Innovation in the OSS layer

Now we take these digital aspirations and the power of intuitive experiences and move to the far less sexy world of actually enabling fixed broadband networks to enable rather than undermine realization of these goals. Let’s focus on how to tackle the complexities of OSS, where so little innovation has been delivered, to enable it to seamlessly integrate into the digital experience. There are two legacy areas that should be prioritized for attack because of the systemic barriers left behind by years of new technologies being layered upon old technologies.

The first is the physical and logical inventory, or perhaps we should say “inventories,” as having multiple inventories segregated by technology and operations is much more the norm rather than exception in the industry.

Graph database technology can be used to consolidate inventory, across all technologies and all the disparate network models within a technology, to give you one single source of truth for customer inquiries and transactions into services available to them, at their unique address.

A critical additional benefit is long term scalability and sustainability, the result of removing the reliance on mapping and a static relationship between data model and technology. This scalability and sustainability are delivered by the following:

• One single source of truth compared to a federated solution is vital to enable flawless service delivery. Accuracy of the inventory system forms the foundation for accurate serviceability, service order management, and provisioning and activation.

• Real-time inventory collection and validation powered using real-world graph database models offer significant advantages in managing hybrid networks over static relationship database models.

The second area for focus is migrating network-facing functions, which are in general monolithic, to a cloud-native, microservices-driven architecture. The key components of a successful migration are:

• Enabling automation and workflow-driven orchestration to improve operation efficiency

• Embracing standard, Open APIs for integration;

• Migrating from managing of network infrastructure in silos to autonomous network management encompassing all physical, logical, virtual and hybrid resources;

• Improving operational efficiencies through analytics, move towards zero-touch service delivery.

Truly successful transformation demands an unwavering focus and commitment to an intuitive and engaging customer experience. It’s only possible with a cloud-first, digital native orientation, in harmony with a clear-eyed, hard-nosed attack on the legacy complexities embedded in the physical network.