The SIMA platform is an answer from INOV to the growing need of the new Telecommunications operators in gathering administration and operation information from the several systems of the telecommunications network in operation. The management and alarm SIMA platform dialogues with several equipments from different manufacturers that is monitoring and diagnosing, providing all the control information necessary and broadcasting, under the form of alarms, information for the operation and maintenance teams of the system.

The considerations that guided the design of the SIMA platform were:

• Modular architecture
  This platform in based in an object server, representing the nucleus. Many of the services common to all the components are implemented by the platform and reused, allowing a fast development of additional components.
  
  
• Scalable architecture
  Each monitoring and control service, is represented by a software module that can be connected to its respective agent (component server), depending on the requirements. This architecture based on components allows the platform to be used in administration and control of any system: from small equipments to large telecommunications systems.
  
  
• Integration with existent systems
  To integrate with any existing platform and management and monitoring protocol, SIMA™ supplies APIs (Application Program Interface) so that the several components of the system can be managed by other protocols.

The software architecture of the SIMA™ platform is divided in 3 different levels:

• Instrumentation Level;
  
• Agents Level;
  
• Administration level.
  

Besides basic administration and communication services, the architecture supplies a dynamic components container. Those components, developed later on the process, represent the resources that are managed and monitored by the platform. The registry of those components is completely dynamic and new systems or resources can be added or removed without stopping the platform.