Element Management for the Equipment Vendor

All telecom equipment vendors will have to provide element management software with their equipment. Due to the diversity of telecom/datacom management technologies, the telecommunication equipment vendors are also faced with many different requirements from their customers. Satisfying these requirements may become a major overhead for new contracts. They often have to spend as much or even more on the development of element management software for their equipment as on the development of the equipment itself.

Solution

Element Management implies "a bit of everything" of management, including fault/alarm management, configuration management, performance management, security management and usually some network management functionality as well.

Q3ADE 3G provides the necessary basic management functionality on all these areas required by any element management system, like alarm management, drill-down maps, tailorable configuration management and security management. Tailoring it to the technical specifics of the vendor’s equipment or specific customer demands may be done via the graphical configuration interface or scripts in a very efficient manner.

Q3ADE Gateway Developer enables you to add your own information models to Q3ADE 3G and develop your own Java Views for the Q3Browser platform.

Your customers will eventually request that your Element Management platform can be integrated into their network/business management architecture. This may require support of technologies like CMIP, CORBA, XML, TL1 or some proprietary solution.

Q3ADE Gateway Developer includes tools for these interfaces and many more. In many cases, it is a matter configuration to integrate with your customer's management system. It also enables you to develop a proprietary interface to your equipment, either based on one of the technologies above or one of your own making. Cf. also our interoperability list.

Scalability

Naturally, we are aware of the fact that the incremental cost factor is crucial for an equipment vendor (Cf. the discussion above).

We have therefore designed both the Q3ADE architecture and the pricing model with scalability in mind.

With Q3ADE you can base your EMS on retail PC technology with an option to scale up to a multi-cpu Sun platform. Q3ADE has been installed on hardware ranging from an palm-sized Allen-Bradly controller to an 8-cpu Sun Spark host.

Some of our customers have tested configurations managing more than 50 equipment units on a single <1000 USD retail PC, including periodical collection of statistics, multi-user interaction and alarm correlation.

Benefits

• Reduced time-to-market. Q3ADE 3G's Out-of-the box management functions includes an increasing range of basic management functions, like alarm management, alarm correlation/animation, auto-discovery etc. which is required by any management system. You may have a deployable management system ready within weeks.
• Increase your chances to win the contract. Few customers appreciate to have yet another proprietary stand-alone management system. Q3ADE 3G provides easy integration with your customer's OSS and business applications, including ODBC, XML, SOAP, CORBA, Q3/CMIP.
• Improve your customer’s first-impression. The Element Management system is often also the only visible facade to your equipment. By being able to show an impressive professional element management system up front, the chance of a sales follow-up increases significantly.
• Cost saving scalability. The management platform may range from a retail PC to a network of high-end multiprocessor Sun Servers. The cost of providing a management system scales with the cost of the equipment.
• Dynamic tailorable platform. Q3ADE 3G includes a dynamic web server function, which enables you to tailor your management application to your customers requirements on-site using general purpose web design tools - nothing else.

Pricing

Depending on the quanta and required features, your cost overhead for Q3ADE SW per EMS controlling one equipment unit may be less than USD 1000.

The pricing scales with the number of equipment units to be managed per EMS license and/or users using it concurrently.