By: Mark Abolafia

Digital transformation empowers operators with next-generation service delivery and autonomous, intent-driven networks. But this industry shift presents daunting challenges. As CSPs become digital service providers, they must transform their monolithic operations support systems (OSS) and retool their network architecture to satisfy the demands of the modern market. 

These technical and operational challenges result from the extensive manual coding required to implement traditional BSS and OSS tools, including end-to-end service orchestration, network provisioning, service monitoring and service assurance.  To address these challenges, operators must integrate intelligent OSS solutions that automate service lifecycle management and minimize the human intervention needed for provisioning functions across multi-vendor environments.

As over-the-top (OTT) services erode revenue and bandwidth becomes commoditized, managed overlay services will prove essential to profitability growth and a positive return on investment (ROI) for 5G infrastructure and wireline alike. An automated, vendor-agnostic OSS stack can empower operators with autonomous networks that can deliver emerging services profitably. Through an intelligent OSS solution based on TM Forum’s standards, operators can drive positive business outcomes and automate onboarding, service orchestration and provisioning for enhanced network flexibility, agility and operational cost-savings. 

Legacy OSS: a barrier to autonomous networking 

Autonomous networking marks an evolution in the telecom industry, providing high operational efficiency without human intervention in business operations and network functions. This networking shift is a key facet of digital transformation. In turn, OSS tools must evolve through automation to keep pace. As operators strive for autonomous networks, they are struggling with inflexible, time-consuming and costly legacy OSSs. Legacy OSS presents a substantial barrier to digital transformation, hindering positive business outcomes and revenue enhancement in novel and existing business lines. Legacy OSS cannot cater to real-time customer demands, burdens operators with high operational costs and is dependent on custom code.  

Operational silos have risen as a result of layer upon layer of new services placed upon legacy systems, with the effect of impeding timely access to data and timely service delivery. As the networks become more heterogeneous and software-oriented, the flaws of siloed OSS magnify. With network complexity increasing across multi-vendor environments, manual OSS intervention is proving too costly and time-consuming to contend with the service lifecycle demands of the modern marketplace. These shortcomings cause delayed time-to-market and consequently delayed time to revenue, as traditional OSSs may take years to implement.  

To facilitate new digital services and experiences, operators need autonomous networks that adapt to customer demands and enable real-time customer engagement through agile OSS automation, streamlining customer experiences across all channels and reducing operational costs. Service lifecycle speed and customer experience are paramount to successful digital transformation and continued profitability, and automated OSS solutions such as no-code orchestration will play an integral role in satisfying these new network needs. 

Optimized business outcomes through no-code orchestration 

To eliminate operational inefficiencies and service delivery delays across multi-domain networks, operators need vendor-agnostic, cloud-native, standards-based OSS solutions that automate end-to-end service orchestration. No-code orchestration is a vital solution to fulfilling these requirements and addressing the myriad shortcomings of legacy OSS systems. Through this centralized OSS tool, operators can speed time to market and implement within weeks instead of years. 

No-code orchestration empowers operators with enhanced network agility, automating the fast delivery of new services and vertical market applications. Additionally, it is scalable according to evolving business needs and real-time market demands. This automated solution’s primary benefits include accelerated time to market for new and existing services, lower operational expenses, enhanced customer centricity and heightened network flexibility and agility. Through the benefits of no-code orchestration, operators can eliminate siloed OSS infrastructure and merge the service lifecycle processes of numerous technologies under one automated platform.