TMN and OSI management

Initially there was little collaboration between the management groups of CCITT and ISO/IEC. As a result, the 1988 version of Recommendation M.30 had no ISO/IEC counterpart and ISO/IEC standards had little impact on TMN. After publication of M.30, the collaboration between CCITT and ISO/IEC improved, which resulted in the incorporation of many OSI management ideas into TMN. Nowadays work on TMN and OSI management is being performed within the TeleManagement Forum (TMF), which is the successor of the Network Management Forum (NMF).

The most important changes to TMN were:

• The `manager-agent' concept, as originally developed by ISO/IEC, was adopted. The current TMN text contains for instance a statement saying that "The description of the manager/agent concept ... is intended to reflect the definitions given in X.701" (the OSI Systems Management Overview).
• ISO/IEC's `Object Oriented' approach was copied. The current TMN text says: "... the TMN methodology makes use of the OSI systems management principles and is based on an object oriented paradigm".
• The idea of `Management Domains' was included. A number of TMN drafts that were developed during the 1988-1992 study period contained notes saying: "CCITT SG VII and ISO have a work item on the definition of Management Domains. Resulting material should be used or referenced when available".

Despite this cooperation between the ITU-T and OSI management groups, fundamental differences in philosophy still exist.