On the critical importance of vendor-agnostic, standard data models

Networks and services are more and more complex both in terms of supported features, sophisticated services to be delivered, number of devices, technologies, number of serviced customers, etc. Also, given that networks are dynamic, advanced tools are needed to:

- (automatically) identify root causes of anomalies, disseminate telemetry information, emulate “what-if” scenarios (e.g., Digital Twin Networks), feasibility checks, planning, etc.;

- expose capabilities to be consumed by services;

- capture service requirements.

The lack of standard data models raised in the past many challenges in system integration and often resulted in manual configuration tasks and quasi static actions.  

These models are used to not only reflect service providers' savoir-faire, but also to dynamically instantiate and enforce a set of service-inferred policies that best accommodate what has been agreed with the customer.

Data models are not only key for the usual provisioning of a given service but apply to all service lifecycles

This article highlights the importance of data models, introduces YANG data modelling, and presents an integration approach for service and network management automation purposes that takes advantage of standard-based YANG modeling technologies. An applicability to network slicing is provided to exemplify the use of the YANG-based integration approach.