TMN Management Systems using a Grid based agnostic middleware

In this paper we propose a new paradigm for Telecommunication Management Network (TMN) based on Service Oriented Architecture. Web-based Grid technologies, indeed, allow for combined flexibility at the level of information structuring and distribution, while leverage existing systems for managing both information and system complexity. On one hand, the Web technology frees human users from complicated management system interfaces, introducing a common and univocal management interface: the browser! On the other hand, the Grid technology enables to create cooperation between sophisticated management systems in order to manage their complexity. The improvement to TMN Management System proposed is a Grid based framework that transforms a layered TMN architecture into a simply manageable "flat" network. The framework provides a generalized TMN interface, based on Web Services that integrates protocol-dependent gateway systems. By using this interface, the TMN management application can be easily constructed to provide complex TMN management services to user via user-friendly Web browsers. On the basis of this framework, we have designed and implemented a prototype of TMN Manager system that validates our framework.