British Telecommunications Plc yesterday announced what it claims to be the first network management system specifically designed to meet specifications laid down by the OSI Network Management Forum. Because it conforms to OSI standards, any software which also has Open interfaces can be passed into it. Rather than having several management systems that have to be integrated with one another, different networks can now all be orchestrated via Concert. It will provide an end-to-end view of what is happening in corporate networks. Of course not all networks do conform to Open Systems standards, but with 93 companies, including all the major software vendors now involved, Telecom is convinced that Open Systems are the way forward. This view is backed by a survey of the top 300 Telecom customers in which 90% said that they wanted to go into Open systems management systems. Concert yet has to pass the OSI Forum’s standards tests but this should be completed by May. Concert is written around the Oracle database management system for Posix-compliant operating systems and will make extensive use of the X Window System, and will be available in the second quarter of 1991. British Telecom declined to hint at the price it has in mind for when Concert is available.
