The management paradigm shift: Challenges from element management to service management
Shervin Erfani, Victor B. Lawrence, Manu Malek · Bell Labs Technical Journal · 2002
In today's marketplace, the value of a network — whether public or private — is defined by the services it provides. This is a fundamental change from networks whose major value has been perceived as providing data communications. While operations support systems have served the needs of telecommunications providers for many years, major changes will be required in these systems to support this value shift. This issue of the Bell Labs Technical Journal, which emphasizes a management-paradigm-focused view of the network, provides a sample of many trends and challenges found within Lucent Technologies — from implementing element management systems to implementing service management systems. This paper, which presents a view of service management as managing the relationship between clients and applications in a heterogeneous network, serves as an introduction to the issue.