I was listening to a recent IT Management Guys podcast and Tarus Balog mentioned that the upcoming OpenNMS 1.6 would include TL-1 (Transaction Language 1) support. My jaw hit the ground (floor of the airplane).

An open source, free software solution for TL-1! I seem to recall the MUSE acquisition of Lumos Technologies was pretty significant as a key vehicle for integrating eventing/messaging from telco environments. In turn, these “probes” were sold for $$$$$$$ within large telco environments to bring in information from Class 4/5 Switches, DACS, SONET ADMs, etc. Not sure if this is a big seller for us or not still, but it was at one time.

I pinged Jeff Gehlbach and he confirmed this news and pointed out their focus on support for autonomous messages, turning them into openNMS events. He mentioned these would also be easy to relay as traps. They’re looking for test gear to continue to develop and improve their TL-1 support (obviously a challenge to find or get access to). Ping Jeff here if you’ve got any leads.

If OpenNMS is able to execute here and provide this capability, their position is likely to grow as a solid open source/free software alternative in service provider environments. They’re already winning and displacing incumbent Netcool installations in Italian service providers.

Ron Burch, one of our top TBSM L2 support team and the TBSM L2 lead in our Global ISST BSM Practice facilitated an excellent presentation this week on TBSM installation tips and common problems. This has a few of the common ones for TBSM v4.2 as well.

Worth a look if you’re troubleshooting install issues!

Presentation here.