Open architecture telecommunications provisioning systems

The Bell System and its post-divesture successor organizations have led the way in the development of large scale telecommunications provisioning systems. The authors discuss the evolution of these interconnected transaction processing systems from proprietary protocols, operating systems and architectures through to the planned open system interconnect protocols and open systems architecture. The main connectivity issues in open provisioning systems are centered around application to application communications and the migration of synchronous and asynchronous terminals to intelligent PC workstations or X/terminals over a TCP/IP network. The main operating system issue is the appropriate distribution between MVS and UNIX systems to provide various provisioning systems functionality. Two distinct themes are developed that are the evolution of the open architecture through the use of the UNIX operating system and the use of open system interconnect protocols. Use of these two themes create provisioning systems that are the closest one can currently come to an open architecture provisioning system today