TSOM without TNI for telco network discovery

[snehapatel]

Hi,

We are planning to use TSOM for discovering the telco network. With reference to the below documentation

"Horizontal Discovery is an automated process that continuously scans and identifies all the components within the network infrastructure. It plays a crucial role in maintaining an accurate and up-to-date CMDB and TNI with the information in the network."

Is it necessary to have TNI for discovering the telco networks. If we do not use TNI, then is it we need to create custom CI classes/tables to map the telco network elements. We are not thinking of using the TNI as the there no immediate plans to migrate/replace current inventory being used. Need to understand the impact of not not using TNI when using TSOM for discovering the telco networks.

Thanks,

Sneha

[Aneesh-D · Accepted solution]

Hi @snehapatel - This should be a very conscious decision considering the future. 
As of today, there seems to be no dependencies between TSOM discovery and TNI.
Plugin Installation: Telecom Discovery Pattern plugin has only one dependency and TNI is not that.

I just tried a discovering a Nexus9K switch from an Instance where TNI was not installed and nothing seems to be failing.

As I said, this is as of today and TSOM discovery is fairly new and is going to evolve a lot. So not sure of the immediate future. So I would suggest you to connect with your ServiceNow account contact and understand TSOM road map and see if it aligns with your Organization road map.

In case if you wanted to read details around TSOM discovery please take a look at this article: https://www.servicenow.com/community/telecom-articles/servicenow-tsom-discovery/ta-p/3284068