Emperative, Inc. software provides point-and-click provisioning for optical nets:
Article on new provider of rapid provisioning:
eetimes.com
By Craig Matsumoto
EE Times
(02/05/01, 11:21 a.m. EST) SAN MATEO, Calif. — A software company is tackling the thorny problem of building connections in an optical network, providing the "point-and-click" process that service providers and equipment vendors are striving for. Emperative Inc. (Waltham, Mass.), which already has developed its ProvEn provisioning software for cable and digital subscriber line networks, this week will release its ProvEn Optical software module. Emperative's software uses a Java state machine to juggle the various steps of the provisioning process.
Redback Networks Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) and Ciena Corp. (Linthicum, Md.) will be the first vendors whose equipment is supported by the software, with Nortel Networks a likely future candidate, Emperative officials said.
The creation or destruction of a connection — a process known as "provisioning" — can take weeks to do manually or several hours with software. Service providers are looking to slash provisioning times to just minutes, and equipment vendors are trying to accommodate them by developing their own point-and-click provisioning software.
But those efforts are in an embryonic stage, said Michael Allen, an analyst with the Aberdeen Group (Minneapolis).
"Nobody is close to being able to do [point-and-click provisioning]," he said. "If they were, we wouldn't be having so many troubles with DSL. Even voice lines aren't that easy to provision."
In typical software-based provisioning, connections are created using software scripts, which are sent to each node along a desired network path. If all goes well, those nodes tune themselves according to the scripts, and one long connection gets created.
However, it's difficult to tell when or why particular scripts fail, said Craig Weich, vice president of product management for Emperative. New scripts are transmitted repeatedly on a trial-and-error basis until a particular combination works.
The process takes around 20 hours, Weich said — an improvement over the manual method, where technicians physically wire up each node, but still far from what service providers want.
In scanning the network, the Emperative software keeps track of each node's state — whether a particular piece of equipment is ready to accept a new connection, for example. This way, the software can compensate for any dependencies between particular nodes, Weich said. When the software hits a dead end, the model backtracks and tries a different path through the network.
But optical networks tend to be built from several vendors' equipment, and ProvEn Optical needs to be tuned for each brand of box. Hardware requirements differ among systems — some have Corba-compliant ports, while others use the older TL/1 connections — and each system's firmware varies as well.
Different scripts
The situation is similar to the varying types of processors that support Windows, Allen said. "Although the basic commands are pretty much the same, there are some unique quirks to each one in the software, and sometimes you'll have a foul-up," he said. "Although [networking-equipment vendors] adhere to industry standards, the standards are broad enough that you do need different scripts."
Altering ProvEn to work with a particular equipment brand takes one month, Weich said. That time frame is short enough for Emperative to add vendors on a case-by-case basis, depending on what's requested by carriers.
Emperative this week will announce support for Redback and Ciena equipment. The company also plans to develop support for Nortel equipment, since Nortel customer GiantLoop Network Inc. (Waltham, Mass.) has shown interest in ProvEn, Weich said.
Allen of the Aberdeen group said he hasn't seen any of Emperative's software working in live situations, but he believes the company has a good theoretical grasp of provisioning. He noted that the complexity of optical networks goes beyond the heterogeneous equipment types, however.
Provisioning also involves getting the new connection properly recording in billing systems, customer service databases and other back-office software.
ProvEn Optical sells for $200,000 and up.
I seem to recall that Sycamore Networks is working on something similar. Does anyone see a leader in this "Point & Click Provisioning" realm?
Just wondering, Ray :) |
