On-going industry convergence and pressure to reduce cost is placing an ever-increasing emphasis on the need to rationalize and align various network management aspects across boundaries of standards/specifications producing organizations. The cost, resulting from integration and management challenges, of the lack of a coherent treatment of the whole network has becoming increasingly apparent to the point where operators of networks are demanding action.

This document provides key concepts and principles for the Federated Network Information Model covering all key aspects of a solution to the on-going industry convergence challenge. The proposal focuses on Information Model federation and is constructed to best deal with the various contradictory pressures of the current environment providing a pragmatic and realizable approach. The structure proposed will be called the Federated Network Information Model (FNIM).