NATO: where Mission Critical is more than a matter of policy

17.11.04

Netcool® Provides Realtime IT Assurance Solution for NATO Member Countries

PROBLEM:
Most businesses talk about having mission-critical systems. Within NATO however the phrase takes on quite a different meaning. If communications do not work properly, then lives and political processes may be at stake. NATO needed a secure, tested management backbone that could support maximum uptime of its data networks whilst maintaining operational

SOLUTION:
Micromuse’s Netcool® solution is providing a robust and secure framework that helps ensure the uptime of NATO’s global data networks for command, control and logistics.



The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) exists to protect the freedom and security of NATO member countries by political and military means. NATO uses data networks to help enable political consultation, to communicate with military forces and for command, control and logistics.

The North Atlantic Treaty was signed in 1949 by twelve nations and has since expanded to nineteen. NATO restructured to support peace-keeping and crisis management following the end of the cold war and works with other international bodies as part of a co-operative security organisation. This increases the demand for flexible communications.

When NATO intervenes in a crisis, the forces that are deployed are referred to as “NATO forces”, but are actually contributed by NATO nations. The only military infrastructure owned and maintained by NATO is the communications equipment; so robust networking is crucial. NATO provides voice and data services for over 30,000 users, located from California to Turkey in longitude and Norway to Italy in latitude. These are used by a host of different organisations within NATO and its member nations. Like all large organisations, NATO has a network made from several vendors’ equipment and including multiple protocols. Technically, the IT systems include more than 100 PABXs, switches, routers, as well as bandwidth management equipment and ATM switches.

The basic network infrastructure includes a meshed ISDN network, TDM and ISDN trunks and an IP-based intranet. Interconnections also include ATM and frame relay links. These are connected using ISDN, IP routing, frame relay, TDM and ATM. NATO’s communications and information systems (CIS) are operated by a central organisation known as NACOSA (NATO CIS Operating and Support Agency), who provides all services including hardware, software, training and security.

As well as managing and controlling the CIS network for users across NATO, NACOSA gives operational support, hardware and software maintenance, personnel training, installation and other services including security. It works with other NATO bodies, commercial firms and national agencies to make sure that the users of NATO’s CIS networks get quality of service and value for money.

NACOSA has a central staff in Mons, Belgium and a training centre in Latina, Italy. NACOSA continually works to improve its service and decided to upgrade the infrastructure that supports its communications systems to increase its control and make network performance information more visible to senior management staff. The organisation wanted to manage service level agreements (SLAs) more closely and to improve root cause analysis. Underlying these aims, NACOSA was seeking a service assurance technology that could centralise control of the network whilst working with existing element management systems.

Rock-Solid SLA management

SLAs are common in industry and bind service providers to a set level of network performance, with penalties imposed if these are missed. Important as service levels are for businesses, they are vastly more crucial in the military sector, where lives -- and indeed nations -- may depend on the network delivering a communication within a certain deadline.

NACOSA’s users required a service they could rely on. Furthermore, service levels had to be guaranteed end-to-end, which meant that NACOSA required a service level view of third party systems and equipment, including external service providers who provide the underlying network links it uses. NACOSA has SLAs with these service providers to guarantee the network bandwidth that NATO users require. However, SLAs are notoriously difficult to enforce, because the customer and the provider rarely have access to the information that would show what service level is actually being met. Proactive SLA management would allow NACOSA to enforce penalties when services fall below the agreed level.

“NACOSA needed to provide end-to-end SLA management of all its transmission networks,” said the director of network infrastructure at NACOSA. But it had a tougher problem than most carriers or enterprise networks: “While commercial carriers are responsible only for the customer edge, NACOSA is required to monitor other carrier networks and infrastructure.”

Root-cause analysis and dashboards

A problem with the network infrastructure can quickly cause error data to cascade as several devices and services are affected by a single failure. To minimise the noise from the network and effectively target repair work, network managers need to quickly identify the underlying root cause of the problem. In NATO’s case, realtime root-cause analysis was a priority and it had to cover both NACOSA’s own equipment and that of its service providers. Both SLA management and root-cause analysis needed to give multiple views of the service-affecting problem for different staff. Technical staff need to know where the problem is and on what equipment and high-ranking officials required an at-a-glance, dashboard view of the services NACOSA is providing, which clients will be affected by a given fault, and how seriously.

Selecting technology

NACOSA used another NATO body, the NAMSA (NATO Maintenance and Supply Agency) to procure a manager of manager technology that would allow it to fulfil its requirements. NAMSA’s role is to procure products corresponding to its customers needs, in the most effective way. Micromuse’s Netcool technology was chosen to manage most of NACOSA’s equipment out of the box, meeting NATO’s drive towards deploying off-the-shelf products to save development and consultancy time and public money. The decision to purchase Netcool was swift, as the software met all NATO’s demands for compliance with specific standards. The system purchased gives senior managers a top-level view of the network in realtime, and allows technical staff to drill down into the device level detail. At the senior manager level, the interest is in the effective operation of NATO and its specific projects, not in the details of network equipment.

Before and after
Before investing in Netcool, NATO’s network management was labour-intensive as each layer of CIS technology was managed with its own control equipment, some with inadequate user interfaces. There were problems with operator saturation due to flooding with repetitive, technical details. This combined with the fact that management was technology and network centric made service evaluation difficult.

Micromuse’s Netcool solution gives NACOSA a unified vision with automated event de-duplication and highly customizable post-analysis automation. In addition, all events are stored for long-term analysis. Through web technology, automated reports are visible by any authorized network operator. Netcool’s unified event manager also largely compensated for user interface deficiencies in components of the network.

The flexibility of the Netcool solution allows NATO to customize post-event automation and report summation. The training and documentation provided to NATO allows it to do this autonomously, which is essential in a military environment.

In summary, Netcool provided NATO with a network that is manageable from end-to-end, despite using multiple equipment and services from several providers. NATO staff, right up to senior officials, can see service performance in a single, effective management interface. Not only does this give NATO staff better situational awareness, it also pays real dividends in financial terms, since NATO can now make sure that service providers deliver on their service commitments.