Lifecycle Service Manager
NetACE
White Paper
There's a lot of legacy equipment out
there! Can we integrate it into a Service
Orchestration environment?
Tired of tedious and expensive device
driver development and maintenance of
so-called multi-vendor service activation
systems?
Stuck in a bad relationship with your
NMS vendor?
NetACE - Lifecycle Service Management
Leveraging NetACE's Lifecycle Service & Device Management capabilities powered by unique «Model-driven Service Design», intuitive and simplified «Data Modeling Language», and «Vendor Agnostic & Device-Adapter-Free Architecture» makes the service provider’s operational environment much more agile. All this while moving away from hard-coded, rigid service structures and tedious device adapters (drivers) maintenance to reusable and rapidly editable at runtime service and device models. NetACE also facilitates accelerated time-to-market when introducing new services into their portfolio or deploying new device vendors. Operators significantly improve their responsiveness to business demands through a simple, network-aware service design approach (no programming skills or system upgrades required) and rapid cross-vendor service provisioning. For complete flexibility, product and service managers are able to add new service models to the NetACE at any time with no impact on the non-stop operation of the system. This translates into a sizable reduction of overheads throughout all network operations and completely liberates the operator from vendor lock-in.
Atrinet’s NetACE is designed to orchestrate the entire lifecycle of network services that span different vendors and technologies in a centralized and error-free manner (i.e. service design, service configuration, service planning, service activation, network resource optimization and allocation, runtime service
modification, service reconciliation from the network, service assurance, service performance monitoring and deletion). The end-to-end provisioning of network services or service chains is performed in a single and safe transaction across multiple silos using a unified service data model. Instantiation of network services from the NetACE catalog can either be requested by an operations engineer using the GUI or be triggered by 3rd party B/OSSs using programmable APIs thus achieving fully automated and optimized provisioning and control of a multi-vendor, multi-technology network environment.
NetACE is a model-driven NMS platform that provides service orchestration and automated network provisioning of physical and virtual multi-vendor Ethernet, IP and MPLS infrastructure as well as Firewalls, Load-balancers, Mobile Radio Base-stations, Microwave and other types of network equipment. NetACE also offers customizable Resource Management capabilities enabling centralized management of network resources and automatic policy-driven resource allocation, automatic cross-vendor Topology Discovery for building dynamic network maps and FCAPS functionality for any network device.
NetACE’s open northbound programmable APIs enable rapid and low cost integration with 3rd party service fulfillment tools, Inventory Management, Billing and CRM systems.
NetACE is a carrier grade network management platform, thus supports fully redundant and distributed multi-layer system topology with a load-sharing and realtime database replication mechanism, installed over a virtualization platform (VMs) and has the proven scalability of 100K NEs and 500K network services.
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NetACE – Lifecycle Service Orchestration & Automation
• Reduce order-to-cash times (by ~90%) through automation of end-to-end (and cross-vendor) service delivery.
• Significantly reduce the operational complexity and costs (by ~50%) by introducing new services and any network equipment in a simplified manner at runtime, without code modification, driver installations and upgrades.
• Improve operational efficiency (by 60%-80%) with assured inventory accuracy and automated cross-vendor provisioning of business and residential services.
• Avoid (or minimize) penalties for SLA violation through reducing MTTR and improving service uptime with ongoing cross-silo service assurance in near realtime.
• Reduce configuration errors (by 99%) by replacing manual error-prone configuration with automated cross-vendor, cross-technology service fulfilment processes.
• Eliminate the barrier to new service introductions caused by a variety of proprietary appliances from numerous vendors.
• Automate and centralize provisioning and control of tens of thousands of network elements of different vendors and types in realtime, over a distributed, multi-service and multi-vendor infrastructure. • Eliminate the management burden and expenses of the vendor-proprietary management tools thus
reducing the Total Cost of Ownership.
• Realize a clear migration path to SDN and NFV technologies and new competitive services.
NetACE value proposition
Model-driven Service Design approach
o
Achieve unrivalled operational agility by designing new or amending
existing service models at runtime, with no impact on the non-stop operation
of the system and without any code modifications.
o
Rapidly and at almost zero cost adjust to any future changes and business
requirements, even those which cannot yet be anticipated.
o
Reduce operational expenses through quick and intuitive design of new
services accomplished by in-house Network Engineers in a few hours or days.
o
Accelerate time-to-market by designing and introducing new services into
the Service Catalog in hours or days and not months.
o
Enable the highest level of automation across any physical and virtual layer
2-3 and layer 4 multi-vendor networks.
o
Design complex service models that enable operators to develop their own
differentiated network services providing business managers with the
freedom to create more services more quickly, by removing the current
barriers to new service introduction.
o
Introduce policy-driven business logic into a service model and consolidate
multiple resource managers.
Vendor-agnostic & Device-adapter-free Architecture
o
Reduce operational and capital expenses through defining new device
vendors and new device types in 15 minutes via GUI-based tools instead of
tedious and expensive device driver development/maintenance and system
upgrades.
o
Shorten the time for rolling out completely new device vendors and device
types from 6-10 months (for device driver/pack development) to 15
minutes.
o
Totally eliminate the risk of vendor lock-in enabling plugging in any random
network device.
o
Achieve a new level of operational agility through rapidly defining any new
device vendor or device type into the system via GUI-based tools in 15
minutes, with no impact on the non-stop operation of the system and without
any code modifications.
Hybrid Automated Orchestration and Assurance
• End-to-end Lifecycle Service Orchestration across physical, virtual and
software-defined networks
• Orchestration of Virtual Network Functions (NFV)*
• Centralized and Policy-driven Network Resource Management
• Adaptable e2e Service Assurance in Hybrid Network
Model-driven and Device-adapter-free
Unique Model-driven service design approach and Device-adapter-free architecture enables the design of the most complex services for any network device or network function by the service provider (in-house) in a matter of hours, and run-time introduction of these completely new services to the Service Catalog. Atrinet has developed a simple and intuitive process of designing new services in NetACE using GUI-based Service Modeling Tool without the necessity for any
programming skills and system upgrades.
Programmable
Networks that allow business customers and/or their applications to order, add, change and flex connectivity services on demand are variously called "programmable networks," "user-defined networks" or "network as a service" (NaaS), but the principle is the same. They allow customers, through a portal, to logically define where they want connectivity services, their type and bandwidth. NetACE receives the service creation request and user parameters through its programmatic interfaces and automatically provisions the service, taking minutes to deploy what would once have taken a team of network engineers perhaps weeks to roll out.
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NetACE Architecture
• Tier 1 scalability: 100K NEs and 500K Services • Modular and Distributed System Architecture • Component Redundancy with Load Sharing
Getting started with NetACE on a «Brownfield» Network
High-level steps
1. Install NetACE on a Virtual Machine
2. Define via GUI-based Device Type Manager (DTM) the network equipment types/vendors you would like to manage and provision in NetACE (a process that takes less than 10 minutes per device type). 3. By specifying IP Address range(s) automatically discover the Topology Map and build a Device Level
Inventory of your multi-vendor network realizing full FCAPS functionality.
4. Create (model) the network services models using an intuitive Data Modeling Language and GUI-based Service Modeling Tool (note that service models are used for both Service Provisioning and for
Reconciling Existing Services from the Network).
5. Create (model) the network resource managers using the GUI-based Network Resource Editor and synchronize all the configured resources across your multivendor network into the NetACE. (A non-network related data can be also pushed to the Net-ACE DB)
6. Discover (reconcile) the existing services from the network and build a real-time Service Level Inventory (once discovered these network services will be managed and controlled as if they were provisioned via NetACE).
7. Mass-provision the custom-designed network services in a point-and-click manner via the NetACE GUI. 8. Integrate NetACE with existing (or new) 3rd party service fulfillment tools and CRM for automated
NetACE Applications
Net
ACE
Web-based Service Modeling Tool
™
and Catalog Manager
NetACE's flexible Model-driven Service Design Architecture enables the design different service types and run-time introduction of these completely new services to the Service Catalog in a matter of hours. Atrinet has developed a simple and intuitive process of designing a new service in NetACE using the GUI-based Service Modeling Tool and Catalog Manager that operates in a "drag-&-drop" manner.
This web-based tool facilitates the addition of new service models that are automatically saved to the Service Catalog as well as modification of existing ones. A service model can be defined using either the rapid point-and-click Service Creation graphical interface. This flexibility allows the design of a variety of models ranging from the simple service models to the complicated ones which require multiple conditionals, sophisticated network logic and validation by user-defined Resource Managers of different levels.
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Net
ACE
Multi-vendor Topology Discovery Engine™ (and GUI)
Provides an accurate view of your network by automatically discovering and tracking changes to your network’s equipment. NetACE’s automated discovery process completely eliminates preparatory manual data entry.
Adding a new Vendor in 15 minutes via GUI-based tool (Device-adaptor-free)
Adding a new and previously unknown device vendor to an NMS is usually a very expensive and time-consuming process which requires vendor intervention and driver development. The device may have non-standard MIBs that need to be mapped to the device properties, and therefore the relevant changes must be inserted in several places in the source code (e.g. OIDs must be hardcoded to show module information). These code changes inevitably mean the release of a new software version. In NetACE's, adding a new device type is speedily done within 15 minutes and never requires code modification or new driver installation. As part of the process, every new device type configuration is automatically stored into NetACE's database including all its OIDs as configured by the operator. Modification of the mapping between the device's MIBs and of the full set of properties controlled by NetACE is simply achieved via GUI-based Device Type Manager and in effect allows any device vendor to be automatically discovered, have a full set of managed properties, FCAPS and automated Service Lifecycle capabilities.
Net
ACE
Automated Lifecycle Service Management
Leveraging NetACE's Lifecycle Service Orchestration capabilities and flexible Model-driven Service Design Architecture, moving away from hard-coded, rigid service structures to re-usable and easy editable service models, will make the service provider’s operational environment much more agile and achieve accelerated time-to-market for introducing new services quickly into their portfolio. Operators will significantly improve their responsiveness to business demands through a simple and network-aware service design approach (no programming skills required), rapid cross-silo service deployment and, at the same time, reduce overheads associated with the network operations. Rapidly design, configure, activate, plan and allocate and validate network resources, discover, assure, control all types of custom-designed services over a complex multi-vendor network.
15
minutes
To model a new device type
2
hours
To model a new service
1
minute
To activate a new service
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NetACE – Lifecycle Service Orchestration & Automation
Design
Service
Configur
e Service
Activate
Service
Allocate
Network
Resources
Discover
Service
Assure
Service
Modify
Service
Delete
Service
NetACE
Service Lifecycle
Net
ACE
Real-Time Service Reconciliation Engine™
Discovery and reconciliation of services and network resources are key components of Lifecycle Service Automation, efficient network utilization and stability. NetACE enables operators to discover and manage not only all cross-silo services created via NetACE but also has a unique technique to discover the “brownfield” services configured via 3rdparty NMS/EMS systems, scripts and CLI. Any new network resource/object configured via
external service activation tool will be automatically synced and reflected in NetACE. This allows NetACE to co-exist with other network management systems in complex network management topologies.
Net
ACE
User-defined Resource Management™ and Automated Resource Allocation
NetACE, with its user-defined, network-aware Resource Management and Automated Resource Allocation system, reduces the need for administrators to be constantly engaged in endlessly repetitive routine work, allowing them to focus on the broader, higher-level tasks of managing their infrastructure. Sophisticated and custom-defined resource management and automated resource allocation system helps to avoid human errors while maintaining multiple customer datasheets outside the system and attempting to set the correct parameter during provisioning. It replaces the manual, error-prone and time-consuming resource lookup procedures with a smart and fully automated resource allocation process which is custom-defined and managed inside the NetACE’s database.
Net
ACE
Zero-touch Service Provisioning and Planning™
NetACE eliminates the complexity of circuit provisioning though zero-touch automated service activation. It enables pre-provisioning of services prior to deployment of physical network elements, automatic resource allocation and ensures that the configuration parameters necessary for service delivery are correctly applied.
Net
ACE
RESTful APIs
NetACE provides robust northbound RESTful APIs for automated network provisioning, customer management, billing, payment and ordering functionality, and integrates with the latest web technologies and OSS/BSS systems.
Net
ACE
Centralized Device Configuration Manager™ and Task Scheduler
Automatically backs up, restores, upgrades, and loads SW, etc. on all NEs across the entire network, regardless of vendor, using a consistent process and a single user interface. Simply design and allocate custom-build network tasks including, device upgrades, backups, configuration restores, etc.
Net
ACE
Centralized Fault Manager™
Minimizes network downtime and improves mean-time-to-repair by centralizing all alarms and traps of your multi-vendor network into a single unified view reducing potential risks and expenses through reduction of SLA violations.
Net
ACE
Security Manager and Event Logger™
Provides a centralized authentication and role-based access-control point into your system to improve security and reduce user administration costs while enabling group permission management to control who can access what and when and captures all user activities in real-time to facilitate security and tracking.
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Atrinet is a leading provider of multi-vendor Lifecycle Service Orchestration solutions to Communication Service Providers, Enterprise Customers and Network Equipment Vendors. Atrinet introduces
programmability and automated service delivery and operational agility to traditional and next generation networks, leveraging the power of NVF & SDN to reduce the operational costs and complexity.
Backed by Nokia Solutions & Networks, Atrinet provides Solutions & Services to over 70 customers worldwide.
About Atrinet
Partial list of our Customers
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Contact Us
Phone: +972-77-8066900 Email: [email protected]
www.atrinet.com
NetACE trademarks are all trademarks or registered trademarks of Atrinet Ltd.
All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. All rights reserved.
Copyright 2015.
