Reaching new heights founded on a dynamic inventory cornerstone
Sponsored by: Blue Planet Predictive analytics serve to drive informed, prescriptive actions that enable networks to adapt rapidly to changing market demands, ultimately enhancing the end-customer experience.
30 Apr 2019
Reaching new heights founded on a dynamic inventory cornerstone
Sponsored by: Blue Planet
In building construction, the cornerstone is the critical element to ensure a reliable, long-standing structure. If the cornerstone is not solid, the entire structure is shaky and will not be able to withstand harsh conditions.
In the world of networking, what serves as the cornerstone? How can service providers embark on digital transformation and network automation projects if they are not aware of the resources underpinning their networks? To effectively manage their networks at the most basic level, service providers need an inventory system that accurately presents all available resources, physical and virtual, end to end. Only after laying this foundation can operators build automation capabilities, block by block: next comes service orchestration within a domain, and across multiple domains, as well as route optimization and assurance. Furthermore, the accuracy and precision of business processes can be augmented with advanced analytics powered by AI techniques. With these analytics building blocks, network automation can reach new heights. Predictive analytics serve to drive informed, prescriptive actions that enable networks to adapt rapidly to changing market demands, ultimately enhancing the end-customer experience.
Within a service provider, three interconnected network and IT processes are integral to business operations:
To fulfill their business functions, operations personnel rely on IT systems that are underpinned by inventory data, yet that data is fragmented, spread across multiple inventory systems. For example, there is network inventory data (such as device or port), geolocation inventory data (for example, if a router is on the third floor of a building at a specific address), and passive equipment data (such as patch panels or cross-connects). There is also data associated with the state of subscriber services.
This data exists for multiple domains (such as access, metro, core) and network layers (such as optical, Ethernet, IP). It is not uncommon for large providers to have dozens of different inventory systems, either vendor-supplied or internally developed. Service providers have steadily built overlay network infrastructure and Operational Support Systems (OSSs) to meet each new service demand.
Moreover, these legacy inventory systems are static; they not informed by real-time network information. Today, as virtualization technologies are introduced alongside traditional, hardware-based infrastructure, OSSs must become more in sync with the live state of the managed networks. A static, inaccurate view of resources leads to a breakdown of the mission-critical processes that span IT and network.
Multiple assurance systems also exist per domain and per layer. These present real-time performance metrics, yet are not correlated, thus making it difficult to determine how issues in one domain or layer impact end-to-end services, and to troubleshoot the root cause of issues.
When it comes to capacity planning, historical metrics typically are painstakingly, manually analyzed so sufficient network capacity can be built out at the needed locations to satisfy customer demand. The proliferation of OSS silos leads service providers to over-engineer to minimize service order failure and loss of revenue.
Due to these shortcomings, over time, business processes have become riddled with errors, ultimately driving higher operational costs and a poor QoE for the end-customer.
Blue Planet enables service providers to bridge IT and network operational silos and re-evaluate and optimize the critical business processes, leveraging the key elements of intelligent automation—dynamic inventory, systems federation, analytics, policy management, multidomain orchestration, network and service topology and visualization, and route optimization and assurance.
In the world of networking, what serves as the cornerstone? How can service providers embark on digital transformation and network automation projects if they are not aware of the resources underpinning their networks? To effectively manage their networks at the most basic level, service providers need an inventory system that accurately presents all available resources, physical and virtual, end to end. Only after laying this foundation can operators build automation capabilities, block by block: next comes service orchestration within a domain, and across multiple domains, as well as route optimization and assurance. Furthermore, the accuracy and precision of business processes can be augmented with advanced analytics powered by AI techniques. With these analytics building blocks, network automation can reach new heights. Predictive analytics serve to drive informed, prescriptive actions that enable networks to adapt rapidly to changing market demands, ultimately enhancing the end-customer experience.
Legacy operational systems have irreparable cracks
Within a service provider, three interconnected network and IT processes are integral to business operations:
- Plan to build – Creation of the service-ready network that is able to support new services, including physical, logical, and virtual infrastructure
- Order to service – Taking the customer request and converting it into service via the network resources and applications
- Trouble to resolve – Proactive monitoring of the service to handle events and faults and restore services to a normal state
To fulfill their business functions, operations personnel rely on IT systems that are underpinned by inventory data, yet that data is fragmented, spread across multiple inventory systems. For example, there is network inventory data (such as device or port), geolocation inventory data (for example, if a router is on the third floor of a building at a specific address), and passive equipment data (such as patch panels or cross-connects). There is also data associated with the state of subscriber services.
This data exists for multiple domains (such as access, metro, core) and network layers (such as optical, Ethernet, IP). It is not uncommon for large providers to have dozens of different inventory systems, either vendor-supplied or internally developed. Service providers have steadily built overlay network infrastructure and Operational Support Systems (OSSs) to meet each new service demand.
Moreover, these legacy inventory systems are static; they not informed by real-time network information. Today, as virtualization technologies are introduced alongside traditional, hardware-based infrastructure, OSSs must become more in sync with the live state of the managed networks. A static, inaccurate view of resources leads to a breakdown of the mission-critical processes that span IT and network.
Multiple assurance systems also exist per domain and per layer. These present real-time performance metrics, yet are not correlated, thus making it difficult to determine how issues in one domain or layer impact end-to-end services, and to troubleshoot the root cause of issues.
When it comes to capacity planning, historical metrics typically are painstakingly, manually analyzed so sufficient network capacity can be built out at the needed locations to satisfy customer demand. The proliferation of OSS silos leads service providers to over-engineer to minimize service order failure and loss of revenue.
Due to these shortcomings, over time, business processes have become riddled with errors, ultimately driving higher operational costs and a poor QoE for the end-customer.
Blueprint for success – Blue Planet® Intelligent Automation
Blue Planet enables service providers to bridge IT and network operational silos and re-evaluate and optimize the critical business processes, leveraging the key elements of intelligent automation—dynamic inventory, systems federation, analytics, policy management, multidomain orchestration, network and service topology and visualization, and route optimization and assurance.
Each service provider line of business has a product catalog of services that span any mix of network domains; therefore, operations personnel need to access multiple, per-domain inventory and monitoring systems to complete service planning, fulfillment, and assurance tasks. Blue Planet Intelligent Automation synchronizes per-domain information and correlates real-time network data to present a single, accurate view of network resources. This gives operators the ability to create customer services that combine any domain resource and manage the full lifecycle of operations for that service—including troubleshooting and SLA monitoring—across multiple vendors and hybrid physical and virtual network infrastructure. By abstracting the complexity of the underlying multi-domain infrastructure, Blue Planet greatly accelerates and simplifies business operations that rely on both IT systems and the network.
Ultimately, Blue Planet enables closed-loop automation. Network state and performance telemetry generated by instrumented physical and virtual infrastructure help derive business insights, which in turn help define and refine software control policies. Ongoing analytics trigger policy-guided actions back into the programmable network, enabling automation of network planning, service fulfillment, and assurance processes. This open, data-driven approach optimally aligns and accelerates the critical business processes that span IT and network operations, thus delivering faster time to revenue, reduced costs, and a better end customer experience.
The first step to holistic automation involves federation of multiple per-domain, per-layer inventory systems, along with reconciliation with real-time network data to create a single, dynamic view of all network resources. This approach allows service providers to leave their existing system investments in place while introducing a ‘single pane of glass’ with a user-friendly, next-generation interface. Innovative visualization of end-to-end network and service views dramatically improves the ability to troubleshoot network issues and accelerates the network planning and design processes.
Furthermore, many tasks that were extremely tedious and error-prone can now be automated due to Blue Planet’s open APIs, which allow for simple integration to adjacent OSSs.
Laying the dynamic inventory foundation
The first step to holistic automation involves federation of multiple per-domain, per-layer inventory systems, along with reconciliation with real-time network data to create a single, dynamic view of all network resources. This approach allows service providers to leave their existing system investments in place while introducing a ‘single pane of glass’ with a user-friendly, next-generation interface. Innovative visualization of end-to-end network and service views dramatically improves the ability to troubleshoot network issues and accelerates the network planning and design processes.
Furthermore, many tasks that were extremely tedious and error-prone can now be automated due to Blue Planet’s open APIs, which allow for simple integration to adjacent OSSs.
Layering automation building blocks
With the dynamic inventory foundation in place, service providers can raise their automation capabilities with multi-domain and NFV orchestration. This software enables them to dynamically create, deploy, and automate the end-to-end delivery of services across both physical and virtual networks. It provides a scalable and open software abstraction layer that enables seamless service automation across any mix of vendors and network layers. Leveraging an agile, DevOps-style approach toward resource onboarding and service development, it also allows service providers to easily and rapidly incorporate new networking resources and bring innovative new services to market.
Additionally, Blue Planet route optimization and assurance capabilities uniquely combine routing, traffic, and performance analytics for real-time, path-aware operational monitoring of IP/MPLS networks, and backin-time forensics to troubleshoot problems that can cause service disruptions. Interactive modeling helps engineers optimize their networks by helping to predict the impact of changes, simulate new workloads for capacity planning, and test failure scenarios.
Designing windows into the network
Instrumented network infrastructure generates a wealth of network data that informs IT systems with real-time information and can be used for diagnostic purposes.
Advanced analytics goes beyond simply analyzing patterns and trends and taking reactive actions—it enables proactive operations. Using AI and machine learning methodologies, operators gain the ability to more accurately predict potential network problems and anticipate trends. Mountains of collected data can be turned into actionable insights that drive the creation and fine-tuning of data-driven business policies. These intent-based policies are used by the software policy engine to trigger automated actions back into the programmable network infrastructure. In this way, the network can adapt to changing demands and resolve problems before they even occur. Examples include adjustment of bandwidth allocation, rerouting of a service path, instantiation of virtual functions, or auto-scaling. And the cycle continues indefinitely—an adaptive network continually generates telemetry for ongoing analytics to scale and self-optimize.
Built to last, built to scale
Service providers are striving to outpace their competition to meet the ever-increasing expectations from end-customers for differentiated and on-demand services, high bandwidth, and high QoE. To succeed, providers know they need to undergo a digital transformation—making their IT and network operations smarter and more agile so they can adapt to changing market dynamics more quickly and remain relevant to their markets.
Blue Planet’s Intelligent Automation portfolio enables service providers to succeed in their digital transformations by bringing together best-in-class dynamic, federated inventory, analytics, multi-domain orchestration, and route optimization and assurance capabilities. Built upon an open, microservices-based infrastructure, these capabilities work together to achieve a closed-loop approach to intelligently automating mission-critical business processes that span IT and the network. This approach is unique in the industry. Blue Planet offers expertise in both networking and IT automation, and highly specialized professional services, to deliver a comprehensive solution. Furthermore, Blue Planet provides an open, programmable platform that can be leveraged for continued enhancements using DevOps methodologies. With Blue Planet, service providers can evolve from the constraints of their legacy environments to an agile operational approach based on greater insight and synchronization, and the automation of IT and network processes. The result is closed-loop automation that maximizes operational flexibility to deliver a better customer experience while driving top-line revenue growth.
