Work on the Ericsson telecom management architecture started a couple of years ago when the company revised their telecom management strategy.

Thomas Eriksson, from Ericsson's strategy and portfolio management, says: "We realized that our activities in telecom management could be improved to provide a better architectural overview of the area."

Telecom management is becoming increasingly important to Ericsson's customers, Eriksson says, and new technologies such as broadband and IP-transport increase the demands on it. "To succeed, and give our customers the support they need, we must have a genuine understanding of the whole area," he says. "And within Ericsson we have all the necessary experience and knowledge to build an architecture giving us that."



Johan Wallin, a system architect at Ericsson, has been involved in the architecture design since it started. A fundamental concept in the architecture is network domain, he explains. This is basically a set of related traffic nodes. An example of a network domain is the radio network. Above these domains resides the domain management layer, providing telecom management functionality for entire domains. Products such as OSS-RC (Operation and Support System - Radio and Core) belong to this layer. Above the domain management layer we find the service management layer and the network management layer, providing functionality covering the entire network, but from two different views (the service view and the resource view). And at the highest level, the architecture covers the integration to the business system of the operators.

This architecture, Wallin explains, includes a number of design rules that dictate the telecom management aspects of Ericsson's products. "By following the architecture we will make all Ericsson products look the same from a telecom management perspective," he says. "This will make it easier and faster for the customers to add new Ericsson products to their networks."

Ericsson uses this architecture for the company's own development to ensure that new products can be easily managed. For instance, when launching IPTV the company will also provide a corresponding management solution.

By sticking to the design rules, Wallin says, Ericsson will also reduce cost and lead time when developing new products.

Ericsson is also continuously expanding in the Telecom Management area through selected acquisitions and partnerships, Wallin explains, referring to the company Distocraft and its product NIQ as one example.

Benny Ritzén
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