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Shailesh Patwardhan
OSS transformation: closing the chapter, turning a new page
In the telecommunications industry, operations support systems (OSS) transformation has long been regarded as a fundamental step toward realizing autonomous networks (AN)—a goal now ranking among the top three priorities for CXOs worldwide. While communication service providers (CSPs) have been seeking to enhance efficiency, agility, and customer experience through digital transformation for decades, a sobering reality persists - nearly 70% of telecom digital transformations have failed to meet their objectives over the past two decades. This legacy of underperformance now contributes to hesitation, scepticism, and stalled business case toward achieving level 4+ network autonomy.
A closer analysis of past OSS transformation programs reveals that they typically encompass two intertwined but distinct domains:
The stack refresh focused on modernizing the technology foundation—migrating to cloud-native architectures, introducing APIs, and standardizing data layers—to create a resilient base for automation. Meanwhile, the Autonomy Journey sought to automate customer and operational workflows to deliver measurable outcomes such as improved time-to-market, reduced cost-to-serve, and enhanced service reliability.
Traditionally, these two domains have been executed together, making progress in autonomy overly dependent on the pace of technology modernization and slowing both efforts. The result, years-long programs that exhaust budgets, create transformation fatigue, and leave underlying business challenges unresolved. Ironically, in many cases, a full stack refresh was not even required to deliver the intended operational outcomes.
“True operational outcomes stem from autonomy, not from the underlying OSS stack refresh. Yet, the two are often intertwined—slowing both down.”
To move beyond this legacy of stagnation, CSPs must decouple modernization and autonomy journeys, enabling each to progress independently based on its own success metrics and timelines. This decoupled model—built around two parallel “swim-lanes”—has emerged as a pragmatic strategy to deliver results faster, minimize risk, and enable continuous evolution.
Treat this as a technology lifecycle modernization exercise, not an operational overhaul. The goal is to establish a future-ready, resilient foundation capable of supporting modular upgrades. Key enablers include:
This should be pursued as a KPI-driven, iterative, business improvement program—focused on achieving rapid, incremental, outcomes within 4–6 months. Leveraging overlays, AI, and data-driven insights, CSPs can unlock early wins without waiting for the completion of the stack refresh. Focus areas include:
This reimagined two-swim-lane approach provides clarity, agility, and faster returns. Research shows that while 57% of telecom executives consider cloud and AI as critical enablers for autonomous networks, only 19% of CSPs have successfully embedded AI in more than three OSS or network functions. Decoupling directly addresses this gap by allowing service-centric AIOps implementations to run in parallel with infrastructure modernization—rather than being constrained by it.
The benefits are tangible:
“By separating Autonomy Journeys from the OSS stack, CSPs can embrace AI, data, and agentic innovation—without waiting for the next big migration.”
Consider a CSP’s typical OSS landscape—fragmented systems for network rollout, inventory, and fault management; disjointed workflows across planning and design; and manual “swivel chair” operations. Traditionally, a transformation roadmap would replace these systems through a multi-year integrated program, but such efforts often face delays, overruns, and partial KPI realization—mirroring the 70% failure rate.
Under the reimagined approach, the CSP modernizes selectively:
CSPs must close the chapter on traditional, monolithic OSS transformations—lengthy, big-bang programs prone to delays—and turn the page to adopt a modular, outcome-driven approach. The future lies in decoupled, self-sustaining journeys that combine modernization with autonomy for continuous evolution toward Autonomous Networks. By leveraging service-centric AIOps, CSPs can accelerate measurable results, embed agility into roadmaps, integrate AI and data seamlessly, and reduce risks and costs. This new paradigm isn’t about massive overhauls; it’s about smarter, iterative, and KPI-focused evolution that delivers efficiency, autonomy, and resilience without the friction of legacy transformation models.
