The Deutsche Bundespost Telekom has joined the swelling number of service providers officially endorsing the Network Management Forum’s OmniPoint network management specification by incorporating it into its procurement strategy. Its decision comes as the Forum, which sponsors OmniPoint, nears agreement on conformance testing. The OmniPoint Procurement Guide, which aims to enhance interoperability between products and systems based on different standards, is to be incorporated into Telekom’s procurement guidelines for all its data services, including packet- switched, Frame Relay and Metropolitan Area Networks, and leased line services. Telekom it plans to buy products wherever possible, as opposed to making them internally, in order to encourage competition – to bring prices down – and to take advantage of applications programming interfaces to increase the reusability of software. At the CeBit show in March, Peter Delfs, executive manager for network management systems, indicated his intention. We feel that the Forum’s goals are in line with ours. There are many groups dealing with standardisation, but each deals only in a specific area. As an industry-wide co-ordinating force, the Forum’s specifications and views have a greater impact than those of a single carrier, he said. As yet, OmniPoint is still in its first release, with OmniPoint 2 set for the end of 1994. In its existing form, OmniPoint contains no procedures for conformance and interoperability testing, although Beth Adams, the Network Mangement Forum’s managing director says these are near completion. With anything new, testing technology typically lags by a small amount, she said. Deutsche Bundespost Telekom joins AT&T Co, British Telecommunications Plc, Stet SpA, France Telecom and Telefonica de Espana SA in in supporting OmniPoint.
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