And, we have incorporated policy and AI and machine learning driven operations capabilities into the platform to support the move towards more autonomous operations.

Putting all these worlds into one fully cloud-based, microservices platform is not obvious and there aren’t many independent providers in this ecosystem. Network equipment providers, for example, find it’s in their own interest to combine this capability in their own siloed systems but this doesn’t help CSPs have open systems.

We’re totally open and it doesn’t matter if you’re operating a hybrid network of multiple vendors, we’ll enable your business with end-to-end capabilities.

GM: How should service providers navigate the digital-tonetwork automation journey?

IS: It’s important to first recognise that such a transformation cannot happen in one shot overnight, and indeed it’s a journey. To start with, service providers need to adopt an OSS platform that can support automation in an incremental manner, be it by specific business process or service type. Explore how new capabilities can start getting incorporated in either ‘side-by-side’ and ‘over-the-top’ implementations through federation and loosely coupled integration. Advanced and flexible technology underpinnings using industry-standard APIs, microservices architecture, embedded AI, CI/CD tools and testing automation help take this approach.

The service provider should clearly identify and prioritise the key processes to automate, taking into consideration their desired future state. The objective may be to have a unified order handling process and single catalogue across the BSS and OSS layers; or on-demand, adaptive, contextual orchestration with real-time notification to billing and charging for efficient monetisation. Other objectives include closed-loop operations with contextual notifications and alerts through inventory as well as back to the order and service orchestrators and real-time active and federated inventory for full visibility of hybrid network services and resources. Finally, it’s important to factor in the impact of new network technologies and service architectures, even if the adoption is still in progress or further out. This includes things like 5G network slicing and edge services, the transition to cloud-based services and applications, the acceleration of IoT, ecosystem powered innovation and more.

GM: Please can you give some examples of service providers that are successfully digitalising and automating service and network operations?

IS: We have many examples, but I can highlight one of our recent deployments in Europe where a customer took a strategic decision to grow its revenue and expand its broadband offering with fibre to the home (FTTH). In order to enter the market quickly and do so with lower capex, the service provider is taking advantage of unbundled local fibre access. To execute its strategy on that kind of infrastructure, the customer knew it needed an advanced OSS solution that would enable automation of the service activation process over a complex mix of third party and organic network infrastructure. This includes seamless interaction with systems of the third-party fibre infrastructure providers for accurate feasibility checks, reservation of partner fibre infrastructure, automatic service activation and closed-loop service assurance.

To achieve this, the customer selected our Service and Network Automation platform, Amdocs NEO, which is deployed on the cloud and operated by us as a managed service which enabled it to accelerate the project timeline and minimise its investment. Our platform is responsible for automatic end-to-end service lifecycle management which includes inventory management, order fulfillment, configuration and activation of the customer premises equipment (CPE), as well as automatic fault detection and resolution. In short: full-stack OSS on the cloud. The bottom line is that this is a good example of a service provider that expanded its business quickly by utilising our service and network automation solutions to accomplish digital-to-network automation of their services management processes.