1920: the birth of the term “Network Management”. ATT coined the term Network management, wherein supervisors used to roll on skates to manage the network incidents requiring attention.

1962: the first “Network Control Center” is born at ATT.

1977: the first “Network Operations Center” is born at ATT.

1987-8  was one of the most important years for Network management. The birth of SGMP and SNMP Version 1 protocols by IETF. The birth of ITSM by CCTA’ [Birth of Service Assurance concept]

1987: the first “Topology driven NOC”

1991: the birth of “Network Management as we know it”. Monitoring/surveillance/Operations & Administration assumed by NOC.

1993: birth of SNMP V2

1997: birth of SNMP V3

2001: Telecom bubble burst and highest emphasis on “doing more with less”/”Lean”. Birth of Business Service Management [Searching for hard citations, will update soon]

2003-05: Multiple Mergers and Acquisitions era starts with an effort of consolidation on Enterprise management market

2005: 3GPP goes big with the planning for LTE, SAE etc for defining the 4G networks and industry focus on Virtualization starts

2007: Forrester puts forward a study stating ManagedObjects and BMC as leaders of BSM. Lights a fire under IBM, HP and others to put forward better offerings.

References:

http://www.corp.att.com/history/nethistory/management.html

http://140.134.26.20/wbem/eng/ch2.html

http://www.ir.bbn.com/~craig/

http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200603/msg00182.html

http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/wave%26trade;_business_service_management,_q1_2007/q/id/38931/t/2