Something extraordinary is happening in telecom: true transformation. This was the opening thought and consistent theme on Day 1 of TM Forum’s Digital Transformation World Series.Oddly, this “true transformation” has happened by sheer force – as in, the industry had no choice but to change due to the Covid-19 pandemic, global lock-down and the world’s immediate and fierce reliance on connectivity. If there is a bright side to this year, it is the telecom industry’s fundamental sea change, according to Nik Willetts, CEO, TM Forum.
“Because we’ve been forced to think on our feet, forced to make changes with conviction, forced to take risks and trust that those risks will pay off, we found a new way of working and we’ve, for the first time, I believe, truly embraced it,” Willetts said.
He added that the industry’s reaction to the pandemic and other business threats have shown that when necessary the industry can move quickly.
“When we need to find a solution fast, change happens. When the red tape is taken away, change happens. When we're forced to think differently, change happens,” Willetts said, acknowledging that any change seen so far was just a start and that much more change is necessary to meet the future needs of a connected world.
Connectivity should be easy
Willetts said that connectivity, while important, needs to be as easy to embrace as cloud computing has become over the last decade. He urged the industry not to get too comfortable with knowing connectivity is currently in high demand.
“In the long term, it consigned us to still being a utility,” he said. “The opportunity we have is to take a different path with the lessons learned during this time.”
The biggest difference between this path and that followed in previous years is partnerships. It is with partners collaborating with the TM Forum that the industry can unlock the power of the new set of technologies that have emerged in the last few years, including 5G, edge computing, IoT and AI.
To embrace this change and help lead the future, Willetts said TM Forum will help underpin a true revolution in the software of our industry that replaces old ways of working and processes and transforms the software base of the industry and skills.
He pointed to the progress on the new vision for software in this industry authored by Forum members and called the
Open Digital Architecture. The industry needs a modern focus that promotes reuse, is truly cloud native, enables businesses to innovate and drives that innovation, he said, adding that it also needs to move beyond architectural diagrams to developing actual working code and reference implementations and achieve greater interoperability.
A dozen new companies
committed to collaborating on building TM Forum’s ODA by signing
the Open API and Open Digital Architecture Manifesto, bringing the total to
42 companies. In his talk, Willetts previewed a new ODA Component Accelerator Program, which will help build specifications faster and is scheduled for official launch in December.
“The commitment of vendors in our market to make that happen is remarkable,” Willetts said. “We've gone from an environment where every vendor wants to take their own path to one where we can see an architecture that allows vendors to experiment and show their capabilities.”
Getting real about 5G monetization
In addition to moving beyond connectivity, the industry needs to get beyond talking about use cases and get real about them and about
5G monetization and real business cases. It also need to be more open about partnerships and even leveraging open source.
In the keynote address that followed,
Orange Chairman and CEO Stéphane Richard said he believes open source can help the industry standardize its foundations and facilitate future innovation.
“This would provide vendors with sufficient diversity of scenarios that would enable them to differentiate but in a way that drastically reduces the integration and deployment burden. I am delighted to see that TM Forum embraces the open source way of doing standards that does not pose a threat to software vendors but acts as a catalyst to accelerate consensus.”
Richard, who is also chairman of the
GSMA, said ODA will mark a significant change for the industry, simplifying solutions and removing the need for large scale customization integration. Richard also vowed that
GSMA and TM Forum will work more closely together to bring IT and network closer together through open architectures.
Needing a rapid IT shift
One way they will work together is to unify the approaches to IT and network. Richard said the way telcos operate today is too complex, too rigid and too cost intensive.
“Our core IT, the billing systems, the ordering systems, the provisioning systems…these systems were built, 10 to 30 years ago, often made of legacy processes and technologies and they are a systemic part of the problem,” he said.
“I am fully convinced that the industry also needs a rapid shift to an open, modern, software-based technology architecture that enables new operating and business models, one which is loosely coupled, cloud native, and AI driven, made up of standard components, which can be easily procured and deployed, without the need for customization.”
In other words, the telecom industry must evolve from a closed IT architecture, where it is only delivering its own services to its own customers to an open platform architecture accessed through openly available APIs.
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