Accelerate delivery of third-party solutions integrated with Cisco ANA to your customers and extend opportunities to new markets
Cisco® Active Network Abstraction (ANA) is a powerful, next-generation network resource management solution designed with a fully distributed OSS mediation platform which abstracts the network, its topology and its capabilities from the physical elements. Its virtual nature provides customers with a strong and reliable platform for service activation, service assurance and network management. As a result, independent software vendors (ISVs), system integrators (SIs), and end users can focus their efforts on adding new management services rather than each having to maintain their own mediation layer to the network equipment. The resulting operations support system (OSS)/business support system (BSS) platform will help the entire service provider community better align network capabilities and costs with business demands and allow faster deployment of services to their customers.
Features and Benefits
To help facilitate this, Cisco offers a comprehensive ANA Integration Software Development Kit and its associated developer program to help enable end-user and partner developers to integrate/interoperate existing OSS/BSS applications with the Cisco ANA network resource management solution and to provide partners go-to-market opportunities to promote their applications integrated with Cisco ANA.
The Cisco ANA Integration SDK offers the features listed in Table 1.
Table 1. Features and Benefits of Cisco Active Network Abstraction Integration SDK
Features
Benefits
Standards-based interfaces: Web services and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)
• Standard northbound interfaces reduce OSS/BSS integration complexity
• Modular interfaces preserve your investment , independent of specific device access methods
Developer aids such as developer guide, model primer, sample applications, developer forums and developer support
• Minimal ramp-up and development time
• Content updates keep developers with most up-to-date information
• Active developer participation in Cisco ANA forums
Cisco ANA developer program
• Greater sense of developer community through committed Cisco developer program
• Certification of partner implementation provides greater customer confidence in joint solution and reduces integration effort
• Go-to-market activities
Integrating with Cisco ANA enables you to:
• Use an abstraction layer that hides the device complexities from applications
• Deliver greater value to customers by allowing you to focus on real value-added service management
• Offer much-demanded integrated service management applications sharing a common infrastructure
• Expand market through increased visibility of your solutions to Cisco ANA end users
As a result, Cisco ANA end users can:
• Use the value of pre-tested integrated applications by reducing deployment time and internal integration costs
• Benefit from a larger pool of interoperable vendor solutions
• More effectively support the delivery and management of new services
• Benefit from coordinated product support between Cisco and the application vendor
Program Benefits
Cisco ANA offers several integration APIs in the form of an Integration Software Development Kit (SDK):
• Web service interfaces to extract device and topology inventory
• Web service interfaces to provision network equipment through activation scripts, workflows or configuration templates
• Web service interfaces to invoke management services for device image management and device configuration archiving
• Web service interfaces to subscribe and receive alert notifications
• Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) traps as alert notifications
• Information model extensibility through a graphical user interface
The Cisco ANA developer program applies to:
• Partners such as independent software vendors to integrate their commercial applications with ANA.
• Cisco ANA end users and system integrators who need to integrate Cisco ANA with other applications using the Cisco ANA Integration SDK.
The program offers several features and benefits during and beyond the integration cycle.
During the implementation phase, the Cisco ANA developer program provides developers with the following:
• Cisco ANA software for partner development
• Developer documentation (Developer Guide, API Reference, Model Primer)
• Application samples
• White papers
• Developer support
• Developer forums
• Validation of partner implementations
After successful validation of a partner implementation, the Cisco ANA developer program offers go-to-market activities to further enable partners to promote their solutions, which can include:
• Partner manager
• Partner newsletter
• Logo use
• Participation in Cisco events
• Cisco product discounts
• Company and product profiles on Cisco.com's Partner catalog
• Coordinated product support agreement
Table 2 gives a summary of the benefits of the Cisco ANA Developer Program.
Table 2. Summary of the Cisco ANA Developer Program Benefits
Benefits
ISVs, SIs
End-User
Cisco developer program level
Affiliate
Partner
N/A
Partner registration
X
X
Relationship management
Partner Manager
Partner Manager
Account Manager
Cisco ANA software and development license
X
X
X
Developer Web site (white papers, documentation, code samples)
X
X
X
Developer support (fee-based)
X
X
X
Class training (fee-based)
X
X
X
Validation of product integration
X
X
Partner newsletter
X
X
Logo use
X
X
Participation to Cisco events
X
X
X
Cisco product discounts
X
X
Cisco partner catalog on Cisco.com (fee-based)
X
X
Partner help desk
X
X
Supported Software Development Kits
The Cisco ANA developer program is available for the ANA Integration SDK.
As other ANA SDKs are made available, the Cisco ANA developer program will be enhanced to support those SDKs, thus preserving a common program for all ANA partners and end users.
For more information about the Cisco ANA developer program or the ANA Integration SDK, visit http://www.cisco.com/go/ana-sdk.
To become a member of the Cisco ANA developer program, ISVs and SIs must register for the Cisco ANA developer program at http://www.cisco.com/go/ana-sdk while Cisco ANA end users should contact their Cisco account manager for further details
