Intent-driven service operations are the route to new vertical partnerships for CSPs
Intent-driven service operations are the route to new vertical partnerships for CSPs
What? Translating customer needs into service and network intent Phase II helps CSPs shift from static service design to intent-based methods
Who’s involved? Nokia, KDDI Research, TELUS, Verizon, Salesforce
Commercial context
5G’s ability to support next-generation connected services has not come cheaply for communication service providers (CSPs), involving one of the most intensive periods of investment in the industry’s history. The challenge for CSPs, now that 5G is truly here, is to determine how to make good on this expenditure in ways that don’t require long waits for ROI. To diversify revenue streams and reduce operations costs, but also drive income growth quickly, CSPs must focus on simplifying the process of planning, onboarding, and delivering on enterprise partnerships with vertical industries – which, while rich with opportunity, can be complex to set up, expensive to resource, and ultimately slow to pay off. It is crucial, then, to reduce the friction typical in B2B by evolving past traditional imperative integration flows.
The solution
Intent-driven approaches have a key role to play here, enabling CSPs to manage the lifecycle of a 5G network slice through its expressed business intent, and dynamically match network resources to customer needs. This can allow the CSP to simplify provisioning, precisely target capabilities depending on application, and ultimately provide the same connectivity support more efficiently – reducing cost and time-to-market, while enabling them in turn to focus resources on unlocking new business models. The Translating customer needs into service and network intent Phase II is targeted at precisely this outcome: helping CSPs shift from static service design to intent-based declarative methods, with a solution integrating business support systems (BSS) software and underlying operations support systems (OSS) software, using TM Forum’s Open application programming interfaces (APIs) and Open Digital Architecture (ODA).
Pilot applications
Vertical industry partnerships work best when they are market-driven and enterprise-led wherever possible in conception, then zero-touch wherever possible in delivery – which this project has demonstrated using an intent, data and AIOps-driven solution based on TM Forum’s Open API 921, which acts as a catalyst for autonomous behavior at every level between customer, service and network. Autonomy is enabled for offer and price setup on the customer layer, intent-driven operations in the service layer, enabling autonomous behavior and optimization of networking capabilities. Intent-based methods are essential here so the enterprises do not need to provide explicit direction on how their needs should be met – the solution allows CSP to translate customer needs to what the network must deliver in support of those needs.
The team – which includes participants from TELUS, Verizon and KDDI Research as CSP champions, and Salesforce and Nokia as technology vendors – also leveraged TMF ODA and TMF Open APIs to scope and design the integration across components. Proof-of-concept via a live video streaming use case – whereby enterprises define business intent in a few clicks, indicating service needs for quality, location, usage and schedule – allowing simultaneous agreement of costs and required, need-based SLAs, resulting in optimized resource allocation throughout the entire life-cycle of the dynamic slice-based service. If the network is not able to fulfil the required service level agreements (SLAs), they can be renegotiated with the enterprise, and once agreed the revised business intent will be autonomously translated into service intent. The solution abstracts the network capabilities to the market while efficiently hiding the complexity of the network from the CSP enterprise customers.
Value to the wider industry
The solution is however use-case agnostic, so will be applicable across industries, allowing CSPs to broaden their commercial horizons quickly without taking on major new operational costs. “As operators, we have high expectations for the potential of autonomous networks and intent-driven operations,” explains Takuya Miyasaka, Research Engineer at KDDI Research. “By introducing these technologies, we anticipate more personalized and fine-tuned services, increasing revenue and customer satisfaction. Additionally, the operational transformation will lead to significant cost reductions, making our services more efficient and competitive in the market.” Dynamic, need-based and flexible resource allocation throughout the life-cycle of slice-based services will ensure the complexity of 5G networks remains hidden from customers – while making the customer-facing aspects easier than ever for them to get the services they need to support their business goals and ambitions.
At the DTW Asia 2023 Catalyst Awards, this Catalyst was the winner of the Outstanding Catalyst – Sustainability and Impact on Society Award. It was also a finalist in three other categories of Best Innovation and Future Techco, Outstanding Catalyst – Business Impact, and Outstanding Catalyst – Showcase.
Visit the Catalyst webpage here to find out more.
At the DTW Asia 2023 Catalyst Awards, this Catalyst was the winner of the Outstanding Catalyst – Sustainability and Impact on Society Award. It was also a finalist in three other categories of Best Innovation and Future Techco, Outstanding Catalyst – Business Impact, and Outstanding Catalyst – Showcase.
