The Technology and Operations Council

The ATIS Technology and Operations (TOPS) Council, chaired by Paul Mankiewich, actively addresses the industry's technical, operational and business priorities.

The TOPS Council's priorities include not only efforts to ensure current technologies and practices are interoperable, but efforts to ensure interoperability in emerging and future areas of technology.

The ATIS TOPS Council identifies the industry’s most pressing technical and operational priorities, and coordinates standardization efforts across the industry to produce interoperable, implementable, end-to-end solutions.

To support its efforts, the Council establishes focus groups, exploratory groups and task forces, as well as conducts industry workshops and symposia to address each of the "most critical" priorities.

For more information on the ATIS TOPS Council please visit the About page.  

Priority Work Items

Network Optimization Focus Group (NetOp-FG)
As more and more bandwidth is needed for end-users, telecom service providers are looking for new and innovative ways to optimize their network capacity. To this end, a Focus Group has been formed to assess how to improve the ability to dynamically make changes in network behavior in a multi-vendor, end-to-end network. The Focus Group, co-chaired by Juniper and Alcatel-Lucent along with 10 member company participants, will be determining how to optimize network, application and subscriber performance—which ultimately will result in a significant cost savings for both service providers and their vendors.
Co-Chairs: Paul Mankiewich, Juniper; and Marcus Weldon, Alcatel-Lucent
Contributions (Member Access)

Machine-to-Machine Focus Group (M2M-FG)
Machine-to-machine technology is playing a greater and greater role in fields such as smart grid, connected vehicles, and ehealth. ATIS has therefore launched the M2M Focus Group to help define ICT's role in this emerging technology. The Focus Group, co-chaired by HP and Cisco and comprising a total of 20 participating companies, will address standards issues in a number of areas and work with other vendors and SDOs on a global scale.
Co-Chairs: Gale Lightfoot, Cisco; and Jeff Edlund, HP
Contributions (Member Access)

Cyber Security Landscape Team (CyberSec-LT)
As more and more end-users are accessing sensitive information from IP-based applications, the vulnerability of sensitive data being compromised needs to be addressed. ATIS therefore launched the Cyber Security Landscape Team, led by Alcatel-Lucent and Cisco. The Team will create an architecture to define the role of security as an enabler of service delivery from network edge devices; assess security as a service ; and create a business plan to develop inter-provider secure relationships.
Co-Chairs: Uma Chandrashekhar, Alcatel-Lucent; Laura Kuiper and Mike Geller, Cisco
Contributions (Member Access)

eHealth Landscape Team (eHealth-LT)
With costs on the rise and new regulatory frameworks in place, the health care sector demands the attention of the telecom industry. Given the broad scope of the eHealth sector and the fact that many groups are currently pursuing agendas (and standards) that suit their immediate needs, ATIS has taken the opportunity to play a leading role in unifying standards across multiple eHealth sectors by launching the eHealth Landscape Team. The Team, led by Hitachi and TNS, Inc., will determine if value-added possibilities exist for service providers and whether to create technical standards around the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and other health regulations and policies.
Co-Chairs: David Foote and Joe Lenart, Hitachi; Paul Florack and Kat Mahan, TNS, Inc.
Contributions (Member Access)

PSTN Transition Landscape Team (PSTNTran-LT)
ATIS has established the PSTN Transition Team to evaluate the transition from the PSTN to a new communcations architecture. The Team will lay out a vision for a new network, identify regulatory and security issues, and determine a transition plan.
Co-Chairs: Mike Nawrocki, Verizon; and Brian Daly, AT&T
Contributions (Member Access)

Unifying Client Architecture Landscape Team (UCA-LT)
The ecosystem of consumer devices is rapidly expanding, and application client developers are faced with the daunting task of creating clients capable of running on literally hundreds of different devices from different vendors, running different Operating Systems, and exposing different functionality to applications via different APIs. Unifying a device-agnostic client architecture that leverages browser-based technologies, and defining common core features, frameworks, and APIs would enable application developers to focus on innovation rather than porting clients to a subset of available devices. The ATIS Unifying Client Architecture Landscape Team, lead by Alcatel-Lucent and Juniper, will meet this challenge, identifying common features exposed by devices and operating systems to determine both a framework architecture and what information should be included in APIs.
Co-Chairs: Dave Robinson, Alcatel-Lucent; and Mark Russell, Juniper
Contributions (Member Access)

Over-the-Top Services Team (OTT-LT)
OTT services significantly increase data traffic, which can lead to congestion that impacts all services, both OTT and from service providers. It is therefore important to manage this traffic in a reasonable and economically viable manner. The OTT Landscape Team will assess network architectures that effectively support OTT services, determining how best to provide QoS and QoE for OTT services and how to integrate OTT services with service provider network architecture.
Launch: February 2012
Contributions (Member Access)

Recently Completed Work

Consolidation and Convergence Task Force (CC-TF)
Co-conveners: Jim Baskin (Verizon) and Robin Meier (AT&T)
The Facilities Consolidation Task Force (FC-TF) was launched in June 2009 at the request of the ATIS TOPS Council and completed its assessment in February 2010. As a result of the Task Force’s assessment, several areas were identified that warranted further study. Therefore the ATIS TOPS Council endorsed a “Phase 2”assessment named Consolidation and Convergence Task Force (CC-TF) to address issues related to the transition of network facilities and technology platforms in a multi-carrier environment.

• Assessment and Recommendations (March 2011)

Policy Management Focus Group (PM-FG)
Chair: Charlie Vogt, CEO, GENBAND
Mission: The PM-FG will conduct a standards inventory assessment of Policy Management from a network perspective and address specific issues related to Packet Processing, Convergence and Policy Charging Control.
Update: The Technology and Operations Council has completed a 12 month study of the issues associated with the industry’s fragmented approach towards Policy Management. Knowing that data volumes will continue to grow, many service providers have concluded that it is unrealistic to focus exclusively on deploying additional capacity to address this problem. Further, to provide a consistent end-to-end user experience, different networks must manage policy with coordinated, synchronized solutions. As such, Policy Management tools have been identified as a means of achieving greater network efficiency, and maximizing installed network capacity

• Assessment and Recommendations (June 2010)