Digital Communications Associates Inc, Alpharetta, Georgia, and Northern Telecom Inc, Nashville, Tennessee are joining forces to develop software that will enable their wide area network management systems to interoperate using technology adopted on January 24 as the industry standard for communications between multi-vendor networks – the Common Management Information Protocol and the Common Management Information Services protocols. The first is a set of rules governing how information is exchanged between separate network management applications, the second rules to identify the services or functions the jointly-developed interface can handle. The Common Management Information Services protocol is the basis for the Open Systems Interconnection Network Management Forum’s specification for common network management guidelines.
