Broader vs Deeper

The only real life is the collective life of the race; individual life has no existence except as an abstraction.”
Auguste Comte
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Starting with the network layer, each step up the management hierarchy gives a shallower representation of device data, but a broader view of device connectivity.

OSS abstract and connect

Or as described in an earlier post entitled “What an OSS shouldn’t do,” each subsequent step northbound does the same thing:

  • It abstracts – it only performs a sub-set of the lower layer’s functionality
  • It connects – it performs the task of connecting and managing a larger number of network elements than the lower layer

Conversely, each step down the management stack should produce a narrower (ie not so many device interconnections), but deeper field of view (ie a deeper level of information about the fewer devices).

This concept will be even more important when managing virtualised networks. As described in this post, virtualised networks have more “moving parts” to manage so it will be important that this complexity is abstracted before being presented to the OSS and BSS layers.

Will this actually occur? Let’s wait and see what the market produces in coming years.

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