Digital Equipment Corp seems to be straying into British Telecom Concert territory with the announcement of TeMIP. The software product highlights the the importance that the company is now placing on telecommunications facilities management and is claimed to enable telephone companies to manage multi-vendor telecommunications networks more efficiently. Based on DEC’s OSI-compliant Enterprise Management Architecture, the product also conforms to ANSI, Open Software Foundation, and CCITT recommendations, DEC says, including the CCITT M.3010 Telecommunications Management Network model. The company says that it can operate with virtually any make of telecommunications equipment, and it is claimed to provide integrated fault management capabilities as well as a framework for adding new applications to extend its functionality. Functions include event logging and alarm handling, and trouble ticketing is planned for delivery this spring. With a Motif-based graphical interface, it provides an iconic map of alarm conditions, and collects and processes event and alarm information from multiple devices, enabling operations personnel to monitor and control all network elements with a single system, and it includes a published programming interface for the creation of new applications and interfaces. It runs on DEC’s DECsystem and DECstation RISC systems under Ultrix. DEC has already garnered support from six vendors, who have said that they will use it as the basis for custom network management systems to be sold to service providers. These include Sema Group, NetMan (a joint venture between DEC and NKT A/S of Copenhagen), MPR Teltech Ltd of Vancouver, BBN Communications Inc, Sandwell Inc and Steria SA, the software house based in Velizy-Villacoublay, France.
