Action Week: A blueprint for intelligent operations
During the first day of TM Forum’s Action Week virtual event, CTO George Glass explained how the Open Digital Architecture (ODA) can enable “a blueprint for intelligent operations fit for the 5G era”.
02 Feb 2021
Action Week: A blueprint for intelligent operations
During the first day of TM Forum’s Action Week virtual event, CTO George Glass explained how the Open Digital Architecture (ODA) can enable “a blueprint for intelligent operations fit for the 5G era”.
Glass pointed to what is driving digital transformation in the marketplace, and thus the need for the ODA, which itself is a blueprint for modular, cloud-based, open digital platforms that can be orchestrated using AI. The ODA replaces traditional operational and business support systems (OSS/BSS) with a new approach to building software for the telecoms industry.
He pointed to several important trends:
As data center infrastructure is virtualized, companies can acquire compute and storage on demand. TM Forum members are developing standardized, interoperable and reusable software components that expose business services through the Open APIs. Using this approach operators can adopt cloud native IT applications suitable for deployment in private, public or hybrid clouds.
Another big change is the adoption of network virtualization and software-defined networking, which is leading to cloud native networks.
The evolution of data analytics is helping CSPs use factual data to decide how to service, integrate and interact with customers. This initially started a flood of work around enterprise data warehouses, extracting data from operational IT applications, depositing it in a big data lake, and then processing it offline and feeding the information and knowledge back into the architecture, and into the applications to control operations.
But even that wasn’t sufficient to meet demand in the marketplace. Companies need to have that information available in real time, and decisions made based on the data must be processed instantaneously. This requires AI.
CSPs are hoping that the ODA and Open APIs will help them move beyond connectivity to address vertical markets with new solutions, especially as they deploy 5G. Glass explains the marketplace concept like this:
“The services that you’ve been developing as a vendor and operator are exposed into a software market, and other producers put their services alongside your services,” he said. “Together we can mash up new services and build new end-to-end solutions for our customers, potentially in adjacent vertical markets. So, we see the emergence of things like smart cities, smart manufacturing, smart agriculture, smart health, and so forth.”
As all these transformations are taking place, organizations are also recognizing the transformation that needs to happen within. This goes beyond technology to the heart of a company: its people and culture.
“As the technology is emerging, we are preparing the Open Digital Architecture – the underlying architecture that supports this transformation [to meet these changes],” Glass said.
Finally, as CSPs create digital efficiency within their own industry, their own companies and organizational processes, they move from being a “traditional” telco towards being a digital one. But this digital enablement story is not mature across the board, and that’s an opportunity to embrace new business models and build strong and effective partnerships. This requires more than implementing a digital division within a company.
During Action Week, hundreds of TM Forum members are collaborating to develop the ODA, define connectivity-as-a-service, explore 5G monetization, understand the impact of IoT on business assurance and more. To learn more about how to get involved in TM Forum's Collaboration Community, contact George Glass directly.
Glass pointed to what is driving digital transformation in the marketplace, and thus the need for the ODA, which itself is a blueprint for modular, cloud-based, open digital platforms that can be orchestrated using AI. The ODA replaces traditional operational and business support systems (OSS/BSS) with a new approach to building software for the telecoms industry.
“At the backbone of what we’re doing within the TM forum, the Open Digital Architecture is the digital architecture for an ecosystem that actually supports our members’ digital transformation,” said Glass.
He pointed to several important trends:
Virtualized data center infrastructure
As data center infrastructure is virtualized, companies can acquire compute and storage on demand. TM Forum members are developing standardized, interoperable and reusable software components that expose business services through the Open APIs. Using this approach operators can adopt cloud native IT applications suitable for deployment in private, public or hybrid clouds.
Softwarized networks
Another big change is the adoption of network virtualization and software-defined networking, which is leading to cloud native networks.
“We’re actually seeing the transformation that happened in the IT space starting to happen in the network space,” Glass explained. “That’s a very exciting opportunity for us because the processes, the practices, the skills that we’ve been developing over many years in the IT space for the operations and management of what was traditionally customer management, product ordering and billing, is now applicable down in the network domain.”
Proliferation of data analytics and the need for AI
The evolution of data analytics is helping CSPs use factual data to decide how to service, integrate and interact with customers. This initially started a flood of work around enterprise data warehouses, extracting data from operational IT applications, depositing it in a big data lake, and then processing it offline and feeding the information and knowledge back into the architecture, and into the applications to control operations.
“There was too much data; the decisions were becoming too complex,” Glass said. “So, we had to bring machines into the process, and we introduced machine learning. And we started to see machine learning being applied to the data and actually driving the operations both on the customer-facing side and early emergence into the network side.
But even that wasn’t sufficient to meet demand in the marketplace. Companies need to have that information available in real time, and decisions made based on the data must be processed instantaneously. This requires AI.
Moving beyond connectivity
CSPs are hoping that the ODA and Open APIs will help them move beyond connectivity to address vertical markets with new solutions, especially as they deploy 5G. Glass explains the marketplace concept like this:
“The services that you’ve been developing as a vendor and operator are exposed into a software market, and other producers put their services alongside your services,” he said. “Together we can mash up new services and build new end-to-end solutions for our customers, potentially in adjacent vertical markets. So, we see the emergence of things like smart cities, smart manufacturing, smart agriculture, smart health, and so forth.”
The humanity behind the transformation
As all these transformations are taking place, organizations are also recognizing the transformation that needs to happen within. This goes beyond technology to the heart of a company: its people and culture.
“As the technology is emerging, we are preparing the Open Digital Architecture – the underlying architecture that supports this transformation [to meet these changes],” Glass said.
The partnership evolution
Finally, as CSPs create digital efficiency within their own industry, their own companies and organizational processes, they move from being a “traditional” telco towards being a digital one. But this digital enablement story is not mature across the board, and that’s an opportunity to embrace new business models and build strong and effective partnerships. This requires more than implementing a digital division within a company.
It’s about “having the whole organization – all of the products and services, the components and the applications and the API’s that you develop – being suitable for that digital ecosystem and being a true digital partner.” Glass explained.
During Action Week, hundreds of TM Forum members are collaborating to develop the ODA, define connectivity-as-a-service, explore 5G monetization, understand the impact of IoT on business assurance and more. To learn more about how to get involved in TM Forum's Collaboration Community, contact George Glass directly.