The 5G-era’s expectations for operations

With the exciting capabilities of 5G-era networks and the lofty expectations placed upon CSPs to drive significant growth through new, innovative use cases, there is a need for CSPs to evolve and transform their traditional operations methods to unlock the value of their networks. Whether we use comparisons to newer tech industry segments like hyper-scalers and Industry 4.0, or if we compare ourselves to completely different, older industries like transportation and manufacturing, we know that more streamlined, software-based operations can lead to significant improvements to productivity and the bottom line.

Shortcomings of present operations

Traditional CSP operations have been built to support extreme performance and availability rigors (five nines), while also being held accountable to regulatory conditions in quasi utility-like ways. This has led to many manual-intensive and conservative methods which, in turn, cause significant reductions in operational efficiencies. To satisfy these high rigors and the required compliance controls, the software systems that have been built and used have been highly compartmentalized and tightly integrated to the underlying network technologies. All told, traditional operations systems limit innovation and CSPs will be hard-pressed to turn a profit on current 5G investments; and they will not be able to support the new use cases anticipated in next-generation networking To achieve profitable returns through innovative services such as network slicing and NaaS, CSPs need to integrate newer, cloud-native automation software directly into the network’s operations.  

The medicine that Nokia recommends

To meet the expectations of the 5G-era, it’s no longer possible to operate with traditional software systems that are siloed and tightly coupled to the network technologies. The complexity of 5G-era networks alone will bring traditional operations to a screeching halt. The industry analyst firm Appledore Research has projected a 100-fold increase in operations actions due to the layered complexity of these 5G-era networks. But there is hope: these new networks are software-based, containerized, and disaggregated , which means they are programmable. What’s missing are software applications that can leverage these highly programmable networks to create automation that CSPs can trust. With the right software applications, CSPs can be confident they’re meeting five nines performance and regulatory compliance; and perhaps more to the point in 5G-era networks, CSPs will be able to deliver dynamic, slice-based services to the lucrative enterprise segment through end-to-end automation and service intent-based operations.

We feel a completely new operating paradigm is required. We need to evolve from traditionally separate fulfillment and assurance systems toward a new, round-trip integrated process that coordinates the flow between the CSP’s commercial-facing systems (or do we say “monetization”) and the underlying networks themselves. The graphic below depicts Nokia’s view of this new paradigm: an end-to-end service operations process that spans the business, network and infrastructure layers to design, deploy and assure services at scale in an automated, closed-loop integrated process across multi-vendor networks.

Enter Nokia Digital Operations software. A few years ago, we recognized the limitations of traditional operations software across the industry, so we made the investment to build new from the ground up. Nokia’s Digital Operations software is fully cloud-native and openly programmable to enable CSPs to customize and innovate in 5G and beyond. This software is not a framework nor a set of building blocks that require long, extensive deployment programs. Using Nokia’s extensive working expertise in networks and operations, the software has built-in functionality that can be tailored quickly to each respective CSP environment.  This allows CSPs to deliver slice-based services at scale, and in turn, achieve faster time-to-benefits.
 

Conclusion

The telecom ecosystem continues to expand in the 5G era, offering CSPs more choice than ever in partners. Nokia is a long-standing CSP partner, with deep network knowledge combined with the proven software expertise needed to help CSPs modernize both network and service operations.

PLDT/Smart is a leading CSP that recognizes how important this combination of experience is in the new operating paradigm. The Philippines operator chose to deploy Nokia’s Digital Operations software to automate the full, round-trip lifecycle management of both network operations and customer-facing services. Specifically, Nokia is helping PLDT/Smart automate the lifecycle that orchestrates services and network slices across the network, from design, to deployment, to assurance. As a result, PDLT/Smart will cut costs through operational efficiencies, and improve network agility to deliver innovative services in 5G.  

Nokia continues to bring its proven strength in networks and software to CSPs globally. For more detail, visit our Digital Operations Center.