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The Technology and Operations Council
The Technology and Operations (TOPS) Council is ATIS’ foremost vehicle for actively addressing the industry’s technical, operational and business priorities. The Council brings an expert-level perspective to solving ICT challenges at the highest levels of business and technical leadership. It is composed of members of the ATIS Board of Directors.
TOPS works by identifying the ICT ecosystem’s needs and coordinating an industry-wide response through convening landscape assessment teams and focus groups. This method enables it to have an efficient process for gathering business and technology experts to examine both near- and longer-term business needs and priorities. Generally working for six to eight weeks, Landscape Teams determine strategy and the technology direction before moving an issue into an appropriate venue to progress the work, e.g., a Focus Group or an ATIS Committee.
For more information on the ATIS TOPS Council please visit the About page.
Priority Work Items
Machine-to-Machine Focus Group (M2M-FG)
The Machine-to-Machine Focus (M2M-FG) is currently completing assessments of the Smart Grid, Connected Vehicle, eHealth, and Connected Home verticals and identifying areas of commonality at the service layer. This assessment will ensure that commonalities across the many vertical markets that will be impacted by emerging M2M innovations can be catalyzed to ensure optimal use of ICT capabilities to improve safety, efficiency, reliability, security and the cost effectiveness of the current and future transport sector.
The M2M-FG has concluded that defining a Common Service Layer, including common functional elements and the technologies that support them, will be advantageous for the vertical segments, application developers, the ICT industry and ultimately the end user. The team anticipates delivering its final report by mid-May. As a result of this effort a formalized M2M Committee will launch by end of 2Q12.
: Gale Lightfoot, Cisco; and Jeff Edlund, HP
Contributions (Member Access)
M2M-FG eHealth Sub-team
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 sub-team within the M2M Focuis Group. The sub-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.
: David Foote and Joe Lenart, Hitachi; Paul Florack and Kat Mahan, TNS, Inc.
Contributions (Member Access)
Cyber Security Focus Group (CyberSec-FG)
The Cyber Security Focus Group (CS-FG) has developed a phased, end-to-end approach to analyzing the Cyber Security landscape, starting with the core network and moving to the edge. It has defined functional domains encompassing chips and handsets, regulatory issues, trust and identity management, reference architecture and service assurance. This approach will ensure end-to-end compatibility with each domain to avoid divergent approaches and lack of end-to-end QoE. As the first functional domain, the CS-FG will address M2M.
The Focus Group also will develop a common set of cyber security/data privacy policies and protocols that minimally conform to North American regulatory requirements. A unified model that addresses cybercrime at a sufficiently high level, while allowing country-specific flexibility, has the potential to reduce the time-to-market for solutions and product launches.
: Uma Chandrashekhar, Alcatel-Lucent; Laura Kuiper and Mike Geller, Cisco
Contributions (Member Access)
PSTN Transition Landscape Team (PSTNTran-LT)
The PSTN Transition Landscape Team (PSTN-LT) sees PSTN Transition as an evolutionary process, not a network replacement event. It has concluded that ultimately, multiple IP-based successor networks will support the services and applications desired by end users. It has recommended the development of use cases for: transition, privacy and security in PSTN transition, accessibility, interconnect, numbering, stranded assets in access networks and QoE in a multiple provider environment.
Additionally, the PSTN-LT developed specific observations to share with the FCC’s Technical Advisory Committee (TAC). A portion of the Landscape Team’s work will provide input to the TAC and ensure that ATIS’ initiatives align with the TAC’s vision. The Landscape Team has completed its initial analysis. A Focus Group will be launched in the beginning of May to further assess the issues related to PSTN transition based upon the use cases noted above.
: Mike Nawrocki, Verizon; and Brian Daly, AT&T
Contributions (Member Access)
Unifying Client Architecture Focus Group (UCA-FG)
The Unifying Client Architecture (UCA) Focus Group has identified key benefits for service provider session control for webRTC as it enhances end-user and network value. Additionally, the UCA-FG outlined high-priority use cases to assess in the first phase of its effort (web-to-web and web-to-nonweb) and will integrate its work into the ATIS’ Technology Development Reference Architecture.
: 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.
Contributions (Member Access)
Recently Completed Work
Consolidation and Convergence Task Force (CC-TF)
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)
Charlie Vogt, CEO, GENBAND
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.
: 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)
