-
based management system (i.e., the aggregate cost of 
management application programs and management communication 
services).

Tailorable Management Operations:
OSI management standards have been bundled into standard 
packages (called profiles) which allow significant 
management implementation flexibility. When needed, a basic 
management communication profile can be used to support only 
a simple set of management operations (akin to simple 
Internet solutions). In other situations, the enhanced 
management communication profile might be used to offer a 
richer set of management operations. Additional system 
management function profiles are available to support 
broader management capabilities such as alarm reporting, or 
management controls for event reporting and logging. This 
small, carefully-chosen set of well-understood profiles 
strikes a balance between flexibility (scaled solutions to 
reduce cost) and minimizing the possible permutations (to 
facilitate interoperation, implementation, and procurement).

Advanced Application Functionality:
Unlike other management approaches, OSI management 
technology includes a set of standard tools to support 
common management application needs such as reporting of 
status and fault information. These basic standard tools 
enable development of common applications which can manage 
any resource. For example, OSI management includes an alarm 
report which uses the same message format for any fault; 
Internet management requires custom application code to deal 
with enterprise-specific trap messages; OMG request brokers 
do not support asynchronous event signaling at all. OSI 
management technology also includes more advanced standard 
tools that can be used in multi-vendor environments to 
support more sophisticated management applications, such as 
resource performance monitoring, remote diagnostic test 
execution, and resource usage accounting. Most applications 
which truly manage (i.e., control rather than simply monitor 
resources) require this level of advanced functionality.

Support For Management Between Administrative Domains:
OSI management technology includes many features which lend 
themselves to use between administrative domains, including 
global X.500-based naming of managed resources, manager to 
manager communication (through use of dual manager/agent 
roles), and mechanisms to negotiate and share knowledge 
about the management capabilities and objects implemented in 
the different management systems that wish to interoperate. 
Other management technologies currently rely on locally-
unique naming and strict manager/agent or client/server 
roles, and provide no standardized mechanisms for 
negotiation or exchange of management capabilities.

Real Time Control of Management:
OSI management is an extremely important technology in 
situations where management systems must be able to control 
their own capabilities. Specifically, in addition to being 
able to manage and control remote resources and services, 
OSI management includes common, consistent interfaces and 
controls for enabling/disabling management services such as 
event distribution, remote test execution, different types 
of performance monitoring, probes, and security audit 
trails. By offering real-time management controls as 
standard tools, devices sold by different vendors can be 
managed by a single management system without requiring 
customization. Without standard tools, control of management 
in a multi-vendor environment may not be possible at all, or 
may require costly custom extensions to the management 
system, the managed device, or both.

Flexible Distribution of Management Functionality:
Other management approaches support only a fixed 
distribution of management functionality which places the 
processing burden exclusively on the manager in order to 
simplify the agent and therefore the managed device.  OSI 
management can be deployed in this simple agent manner, but 
has been designed with greater flexibility. In some 
situations, it is useful, perhaps even crucial, to 
distribute management functionality in other ways. Examples 
include hierarchical management (where an agent can be an 
element management system), management of powerful devices 
(such as computing systems and telephone switching systems), 
and automated management (where the managed device is 
capable of self-management to some extent, and remote  
management is the exception rather than the rule). OSI 
management technology provides the network designer with the 
ability to distribute management functionality as best suits 
his or her business needs, management policies, and/or 
security policies.

Real Time Problem Detection:
In certain environments and situations, resource monitoring 
and accompanying control actions are extremely time-critical 
and are required to stop the spread of faults or security 
breeches, to prevent or isolate significant resource 
catastrophes, and/or to constrain or reduce the costs of 
resource repairs. Powerful OSI management event reporting 
and control mechanisms are available for real time 
announcement of resource problems or resource changes. These 
tools include user-settable criteria to trigger the 
detection and reporting of problems. Such event reporting 
mechanisms are especially desirable in situations where low 
processing or communication bandwidth is available for 
resource management. Internet management products often use 
continual or directed polling to identify problems. This 
approach sometimes results in delayed detection of problems, 
missed detection of intermittent problems leading to 
sustained failure, or increased resource usage. OSI 
management has the flexibility to be deployed in either a 
polling mode or an event-driven mode, as appropriate for the 
situation.

Efficient Search and Selection Tools:
In many situations, management applications need to apply 
operations on ad hoc sets of resources meeting specified 
criteria (e.g., disconnect from a specified communications 
service provider all routers that display lengthy queues). 
In other cases, management applications often need to search 
through the managed network or system to find management 
information meeting specified criteria (e.g., a list of all 
network attachment boards that have been in service for a 
specified period of time or have been fielded before a 
specified date, and have had a large number of service calls 
and are not installed in workstations from a specified 
manufacturer). OSI management provides very powerful so-
called "scoping and filtering" constructs to support such 
application needs. These constructs allow conditions 
affecting a management operation to be evaluated locally by 
the agent system.  Other management approaches require the 
manager to first retrieve all relevant data from the agent, 
evaluate conditions remotely at the manager system, and then 
request the operation using a separate message for each 
selected object. OSI scoping and filtering constructs allow 
sophisticated management operations to be accomplished in a 
single manager/agent interaction, relieving the management 
application from detailed record keeping associated with 
less powerful tools. Scoping and filtering can also be used 
to reduce the network bandwidth required to accomplish 
complex management operations. By having such sorting tools 
implemented once and making them generally available to all 
management applications, the costs of many management 
applications is reduced, and therefore the cost of the total 
management system is reduced.

Highly Reliable Management Operations:
OSI management technology should be seriously considered 
when it is necessary to have efficient, reliable management 
operations with high integrity. OSI management operations 
can be exchanged via connection-oriented communication 
services that detect loss of management message exchange, 
prevent replicated execution of the same management 
operations, and preserve the order by which management 
operations were requested to be performed. Such reliability 
is especially important when management is engaged in 
critical control activities wherein lost control actions, 
repeated control actions, or incorrectly ordered control 
actions can have catastrophic consequences to the system of 
resources being managed. (When deployed in a local area 
network environment where the reliability provided by a 
connection is not needed, OSI management can also be used in 
a connectionless mode.)

Reusable and Extensible Management Applications:
OSI management technology allows easy MIB expansion without 
requiring management application code changes. This 
extensibility is accomplished through a technique known as 
"allomorphism". New features are simply added to existing 
MIBs, generating new, refined object classes that are said 
to be "compatible" with pre-existing classes. This technique 
allows a new resource to be managed as though it were an 
existing, known resource. Allomorphism facilitates vendor 
extension and introduction of new versions in a controlled 
manner. Management applications which are designed to take 
advantage of this technique may be able to simultaneously 
manage both new and old versions of a given device without 
modification, or may be able to make use of vendor 
extensions without inhibiting interoperability.

Alternative Configurations:
Different profiles of OSI management capabilities allow 
different sizes of management implementations to be built to 
match the management situations at hand. Small (20 KB) 
implementations of just the simple profile of basic 
management operations, or of the IEEE 802.1b OSI management 
stack [17], can be used in situations where extremely 
limited computational/memory resources are available to 
support management. More complex management implementations 
need only be used in situations where availability of 
computational/memory resources are not at a premium. In 
addition, OSI management technology can also be deployed 
over alternative transports, in order to take advantage of 
backbone networks already in place.



4. TARGET OSI MANAGEMENT ENVIRONMENTS


The following paragraphs highlight some of the environments in 
which OSI management technologies may be best suited. This 
discussion is not intended to preclude other management 
technologies that may also be applicable, or to imply that OSI 
management is only applicable to the areas identified here. 
(In fact, the general approach used by OSI management allows 
this technology to be used to manage any information 
technology, resource, service, or environment.) Rather, the 
discussion is intended to provide guidance regarding areas in 
which OSI technology is commonly considered a major part of 
the overall management solution.

Management of OSI Applications and Networks:
It is perhaps obvious that OSI management technology is 
expected to be used to managed OSI stacks and OSI 
applications such as X.400 Message Handling, X.500 Directory 
Service, and the like. An analogy can be drawn to Internet 
management, which is commonly used to manage TCP/IP stacks 
and associated applications.

Management of Telecommunications Networks and Services:
The telecommunications industry has strongly embraced OSI 
management technology. CCITT Recommendations use OSI 
management protocols for management communication between 
operations systems and network elements or mediation 
devices; this is known as the "q3" interface. Most CCITT 
management information models have been developed using the 
OSI information model, taking advantage of sophisticated 
system management functions offered for fault, performance, 
and accounting to manage transmission technologies such as 
synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) [12].

Manager of Managers:
OSI management technology is well-suited for use in 
hierarchical management environments, where greater 
complexity and distribution of management functionality is 
required. For example, OSI management technology might be 
used by a network control system to interact with element 
management systems. Element management systems may interact 
with the actual managed devices using a mixture of 
management protocols (OSI, Internet, request broker RPC, 
proprietary) which are native to the local environment.

Management of Heterogeneous Networked Systems:
Information modeling of system resources such as printers, 
hosts, users, operating systems, and the like is currently 
underway in several standards bodies (e.g., IEEE POSIX) and 
consortia (e.g., Open Software Foundation, Unix 
International). To date, this work has been based on the OSI 
management information model. There has been a recent shift 
in emphasis towards the OMG Common Object Request Broker 
Architecture (CORBA) model for use in systems management, 
primarily in a homogenous environment where a single object 
request broker would exist. OSI management is expected to 
remain a significant factor in management of networked 
systems in a heterogeneous environment.

Secure Management Environments:
Most industry-agreed management technologies suffer somewhat 
from lack of security features, and OSI management 
technology is not exempt from this problem. However, OSI 
management technology is well-positioned to take advantage 
of advances made in OSI network security technologies, and 
may therefore be viewed as a more viable management solution 
in environments which require a high degree of management 
security.  For example, NATO and the US Department of 
Defense have chosen OSI technology to manage aspects of 
security services and mechanisms used in networks (e.g., the 
DOD Secure Data Network Systems program, work underway in 
IEEE 802.10).

Enterprise Management:
Many organizations (private industry, public service 
providers, government entities, branches of the military, 
etc.) have used OSI management in modeling end-to-end 
business flows and enterprise-wide management. Typically, 
these organizations make use of whatever standardized 
management capabilities exist, supplementing them with 
enterprise extensions to meet specific business needs. This 
process represents significant investment in information and 
process modeling, and may therefore be a business driver for 
deployment of OSI management technologies.

Management of Large, Highly-Volatile Environments:
Many of the strengths of OSI management technology described 
previously lend themselves to deployment in management 
environments which are very large (many resources and 
devices to be managed, perhaps using hierarchical management 
domains), especially where control and not just simple 
monitoring is essential. Additionally, the strengths of OSI 
management technology lend themselves to deployment in 
management environments that are very volatile (numerous or 
frequent changes occurring in management topology, addition 
or deletion of managed devices, etc.), such as in commercial 
mobile phone or tactical military environments.

Possible OSI management environments are expanding as MIBs 
which have been in the development process are now being 
published at an explosive rate.  These new MIBs span a large 
number of diverse resources such as electronic mail services, 
computer operating systems, telecommunications transmission 
equipment, distributed computing environments, network 
security services, print management services, data 
communications devices, and enterprise management services.  
Public MIB availability is key to successful deployment of any 
open management technology.



5. SUMMARY


Like other contemporary management technologies, OSI 
management has been designed to solve traditional management 
problems. However, OSI management's heavy reliance on object 
orientation positions this technology to provide tremendous 
flexibility with minimal incremental costs. Delayed completion 
of OSI management standards can be attributed partially to the 
time spent architecting a comprehensive management model that 
is tailorable, simple to extend, provides for flexible 
distribution of functionality, and maximizes reuse. These 
characteristics facilitate deployment of products that are 
easily scaled  (up or down) or otherwise adaptable to evolve 
with changing user needs.

OSI management technology has the flexibility to be used in 
the simple-agent mode prevalent in other popular approaches, 
as well as to support more sophisticated needs that are now 
beginning to emerge as experience with early management 
solutions reveal additional pressing requirements. Numerous 
environments can benefit from the strengths of OSI management.  
Target environments span a broad range of resource domains, 
but all exhibit a common need for sophisticated, flexible 
management solutions. 

The cost of management flexibility had been the subject of 
considerable scrutiny during the development of OSI management 
technology.  The solutions which have emerged strike a unique 
balance between malleability and cost, where cost containment 
focuses on the cost of the total management system, including 
the cost of management applications that ride atop OSI 
management technology. This approach facilitates centralized 
implementation of many common management tools that don't need 
to be re-implemented  in each and every management 
application. OSI management technology also preserves 
investment in management applications by providing a stable 
environment in which new functions, new resources, and 
extensions can be added easily and dynamically discovered. 

User demand for OSI management technology is increasing world-
wide [19-22]. Stable, complete, and consistent standards, 
profiles, and infrastructure services are now available [1-
14]. These enabling factors are likely to stimulate vendor 
deployment of OSI-based management products to meet market 
demand, estimated to reach $1.4 billion by 1996 [15].  The 
strengths and target environments explored in this paper are 
intended to provide valuable insight for those organizations 
and individuals who now face the challenge of incorporating 
OSI management technology into the marketplace.



6. REFERENCES


1.	CCITT Recommendation X.701 (1992) | ISO/IEC 10040: 1992, 
	Information Technology - Open Systems Interconnection - 
Systems 
	management  overview.

2.	CCITT Recommendation X.720 (1992) | ISO/IEC 10165-1: 
1992, 
	Information Technology - Open Systems Interconnection - 
Structure of 
	management information: Management information model.

3.	ISO/IEC 9695: 1991, Information Technology - Open 
Systems 
	Interconnection - Common Management Information Service 
	Definition. CCITT Recommendation X.710 (1991), Common 
	Management Information Service Definition for CCITT 
applications - 
	General concepts.

4.	CCITT Recommendation X.711 | ISO/IEC 9596-1: 1991 (E), 
Information 
	Technology - Open Systems Interconnection - Common 
Management 
	Information Protocol Specification - Part 1: 
Specification, Edition 2.

5.	CCITT Recommendation X.731 | ISO/IEC 10164-2: 
Information 
	Technology - Open Systems Interconnection - Systems 
Management - 
	Part 2: State Management Function, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC21 
N6356, 
	October 15,1991.

6.	ISO/IEC 10737-1: 1992, Information Technology - 
Telecommunications 
	and Information Exchange between Systems - Elements of 
	Management Information Relating to OSI Transport Layer 
Standards.

7.	ISO/IEC 10733: 1992, Information Technology - 
Telecommunications 
	and Information Exchange between Systems - Elements of 
	Management Information Relating to OSI Network Layer 
Standards.
 
8.	ISO/IEC 10589: 1992, Information Technology - 
Telecommunications 
	and Information Exchange between Systems - IS-IS Routing 
Protocol 
	Specification.

9.	CCITT Recommendation X.721 (1992) | ISO/IEC 10165-2: 
1992, 
	Information Technology - Open Systems Interconnection - 
Structure of 
	management information: Definition of management 
information.

10.	Network Management Forum: Forum 006, Forum Library - 
Volume 4: 
	OMNIPoint 1 Definitions, Issue 1.0, August 1992.

11.	CCITT Recommendation M.3100, Generic Network Information 
Model, 
	1992.

12.	CCITT Recommendation G.774, SDH Management Information 
Model 
	for the Network Element View, 1992.

13.	IEEE P802.3K, CSMA/CD Access Method & Physical Layer 
	Specifications, Layer Management for Hub Devices.

14.	NIST Special Publication SP 500-202, Stable 
Implementation 
	Agreements for Open Systems Interconnection Protocols, 
Version 5, 
	Edition 1, December 1991, including change pages from 
March 1992 and 
	June 1992 Open Systems Environment Implementors' 
Workshop 
	(OIW).

15.	"Worldwide OSI Network Management Still A Few Years 
Away", Open 
	Systems Communication, Transmission #130, Phillips 
Publishing, 
	July 27, 1992.

16.	RFC 1006, ISO Transport Services on Top of the TCP: 
Version 3, Rose, 
	M.T.; Cass, D.E., May 1987.

17.	IEEE 802.1B, LAN/MAN Management, January 27, 1992.

18.	CCITT Recommendation X.740 (1992) | ISO/IEC 10164-8: 
1992, 
	Information Technology - Open Systems Interconnection - 
Systems 
	Management - Part 8: Security Audit Trail Function, 
ISO/IEC 
	JTC1/SC21 N7039, June 2,1992.

19.	US Department of Commerce, Version 1, Government Network
	Management Profile (GNMP), Federal Information 
Processing 
	Standard 179, November 30, 1992.

20.	US Department of Defense, Military Standard: Network 
Management 
	for DoD Communications, MIL-STD-2045-38000, 17 December 
1992.

21.	UK CCTA, GOSIP OSI Management Subprofile 4.1, Supplier 
Set and 
	Purchaser Set, January, 1993.

22.	Japan Inter-Ministerial Council of Secretary Generals of 
all Ministries, 
	Standard for Introduction and Utilization of Open 
Systems 
	Interconnection (OSI) in the Government, December 9, 
1991.



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