Overview
Genie in a Network (GIN)™ is a next-generation network management and analytics platform that has been expressly designed to address the shortcomings of legacy network management approaches. Network operators have historically built management systems based on vendor-specific tools, dedicated element management systems, and special-purpose controllers, each of which manages only a small subset of the network. These tools often use incompatible interfaces or data schemas, resulting in integration nightmares. As the number of network elements grows—because the scale of the network increases and virtualization and disaggregation become the norm—so will the number of required management tools. In this environment special-purpose management tools are no longer practical, since the size of the management system will grow in concert with the network, and the challenge of integrating the management components will grow exponentially.
This situation calls for a different management approach that moves away from fixed function dedicated management tools in favor of programmable general-purpose tools. Such tools need to be customizable or programmable at runtime to provide specific network management functionality and to adapt to vendor specific and technology specific devices. The tools must also scale to handle very large volumes of network monitoring and telemetry data and include the necessary capabilities for registering, discovering, describing, storing, and processing such data.
The CCI GIN platform introduces a novel network management paradigm that is designed to significantly reduce the complexity associated with managing large networks. This network management paradigm provides the following benefits:
- GIN unifies—it provides uniform network management around a common model-driven management paradigm. GIN’s unified management approach significantly reduces the number of management system components—fewer moving parts—which results in a more resilient system and avoids the accumulation of technical debt.
- GIN is open and standards-based—it uses the OASIS TOSCA standard for defining service models and associated management operations on those models. Collections of TOSCA definitions—TOSCA profiles—can be created to represent various standards, including 3GPP, O-RAN, Kubernetes, ETSI NFV, etc. The use of an open standard avoids the need for operators, their partners, and their vendors to incorporate proprietary technologies into their solutions.
- GIN simplifies—by using TOSCA’s declarative management paradigm, GIN avoids the complexities typically associated with programmable platforms. A declarative paradigm enables no-code and low-code approaches that create services from packages of pre-defined reusable components. This approach significantly reduces the complexity of service design and enables faster time-to-market for new services as well as the creation of one-off custom services.
- GIN accelerates—not only does GIN simplify new service creation, but it also accelerates the definition of the operational aspects of new services. The GIN platform encourages designers to specify monitoring and service assurance aspects of their services in concert with the service definitions themselves. By defining provisioning and assurance all in one place, service assurance will no longer need to be bolted on as an afterthought. By baking service assurance into service design, operators will be able to accelerate time to market for new services while at the same time improving service reliability.
- GIN scales—it includes comprehensive data management infrastructure that leverages almost a decade of experience with FoxStream—CCI’s solution for handling large volumes of telemetry and analytics data. In addition, GIN introduces new roll-up and drill-down functionality for analytics data that is based on TOSCA’s substitution mapping feature. This functionality provides a structured approach for operators to get a handle on large volumes of monitoring data without losing sight of the underlying detail where necessary.