Deploying applications in a service provider environment creates rigorous demands on network infrastructure and network operations staff. While seemingly obvious, this observation is often lost on application vendors who attempt to migrate solutions from the corporate enterprise space to the public carrier space. Application vendors see service providers as easy targets for large purchase orders. However, these vendors often see their applications fail when they attempt to deploy them in complex network environments.

The service provider/carrier environment differs from that of an enterprise environment in three ways. First, a service provider's environment must scale to support extraordinarily large and complex networks—networks that often support thousands of demanding users. Second, the environment must be flexible enough to support rapidly changing technologies and the requirements of diverse groups of users. Third, the service provider's environment must be able to integrate diverse applications easily to help reduce operational cost and automate network management processes. If a performance management application is to meet these demands, it must use sophisticated data warehousing techniques in tandem with intelligent object modeling and graphical analysis tools in a common object request broker architecture (CORBA)–based environment.

Scalability

There are two key aspects to scalability requirements: the size of the networks being managed and the number of users. Service providers create extreme demands on both dimensions, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Scalability Requirements

Service provider networks scale to orders of magnitude larger than enterprise networks. A typical enterprise network may actively monitor tens or hundreds of network objects, including routers and switches. However, an enterprise network pales in comparison to that of a service provider, which monitors thousands to millions of objects. Large enterprise networks that resemble small service providers are the exception. Service providers have a wide range of technologies to manage, including SONET/SDH, ATM, IP, and frame relay. As a result of the complexity and fundamental importance of the services they carry, service providers dedicate abundant human and financial resources to monitor the performance of their network.

Within an enterprise, there are usually only a limited number of users who gather summary data and present it to their managers and executives. These users are usually centralized in an information technology (IT) functional group. Therefore, the total number of concurrent users in an enterprise system might range from one to two and may reach as many as ten. An enterprise that reaches 100 concurrent users is an exception. In contrast, hundreds of users access network performance information internally within a service provider's environment. Extranet applications deliver network performance information to customers and reach hundreds of thousands of users in multiple groups throughout the organization.

Flexibility

Enterprise IT departments have a uniform set of requirements for a performance management solution. However, service providers must take a wide range of relevant parties into consideration as a result of an extraordinarily large range of performance management needs, including network operations, planning and engineering, management and executives, marketing and sales, and customers. Consequently, the performance management solution that a service provider chooses to integrate with its environment must be correspondingly flexible.

The demands multiple groups create are diverse, as they include the need for both real-time and historical data analysis, along with the need to forecast performance trends for complete networks, subdomains, specific technologies, and the services of specific customers. With the rapid pace of change in technology and service provider organizations, these demands can be unpredictable.

On occasion, individual departments deploy solutions for a specific purpose without considering organization-wide requirements. While the chosen application may satisfy short-term requirements, frustration will mount over time as other departments within the organization inherit an application that is not designed to satisfy everyone's needs.

Integration

Deploying a solution that can satisfy the diverse range of users without increasing operational costs requires applications that can be readily integrated into the operational environment. Enterprise systems tend to be smaller and more centralized than their service provider counterparts, which makes them easier to monitor and allows for control of the less mission-critical applications they deliver during the deployment of a new solution.

The large number of systems within a service provider make the problem more complex. Service providers require seamless integration to deploy new services without manual intervention. Therefore, performance management systems must integrate and interwork with ordering and provisioning, billing, workflow, and trouble-administration systems, among others. It is essential that a performance management solution offer a clean, well-defined interface strategy based on accepted standards such as CORBA.

Conclusion

Service providers must deploy carrier-class solutions to meet their performance management requirements. Short-term solutions based upon enterprise applications are often not scalable or flexible, nor can they be easily integrated into increasingly complex environments.