Operational efficiency: The trouble with progress…

In theory, the development of network technology can be characterised as progressive. Speed and capacity increase, service innovation is facilitated, new business models are enabled, profitability increases and so on. At least in theory that’s what happens.

But the reality, of course, is less straightforward. That’s in part because harnessing technological progress doesn’t come in the form of a clean break with the past. Networks aren’t like cars; when you buy a new one you don’t trade in the old one. Thus, 3G didn’t replace 2.5G. 4G didn’t replace 3G. And 5G won’t replace 4G (or for that matter any of the other generations of network technology still extant.) They all sit alongside each other, each responsible for different functions or services. Progress is additive rather than definitive, says Keith Brody, director of Global Marketing at DigitalRoute.

This reality presents a challenge for telcos whose infrastructures, with each new generation of technology, become more complex. For one thing, myriad integration problems arise as new elements, probes, and protocols are placed alongside their legacy counterparts and among the many ways the challenges this presents manifest themselves, compromised operational efficiency is one that has to be addressed.

In a world where single vendor networks, limited services and static subscriber numbers either are or should be in the past but where multi-vendor networks, multiple OSS systems, multiple generations of mobile technology, innovative services and a focus on customer experience should be the norm, to fail to achieve operational efficiency will likely mean failing to exploit the commercial opportunity afforded by advances in netowrk technology to the full.

Addressing this problem is a central Use Case for OSS Mediation. Through the Use Case known as Operational Efficiency, deploying OSS Mediation allows CSPs to access holistic views of the network regardless of underlying complexity so that Customer Experience, Service/Quality Assurance and Network Performance can be managed with confidence.

It allows new and often dynamic and elastic data sources such as NFVIs and VMs to be easily integrated with legacy components and means, for instance, that users can:

• • Normalise data from various probe vendors
• • Correlate records between the user plane and control plane
• • Enrich their data
• • Introduce new are alter existing source formats
• • Scale to handle growing data volumes

If progress in network technology is to yield commercial results then OSS Mediation should be part of the picture. It’s an unrivaled Operational Efficiency tool. Self Optimising at the sources (e.g. SON), it can generate KPI’s , set thresholds to trigger a decision engine, support provisioning into the network and more.

It supports:

• • Using flexible Business Logic creation via a Graphical User Interface. This means time-to-market for new services is minimised regardless of underlying network complexity.
• • Unlimited scalability (using commodity hardware) minimises the impact of rapidly growing data volumes on operational efficiency.
• • Future proofing via programmatic handling of dynamic sources means further network evolutions can be quickly integrated.
• • Acces to Smart Data-the fuel of operational efficiency- is ensured, at the right time.

While the benefits CSPs can accrue from deploying OSS Mediation technology are broad and Use Cases range across a spectrum of different concerns, deploying Operational Efficiency both now and in preparation for the future are central. When opportunity knocks, CSPs need to be able to answer.

The author of this blog is Keith Brody, director of Global Marketing at DigitalRoute

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