• A year of ETSI's Zero Touch Network and Service Management (ZSM) ISG
• 60 member companies and a first draft of new network architecture published
• Need to manage the various expectations that companies have of ZSM 
• IT and network technology companies have different concepts of automation

Who says standard's bodies can't move quickly? ETSI's ZSM ISG (Zero Touch Network and Service Management Industry Specification Group) was first mooted at least year's SDN/NFV World Congress in the Hague. A year on, the ISG now has 60 member companies and a first draft of the important new network architecture has already been published. However, and unsurprisingly given the speed with which the Group has been working, some challenges remain to be resolved. As Klaus Martiny explains the first of these is to manage and reconcile the different expectations that different companies and interested parties have of what the ZSM ISG will contain and what it will address. 

He adds that the second big challenge is that IT companies and NT (network technology) companies, despite bringing fresh thinking and new ideas to bear on the subject, speak almost completely different languages of technology and these have to be translated to that both sides fully understand what the other side is saying. As an example Klaus Martiny says that the concept of 'automation' in an IT environment is utterly different in an NT environment and is confident these problems will be overcome. After all, although the Open Standards movement and processes and traditional standards process are completely at variance one with the other, there are signs that these two hitherto mutually exclusive schools and inimical of thought appreciate the benefits that could accrue to the global industry if the two parties worked together on some projects.

Filmed at: SDN NFV World Congress 2018, The Hague, Netherlands