NetworkMining, an independent supplier of IP & optical network mediation software, today announces the latest extension of its network reconciliation software. NetworkMining’s software now also supports reconciliation between actual and planned/authorized network configurations.
Many reconciliation products rely on the maintenance of the configuration of the complete planned/authorized network. This is due to the fact that reconciliation was often introduced as a way to solve discrepancies between the inventoried network and the operational network. NetworkMining’s software is designed from ground up to avoid such discrepancies through tight integration between auto-discovery and reconciliation. NetworkMining’s reconciliation software therefore only maintains:
- Configurations that are not yet implemented in the network (e.g. network extensions or retirements).
- Configurations that cannot be discovered from the network (e.g. configurations that are manually documented).
- Dependencies that cannot be discovered from the network (e.g. connections between networks managed by separate network management systems).
- Conflicts between actual and planned/authorized configuration changes (e.g. field installations that do not comply with designs).
NetworkMining’s approach has some significant benefits:
- It allows NetworkMining’s software to perform frequent reconciliations (daily or more frequent) between actual and planned/authorized network configurations. This reduces strongly the risk of misalignments between actual and planned/authorized network configurations.
- The short loop between planning and discovery is more resilient to loose, not fully automated provisioning and activation processes, as discrepancies are detected early on and incrementally.
- It supports the use of the same data model for actual and planned/authorized network configurations. It allows the use of the same interfaces for managing both types of configuration sets.
NetworkMining’s reconciliation software comes with the following key features:
- Template driven creation of authorized configurations. Generic and vendor specific templates are provided out of the box. Customers can create their own templates.
- Automatic enforcement of dependencies between planned and actual or planned and other planned configurations.
- Single GUI that exposes actual and planned/authorized configurations.
- GUI or API driven creation of planned/authorized configurations.
- Analytical dashboard (e.g. for analyzing conflicts).
- API for integration with 3rd party OSS (e.g. inventory or ITSM solutions).
- Comprehensive user access rights management.
NetworkMining’s reconciliation has been successfully deployed with several customers. The deployments cover optical fiber and cable infrastructure, as well as active network technologies, including SDH, WDM, IP, Ethernet and microwave. In total over 80 device families from leading IP & optical networking vendors are supported in those initial deployments.