Clear Communications Legacy Gateway backgrounder: Distributed Applications.LINCOLNSHIRE, Ill.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 13, 1996--Clear Communications' Clearview(R) LegacyGateway(TM) is the most advanced and flexible toolset available for automatically extracting vital data from telecommunications legacy databases and translating it into information objects for immediate use by UNIX-based network management applications. New object-oriented applications are being deployed by telecommunications carriers in support of state-of-the-art broadband networks  This article or section needs copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone and/or spelling.You can assist by [ editing it] now. -- including SONET networks -- built according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. the ITU-T's Telecommunications Management Network The Telecommunications Management Network is a protocol model defined by ITU-T for managing open systems in a communications network. It is part of the ITU-T Recommendation series M.3000 and is based on the OSI management specifications in ITU-T Recommendation series X.700. (TMN (Telecommunications Management Network) A set of international standards for network management from the ITU. It is used by large carriers such as Sprint, Verizon and AT&T. ), a highly scaleable, distributed architecture. However, the data in legacy systems is hard to extract by conventional means and does not map to the object-oriented UNIX UNIX Operating system for digital computers, developed by Ken Thompson of Bell Laboratories in 1969. It was initially designed for a single user (the name was a pun on the earlier operating system Multics). management systems needed by SONET and other broadband networks. This situation puts the carriers, especially the Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs), at a tremendous potential disadvantage. One of the major problems facing many large carriers -- especially in the wake of deregulation Deregulation The reduction or elimination of government power in a particular industry, usually enacted to create more competition within the industry. Notes: Traditional areas that have been deregulated are the telephone and airline industries. -- is how to speed new broadband service See broadband and broadband service provider. offerings to market in a cost-efficient manner. New competitors, including local service units of large, long-distance carriers, are constructing their networks from scratch with new technology, and can quickly deploy new services using the latest in client-server platforms and databases. The RBOCs, however, are saddled with large, monolithic, proprietary databases inherited from vendors like AT&T and Bellcore prior to deregulation. These legacy systems represent a huge investment in dollars and staff years of data entry. The Bellcore-supplied Trunks Integrated Record Keeping System (TIRKS TIRKS Trunk Integrated Record Keeping System ), for example, contains hundreds of thousands of carrier circuits and customer information gathered over many years. Current carrier work processes have been built around legacy ordering, network monitoring The term network monitoring describes the use of a system that constantly monitors a computer network for slow or failing systems and that notifies the network administrator in case of outages via email, pager or other alarms. , and work-force administration systems. LegacyGateway, which has been deployed at one RBOC (Regional Bell Operating Company) The Bell telephone companies that were spun off of AT&T by court order in 1984 (the Divestiture). Also known as the "Baby Bells," the initial seven RBOCs were Nynex, Bell Atlantic, BellSouth, Southwestern Bell, US West, and successfully completed acceptance testing (programming) acceptance testing - Formal testing conducted to determine whether a system satisfies its acceptance criteria and thus whether the customer should accept the system. at US WEST, ensures rapid and accurate transfer of circuit and customer data from old legacy databases to new distributed management applications. An advanced feature of LegacyGateway is its ability to translate extracted data into information objects immediately useable by UNIX management applications. There are a variety of extraction mechanisms on the market, but they leave carriers and their system integrators with the problem of data-to-information translation. Clear's product performs that translation, so the information is immediately useable by the UNIX/TMN systems. A second unique and critically-important feature is the software's flexible routing of data and information to and from multiple legacy and UNIX operations support systems Operations Support Systems (also called Operational Support Systems or OSS) are computer systems used by telecommunications service providers. The term OSS most frequently describes "network systems" dealing with the telecom network itself, supporting processes such . LegacyGateway can serve multiple types of legacy and UNIX Operation Support Systems simultaneously. Providing the translation and routing capabilities was at least 80 percent of the total development effort. It was important to Clear to solve these problems, because the product was originally developed to feed legacy-extracted information to Clear's market-leading, performance-management software. It became apparent early in the design cycle that developing the software in a generic toolkit would extend its utility to a much larger development community. The Clearview LegacyGateway extraction methods for initial downloads and dynamic updates are among the most advanced in the industry. They do not rely on the usual 3270 terminal emulation, or "screen-scraping" to extract the legacy data. Screen-scraping solutions tend to be unreliable and suffer from very poor performance, especially where synchronization of data between the legacy and UNIX domains is a requirement. Instead, Clear's system utilizes established contracts and FCIF See CIF. formatting, a bi-directional machine-to-machine interface flexible enough to work in different environments. LegacyGateway is targeted for sale to carriers and system integrators. Virtually any network management application that requires integration with existing systems such as TIRKS and NMA NMA Nederlandse Mededingingsautoriteit NMA National Medical Association NMA National Mining Association NMA NetWare Management Agent (Novell) NMA New Model Army NMA National Motorists Association NMA North Mississippi Allstars can benefit from its use. In appropriate instances, the product can be purchased as a complete system and installed "as is." Independent systems integrators can purchase LegacyGateway reusable object class libraries for quick development of new legacy-to-TMN applications. As a product company, Clear Communications will sell integrators its object libraries to cut the integrators' project risk, cost, and time-to-market. Some of the telecommunications service providers have their own developers trying to develop integration interfaces in-house. Using the system and/or available class libraries will expedite those projects as well. LegacyGateway belongs to the product suite, Clearview Network Window, which the company announced in March. The suite consists of five products -- three of which have now been announced -- designed to address carrier network concerns ranging from quality-of-service reports to proactive maintenance to legacy migration. For more product information, call Clear Communications in Lincolnshire, Ill, at 1-847-317-2500. -0- EDITOR'S NOTE: Clearview is a registered trademark of Clear Communications Corporation. Clearview Network Window and Clearview LegacyGateway are trademarks of Clear Communications Corporation. All products or trade names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. CONTACT: Don Harrison, 770-392-8615 donald.harrison@cbpr.com |
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