Young AIOps enters telecom industry spotlight
We must move away from traditional ways of operating toward AI automation by breaking existing silos and integrating it all into a framework.
07 Jan 2020
Young AIOps enters telecom industry spotlight
AIOps has gained traction as a concept because, according to the latest TM Forum AIOps survey findings, 60% of CSPs consider automation the primary objective for their operations as they push toward 5G and autonomous networks. AIOps gained currency as a term when research firms like Gartner began to push it in the marketplace.
Gartner describes AIOps from an enterprise IT perspective, writing it “combines big data and machine learning to automate IT operations processes, including event correlation, anomaly detection and causality determination.” But CSPs typically have a more complex variety of IT environments and software-driven networks to run, which expands AIOps’ scope for CSPs and forces a rethink of what IT for operations needs to look like in an autonomous-capable network powered with AI.
CSPs face multiple sets of IT challenges: those faced by any large enterprise; CSP-specific business and operations systems and processes used to keep the lights on; and new software-defined networks. As C-level industry leaders call for change in the way CSPs do IT, each of these environments is being re-architected as cloud-native and moving to public, private and hybrid clouds. It is this major conceptual shift that has pulled AIOps into the spotlight.
Orange CEO and GSMA Chair Stephane Richard told the Digital Transformation World Series (DTWS) keynote audience that “IT transformation is an absolutely essential element of many operators’ strategies, including Orange” but also insisted that the telecom industry must “rethink the way we do IT.”
Richard noted that IT has become recognized as a strategic capability. But board-level scrutiny reveals that “IT is too complex, too rigid, and too cost intensive,” he said. IT transformation projects are too slow and expensive as well.
Richard called out billing, ordering, provisioning and other core IT functions for being monolithic. CSPs legacy debt is so heavy in fact, he said, that by 2025 “technical debts will consume more than 40% of operators’ current IT budgets.”
Transitioning operations to an open platform architecture is the purpose of the TM Forum Open Digital Architecture (ODA) and Open API manifesto. Richard points out that while aging standards processes may not be effective here, “complete code” and “real tests within the TM Forum” is what CSPs need to move to a fully automated, AI-driven IT infrastructure.
The ODA working group states that it is “committed to transforming from legacy OSS/BSS to cloud-native software components and replacing traditional IT architectures with the Open Digital Architecture’s standardized plug-and-play components, data model and Open APIs.”
Loosely translated, this means contributors to the ODA have been doing the practical work for several years to define how CSP operations can pivot to open, cloud-native architectures and standard APIs while helping CSPs to minimize both business disruption and stranded cost.
Under the ODA umbrella, the TM Forum AIOps service management collaboration team is assessing how best to automate operations to achieve more speed, agility and cost efficiency as AI increases its role in operations automation. This work is necessary because “we have to move away from a traditional way of operating toward AI automation,” said Tayeb Ben Meriem, Coordinator of OSS Standardization for Orange, during TM Forum’s Digital Transformation World Series panel on AIOps. “That means we have to break silos that exist today, for instance from fulfillment and assurance, and we need to integrate all of this into a framework.”
For a closer look at how CSPs are using AIOps to automate processes and AI to being the move toward autonomous networks, download the latest report from TM Forum: AIOps: From automation to autonomous networks.
Gartner describes AIOps from an enterprise IT perspective, writing it “combines big data and machine learning to automate IT operations processes, including event correlation, anomaly detection and causality determination.” But CSPs typically have a more complex variety of IT environments and software-driven networks to run, which expands AIOps’ scope for CSPs and forces a rethink of what IT for operations needs to look like in an autonomous-capable network powered with AI.
CSPs face multiple sets of IT challenges: those faced by any large enterprise; CSP-specific business and operations systems and processes used to keep the lights on; and new software-defined networks. As C-level industry leaders call for change in the way CSPs do IT, each of these environments is being re-architected as cloud-native and moving to public, private and hybrid clouds. It is this major conceptual shift that has pulled AIOps into the spotlight.
We must rethink IT
Orange CEO and GSMA Chair Stephane Richard told the Digital Transformation World Series (DTWS) keynote audience that “IT transformation is an absolutely essential element of many operators’ strategies, including Orange” but also insisted that the telecom industry must “rethink the way we do IT.”
Richard noted that IT has become recognized as a strategic capability. But board-level scrutiny reveals that “IT is too complex, too rigid, and too cost intensive,” he said. IT transformation projects are too slow and expensive as well.
Richard called out billing, ordering, provisioning and other core IT functions for being monolithic. CSPs legacy debt is so heavy in fact, he said, that by 2025 “technical debts will consume more than 40% of operators’ current IT budgets.”
The solution, he said, is for CSPs to make a “rapid shift to an open, modern, software-based technology architecture that enables new operating and business models.”
This new architecture should be “loosely coupled, cloud native, and AI-driven,” he explained, and must be made of standard components that can be interchanged without customization. In short, he said, the industry “must evolve from a closed IT architecture to an open platform architecture.”
ODA pivots operations to the cloud
Transitioning operations to an open platform architecture is the purpose of the TM Forum Open Digital Architecture (ODA) and Open API manifesto. Richard points out that while aging standards processes may not be effective here, “complete code” and “real tests within the TM Forum” is what CSPs need to move to a fully automated, AI-driven IT infrastructure.
In June 2020 the ODA took a remarkable step forward as a group of traditional OSS and BSS suppliers have joined more than 30 service providers including BT, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica and Telenor, Chunghwa Telecom, Vidéotron and Globetom committed to the effort.
The ODA working group states that it is “committed to transforming from legacy OSS/BSS to cloud-native software components and replacing traditional IT architectures with the Open Digital Architecture’s standardized plug-and-play components, data model and Open APIs.”
Loosely translated, this means contributors to the ODA have been doing the practical work for several years to define how CSP operations can pivot to open, cloud-native architectures and standard APIs while helping CSPs to minimize both business disruption and stranded cost.
AIOps is the next step
Under the ODA umbrella, the TM Forum AIOps service management collaboration team is assessing how best to automate operations to achieve more speed, agility and cost efficiency as AI increases its role in operations automation. This work is necessary because “we have to move away from a traditional way of operating toward AI automation,” said Tayeb Ben Meriem, Coordinator of OSS Standardization for Orange, during TM Forum’s Digital Transformation World Series panel on AIOps. “That means we have to break silos that exist today, for instance from fulfillment and assurance, and we need to integrate all of this into a framework.”
For a closer look at how CSPs are using AIOps to automate processes and AI to being the move toward autonomous networks, download the latest report from TM Forum: AIOps: From automation to autonomous networks.
