Report on
APNOMS'99:
"Meeting the Challenge in End-to-End Service Management"
Young-Hyun Cho, Hiroshi Tokunaga, James W. Hong and Takafumi Chujo
APNOMS '99, the third Asia-Pacific
Network Operations and Management Symposium, was held September 1-3, 1999 in
Kyongju, Korea.This symposium, which follows the successful APNOMS'97 [1] held in Seoul, Korea and APNOMS'98 [2]held in
Sendai, Japan, was attended by 276 (the largest attendance in the history of APNOMS)
researchers, developers, service providers and vendors from 9 countries, 41 companies and
14 universities. Although APNOMS'99 strongly reflects the Asia-Pacific
region's activities on network and service management issues, it is becoming one of global
symposiums with participants from around the world.
The theme of this three-day symposium was "Meeting the Challenge in
End-to-End Service Management". Emergence of new information and networking
technologies and sophisticated customer requirements are changing the way network
operators and service providers do their businesses. Network operations and management has
become one of the most important issues in realizing successful businesses and providing
customer satisfactions. Further, in today's globally competitive market, network operators
and service providers are facing the challenge to realize end-to-end services, which are
faster, cheaper and more reliable. It was very timely that APNOMS'99 has
focused on this theme of meeting the challenge in end-to-end service management.
On the first day of the symposium, the APNOMS'99 participants enjoyed six
tutorials on the hottest topics in the area of network operations and management.
Elizabeth Adams (TeleManagement Forum)
gave a tutorial on "Becoming a Smooth Operator: Achieving End-to-end Automated
Service Management".
Salah Aidarous (NEC
America, USA) gave a tutorial on "IP Impact on the Evolution of Telecom
Networks".
Takeo Hamada (Fujitsu Labs. of America, USA) gave a tutorial on "Policy-Based
Management for Enterprise and Carrier IP Management - SNMP, COPS, LDAP, DEN and
Beyond".
Jong-Tae Park
(Kyungpook Univ., Korea) gave a tutorial on "Mobile Network Management - IMT 2000
Management".
Graham Chen (CiTR, Australia) gave a tutorial on "Integrated
Telecommunications Management Solutions".
Finally, Eric How (Lucent Technologies) gave a tutorial on "IP Network/Service
Management (IP VPN technology)".
All tutorials were well attended and there were a lot of interesting discussions
between the audience and speakers.
The second day started with welcoming messages from the general chair, Young-Hyun Cho
(Korea Telecom, Korea) and Dae-Young Lee (KICS Chair, Korea) were followed by two keynote
speeches by the distinguished invited speakers. Jong-Tae Lim (Ministry of Information and
Communication, Korea) delivered a speech on "Cyber Korea 21", describing how the
Korean government plans invest and provide support on the development of information and
communication technologies in Korea in the 21st century. Chu-Hwan Yim (ETRI, Korea) gave a
speech on "Multi-Protocol Label Switching Technology for Next Generation
Internet", emphasizing how this technology will play a key role in building the
infrastructure and in operating and managing the next generation Internet. The third day
also started with two keynote speeches. Sang-Hoon Lee (Korea Telecom, Korea) delivered a
speech on "Enhanced Networking Architecture and Its Impact on Telecommunications
Network Management" and Yukou Mochida (Fujitsu Labs, Japan) gave a speech on
"Towards User-Friendly Networks".
Following the keynote speeches on the second and third day of the symposium were the
technical presentations. At APNOMS'99, 40 high-quality technical papers
on the latest results of research and development were presented. Technical paper and
poster presentations covered topics on management platforms, service management,
CORBA-based management, TMN, models and architectures, Web-based management, mobility and
mobile network management, new technologies and trends, distributed systems management,
and IP network management.
The APNOMS'99 participants were also treated with two days of demo
exhibitions on the latest tools and systems on network operations and management. There
were 12 exhibitions by DSET, Fujitsu, HP Korea, Informix Korea, Korea Telecom, Lucent
Technologies, NEC, NTT-AT, NTT Comware, Oracle Korea, TCSI, and Vertel.
APNOMS'99 ended the three-day event with a very interesting distinguished
expert's panel on the topic of "How to Realize Seamless End-to-End Service
Management". Masayoshi Ejiri (Fujitsu, Japan) chaired the panel, and the panelists
were Salah Aidarous (NEC America, USA), Graham Chen (CiTR, Australia), Takeo Hamada
(Futjitsu Labs. of America, USA), Makoto Yoshida (NTT-AT, Japan), and Jong-Tae Park (KNU,
Korea). Salah started by describing the implications in the new integration technologies
for multi-service providers and multi-vendors environment. Graham emphasized the
importance of knowing and understanding the customers in order to satisfy their
requirements and needs. Takeo explained the importance of policy-based management for
end-to-end service management. Jong-Tae explained how new technologies can play as
enablers for the new paradigm of service management. Finally, Mac explained how to promote
the common industry-wide vision for realizing seamless end-to-end service management.
Overall, APNOMS'99, was a very successful symposium in terms of the
number of participants, the quality of technical and poster presentations, the number and
quality of exhibitions, the visionary keynote speeches, and finally lively discussions
between the attendees and presenters.
APNOMS 2000 is planned to be held in the fall of 2000 in Japan.
References
1 James W.
Hong, "Toward Global Network Management", Journal of Network and Systems
Management, Plenum Press, Vol. 6, No. 1, March 1998, pp. 91-93.
2 M. Ejiri,
J. T. Park, H. Okazaki, and J. W. Hong, "Managing the New Telecommunications
Paradigms: A Report on APNOMS'98", Journal of Network and Systems Management, Plenum
Press, Vol. 6, No. 4, December 1998, pp. 497-500.