FlowThru is a Collaborative European Research Project funded by the Commission of the European Union through the ACTS program under contract number AC335.
FlowThru completed successfully in February 2000. Many of its R&D threads have been taken up by a new EU sponsored project called FORM.
If you have any queries about the FlowThru project please contact Willie Donnelly the Project Manager.
This web page is maintained by Dave Lewis of University College London
Co-operative secure management of multi technology and administrative domain Network and Service Management
Systems
Effective telecommunications management relies critically on the integration of different management functions. In a liberalised telecommunications market, this integration has to occur over multiple organisational and technological domains. Existing management applications are often designed according to a specific architecture and mplemented to be deployed on a specific technology platform. On the other hand, in any realistic scenario large scale management integration must rely instead on the effective reuse of well understood patterns of design and the reuse of specifications and component implementations.
The objective of FlowThru was to build a management system that supported the flow of management information across organisational and technological domains by reusing components that have been developed by other ACTS projects. Management components from these projects were analysed for their suitability in supporting the necessary management information flows and interactions. FlowThru adapted and integrated these components within a series of demonstrators, called Trial Business Systems. At the service level, components based on TINA specifications for multimedia service management, security management, subscription management and accounting management were used from the Prospect and the VITAL projects. At the network level, TINA-based components for fault, restoration, metering and configuration management was reused from the REFORM , SUSIE and VITAL projects. In addition, Prospect provided technology gateways between CORBA and CMIP. As such, FlowThru aimed to integrate components which address multiple aspects of the FCAPS functional areas, designed according to both TINA and TMN architectural guidelines and deployed on either CORBA and CMIP technology platforms. Furthermore, FlowThru provided the necessary management applications to allow an actual validation of its demonstrator in trial demonstrations.
FlowThru built, demonstrated and validated integrated solutions, based on reusable components that addressed the telecommunication business problems of providing integrated management systems across technological and organisational domains. The project provided guidelines on the capture and specification of business process interactions and information flows across the value chain of end customer, service provider and network operator. FlowThru produced recommendations for the development and customisation of reusable components, which enabled the realisation of integrated management systems without massive re-engineering costs and delays. The project has disseminated its results through the various ACTS concertation mechanisms, as well as through contributions to conferences and relevant industry and standardisation fora, specifically the TeleManagement Forum, TINA-C and the ITU-T.