TM Forum’s MAMA project builds momentum
Turk Telekom and Vodafone share why they are involved in TM Forum's Measuring and Managing Autonomy project and how they expect it to support their own efforts to drive, and realize business benefits from, autonomous operations.
TM Forum’s MAMA project builds momentum
Vodafone and Turk Telekom are two of a growing number of communication service providers (CSP) that are supporting TM Forum’s Measuring and Managing Autonomy (MAMA) workstream launched in June 2022 as an autonomous operations initiative.
Amarjit Singh, who leads on Digital Channels, Security and Enterprise CIAM Design Authority at Vodafone Business, also contributed to the project’s white paper published in August 2022. The MAMA Framework is described as a closed-loop methodology to define, measure and manage the value of autonomous operations.
In a webinar organized by TM Forum’s Global Architecture Forum (GAF), titled Measuring and managing autonomy (MAMA) to unlock business value, both Singh and Ali Emre Tiryaki, Senior Specialist at Turk Telekom, explained why they are involved in the MAMA project and how they expect it to support their own efforts to drive, and realize business benefits from, autonomous operations.
Singh particularly highlighted one of the four major components of the framework, called value streams. The value stream defines a sequence of value-adding activities (value stages) that creates an overall value for a customer or stakeholder. For example, the white paper focused on two value streams: assure network and service reliability and customer experience.
In terms of the role played by the value streams in the move towards self-propelling, autonomous networks, Singh noted that there are three key players here: the people who define the value that needs to be measured, those who generate the value, and those who realize the value.
Turk Telekom highlighted how MAMA is expected to help close the gap by connecting automated processes to business values. As explained by Tiryaki, the operator effectively began its journey to MAMA three years ago when it launched its AI in Operations project, followed by the Intelligent Network Automation project last year. A key aim of the projects is to interpret network KPIs to evaluate problems before customers have reported them, or are even aware of them, to improve service quality.
As for the further evolution of MAMA, while this year has seen the launch of the first white paper and the creation of standards, next year should see some practical use cases from CSPs and the addition of more metrics.
Other CSPs that contributed to the white paper are China Mobile, HKT, NBN Co, Robi Axiata and Telecom Italia. Lead author was Richard Wong from Huawei, while other contributing vendors included Ericsson, HCL, Intracom Telecom, Netcracker, Nokia, Telekinetics and Wipro.
