ON-Center’s design specifically enhances the abilities of FlexSelect Architecture products and easily integrates into existing network management system architectures using standard northbound interfaces. ON-Center offers network operators a unique set of tools for efficient service deployment and proactive network management. It employs a distributed, scalable architecture capable of managing a series of network elements as a standalone solution or as part of an operator’s existing infrastructure. This proactive management system can track individual services across multiple product suites, facilitating planned network maintenance, proactive outage detection, and identification of customers or services affected by network troubles.

ON-Center’s modular architecture, a common Graphical User Interface (GUI) and unified management model, allow personnel to monitor and manage new Ciena technologies and products while leveraging current back-office Network Operations Center (NOC) systems.

The optional ON-Center Service Layer Manager (SLM) provides end-to-end service-level monitoring—for both individual services and end-users—across the Ciena portfolio. The SLM allows providers to offer customers active reports on the health, status and Service Level Agreement (SLA) performance of their services over time, through a secure Web portal. New technology plug-ins extend the breadth of the ON-Center management suite while maintaining the standard TMF 814 interface NBI to third-party Operations Support Systems (OSSs).

Operational Savings
ON-Center provides end-to-end visibility of optical services across all transport and switching elements. This unified management approach decreases time for fault recognition, isolation, and resolution. Early detection, diagnosis, and prioritization of trouble spots within the network allows service providers to resolve problems proactively, before these issues affect revenue streams. Remote monitoring and diagnostic capabilities decrease truck rolls to further simplify network operations. The common management model extends across all Ciena technologies and obviates the need for additional staff training.

Rapid Service Provisioning
Complete management of the entire network allows a single GUI command to create the entire service path, avoiding the piecemeal approach required by existing network management systems. ON-Center’s multi-layer management model provides visibility through the protocol stack from optical transport to Ethernet packet services.

Competitive Advantage 
ON-Center allows existing Time Division Multiplexing (TDM)-based applications, optical wavelength services, and advanced next-generation services, such as optical Ethernet or OTN, to be provisioned quickly through a unified management interface. Umbrella management of all connectivity services allows providers to develop and deploy new product offerings to their customers, regardless of network infrastructure.

Increased Customer Satisfaction
ON-Center’s SLM allows service providers to generate meaningful SLA reports that support the creation of services beyond basic connectivity, and to offer a secure Web portal for customer network management. New valueadded performance metrics with service-level manageability gives packet-based services the same control and performance as circuitbased services.

OSS Integration
Through the Universal OSS Gateway (UOG), ON-Center can integrate seamlessly into a network operator’s management infrastructure, leveraging already deployed critical network functions such as billing, inventory reports and consolidated event reporting.

Ciena may make changes from time to time to the products or specifications contained herein without notice.