Tackling the challenges of autonomous operations
Imagine you are a composer. You hear a tune in your head, and write it down, note by note, on a manuscript, allocating parts to different instruments. Sometimes they will play solo, at other times in a group. The finished manuscript is handed to the conductor of the orchestra, and you wait anxiously to see how the musicians will transform your music from notes on paper into a performance. The conductor corrects wrong tones and sometimes you need to rearrange the score or swap the intended instrument for another to express the mood you intended.
29 Sep 2021
Tackling the challenges of autonomous operations
Imagine you are a composer. You hear a tune in your head, and write it down, note by note, on a manuscript, allocating parts to different instruments. Sometimes they will play solo, at other times in a group. The finished manuscript is handed to the conductor of the orchestra, and you wait anxiously to see how the musicians will transform your music from notes on paper into a performance. The conductor corrects wrong tones and sometimes you need to rearrange the score or swap the intended instrument for another to express the mood you intended.
This scenario nicely describes the complexity and challenges of current and future expansion of digital services in telco world. Chief executives, working with chief marketing officers, have a strategic services plan designed to appeal to their target markets, and achieve their shareholders’ goals.
They talk to their technical and operations peers to translate the intended service strategy into an operational plan that will provide the desired business results and customer experience. The chief technology, chief information and chief operations officers and their teams of experts look to optimize the necessary tools and skills to deliver those intended results and experience.
Sometimes although the tools and skills are not ready, the go-to-market strategy pressurizes the teams into using workarounds and even to bypass the development of new service tools to avoid delays to the service launches.
More difficulties arise from the launches: Unlike the world of music, the telco world does not play a single ‘service score’, but many of them in parallel, using multiple instruments that must be perfectly orchestrated. Sometimes Resource A is used for Service A, and another time it is used for Service B, and on other occasions Service A and Service B run in parallel.
As mobile networks evolved from 2G towards 5G, related services and resources evolved as well. In some cases, subsequent networks used some new service elements, in other case they reuse existing one. 5G Standalone (SA) architecture is good example of that. Evolution towards 5G None-Standalone (NSA) and especially 5G slicing will bring previously unknown challenges for service orchestration and automation.
Service orchestration and service automation are mutually dependent. Continuing the analogy from the musical world, antennas will be challenged to play and orchestrate different musical scores at same time, sometimes with the same instruments. Orchestration controls, monitoring and service recovery tools, will be needed to achieve the speed and extension of such operations which are way beyond the capabilities of human experts. We need autonomy and intelligent operations.
That’s why we believe that now is the right time to discuss, asses and reconsider existing operational models, at Network and IT level. A new kind of handshake between IT & Network operations is a essential for future service expansion.
Automation efforts that move operators towards autonomous operations must go hand in hand with an assessment of the maturity of operational orchestration capabilities. Tracking and correcting any service’s performance is a vital, starting from end-to-end monitoring of service loops to understand services’ context.
Although we have been enabling data-driven decisions for a couple of years, our customers tell us we must enhance their data-driven decision-making capabilities by adding more operational context and knowledge so they can automate more decision making ore, at the right time and right place.
Data is held in databases and information from them triggers actions to improve overall service performance, but data is ‘action-neutral’ – like the notes on the musical score. How they are played depends on their context to achieve the desired outcome. In telecoms, we need to select triggers and actions that will handle operational discrepancies and errors in the most efficient way.
Sometimes it will involve a human, other times it will be automated, and most of the time it will be some combination of the two – a human-machine collaboration. These new operational models need to be assessed, designed and executed, before the next wave of digital service hit markets.
At Huawei, we are closely following the operational implications for this coming digital service wave and participating in a new and methodical approach to systematically address challenges for in this heterogeneous operational environment as telecoms moves towards autonomous operations.
In particular, ID3EA* and Digital Transformation Practice Center (DTPC) cover the entire lifecycle with an operational workflow, guiding customers towards desired business and operational goals. As a starting point, Huawei offers a systematic maturity assessment to help operators quickly identify areas for improvements and it suggests ways to quickly and methodologically identify short-term, mid-term and long-term targets. Huawei can also assist in continuous operation, and adjust and optimize performance indicators.
We are looking forward to being part of your excellent operational and service performance that will be applauded by your customers.
*ID3EA: Consulting methodology including six steps, Initiate, Diagnose, Direct, Design, Execute, Appraise.
This scenario nicely describes the complexity and challenges of current and future expansion of digital services in telco world. Chief executives, working with chief marketing officers, have a strategic services plan designed to appeal to their target markets, and achieve their shareholders’ goals.
They talk to their technical and operations peers to translate the intended service strategy into an operational plan that will provide the desired business results and customer experience. The chief technology, chief information and chief operations officers and their teams of experts look to optimize the necessary tools and skills to deliver those intended results and experience.
Sometimes although the tools and skills are not ready, the go-to-market strategy pressurizes the teams into using workarounds and even to bypass the development of new service tools to avoid delays to the service launches.
Running multiple scores at once
More difficulties arise from the launches: Unlike the world of music, the telco world does not play a single ‘service score’, but many of them in parallel, using multiple instruments that must be perfectly orchestrated. Sometimes Resource A is used for Service A, and another time it is used for Service B, and on other occasions Service A and Service B run in parallel.
As mobile networks evolved from 2G towards 5G, related services and resources evolved as well. In some cases, subsequent networks used some new service elements, in other case they reuse existing one. 5G Standalone (SA) architecture is good example of that. Evolution towards 5G None-Standalone (NSA) and especially 5G slicing will bring previously unknown challenges for service orchestration and automation.
Service orchestration and service automation are mutually dependent. Continuing the analogy from the musical world, antennas will be challenged to play and orchestrate different musical scores at same time, sometimes with the same instruments. Orchestration controls, monitoring and service recovery tools, will be needed to achieve the speed and extension of such operations which are way beyond the capabilities of human experts. We need autonomy and intelligent operations.
That’s why we believe that now is the right time to discuss, asses and reconsider existing operational models, at Network and IT level. A new kind of handshake between IT & Network operations is a essential for future service expansion.
Automation and the use of AI tools
Automation efforts that move operators towards autonomous operations must go hand in hand with an assessment of the maturity of operational orchestration capabilities. Tracking and correcting any service’s performance is a vital, starting from end-to-end monitoring of service loops to understand services’ context.
Although we have been enabling data-driven decisions for a couple of years, our customers tell us we must enhance their data-driven decision-making capabilities by adding more operational context and knowledge so they can automate more decision making ore, at the right time and right place.
Data is held in databases and information from them triggers actions to improve overall service performance, but data is ‘action-neutral’ – like the notes on the musical score. How they are played depends on their context to achieve the desired outcome. In telecoms, we need to select triggers and actions that will handle operational discrepancies and errors in the most efficient way.
Sometimes it will involve a human, other times it will be automated, and most of the time it will be some combination of the two – a human-machine collaboration. These new operational models need to be assessed, designed and executed, before the next wave of digital service hit markets.
Operations for the best performance
At Huawei, we are closely following the operational implications for this coming digital service wave and participating in a new and methodical approach to systematically address challenges for in this heterogeneous operational environment as telecoms moves towards autonomous operations.
In particular, ID3EA* and Digital Transformation Practice Center (DTPC) cover the entire lifecycle with an operational workflow, guiding customers towards desired business and operational goals. As a starting point, Huawei offers a systematic maturity assessment to help operators quickly identify areas for improvements and it suggests ways to quickly and methodologically identify short-term, mid-term and long-term targets. Huawei can also assist in continuous operation, and adjust and optimize performance indicators.
We are looking forward to being part of your excellent operational and service performance that will be applauded by your customers.
*ID3EA: Consulting methodology including six steps, Initiate, Diagnose, Direct, Design, Execute, Appraise.
Huawei is a gold sponsor of the Digital Transformation World Series.
TM Forum’s Digital Transformation World Series is a global event for telco leaders who want to solve the problems of digital transformation. Join the four week digital event and hear from over 50+ C-level speakers, network with 10,000+ attendees from 165+ countries, upskill yourself through masterclasses, training sessions and more. Register now.
Note: Communication service providers: you can claim your free pass here.
TM Forum’s Digital Transformation World Series is a global event for telco leaders who want to solve the problems of digital transformation. Join the four week digital event and hear from over 50+ C-level speakers, network with 10,000+ attendees from 165+ countries, upskill yourself through masterclasses, training sessions and more. Register now.
Note: Communication service providers: you can claim your free pass here.
