We recently caught up with Dr. Piyush Sarwal, VP, Product Management, Oracle to get his thoughts on Oracle’s strategy and the topic of Future Networks: Injecting intelligent automation into network and service operations.

Can you tell us about Oracle’s approach to network and service operations automation?

The traditional operations environment is still largely manual, siloed, and offline, and in many cases relies on a workforce that may soon retire. The key business processes are performed by a fractured IT estate and owned by different departments. This model is not fit for purpose for the new generation of networks and services that are expected to be inherently more complex, more diverse, and much more demanding in terms of customer expectations and performance requirements. Status quo is not an option.

We are tackling these challenges head on with our Unified Operations suite where we are working on the principle of ‘automate everything that can be automated’. Using our solution, CSPs can achieve significantly higher levels of operations automation by (a) increasing the level of automation within assurance, inventory & topology, and orchestration, and (a) building the right level of integrations between these three key solution areas. With these approaches, CSPs can achieve both top-down intent-driven automation for digital services as well as end-to-end service lifecycle automation.

How are you making your automation solution ‘intelligent’?

We are employing a multi-pronged approach to intelligent automation across our Unified Operations portfolio and there are different facets to it depending on the solution area. For example, in our Unified Assurance solution area, we use the RCA3 model to significantly improve the efficacy of operations. It combines machine learning, supervised event correlation and unified network topology to eliminate noise and quickly triangulate the root cause of the most relevant network incidents and their service impact. This automated correlation and compression of events into actionable ones, enables operations to prioritize customer experience and service impacting incidents.

Another example of intelligent automation is the use of intent in our orchestration solution where the desired end state of the service and network is captured. An internal intent engine computes the steps to go from the current to the target state. It is akin to using a GPS where it lets the users specify the destination and the system computes the best possible route to get there. The user can also specify the service and network constraints, for example, what the service performance should be, and even which data centers should the resources reside in etc, like the travel conditions we would typically place on the GPS, such as the quickest route or the shortest route.

How are you helping customers to alleviate the perennial issue of managing legacy tools while modernizing the operations for the 5G era?

CSPs have a built up many operations technologies over the years which are doing a perfectly good job at keeping the lights on for existing networks and services. But they have limitations when it comes to supporting 5G as the technology was developed for older generations networks and services.

Our unique proposition is that with the Unified Operations solution CSPs can bridge the legacy to the new, i.e., pre-5G operations to the 5G-era operations. They can do this by introducing a unification layer on top of existing assets to automate the operational processes. When the time is right, they can standardize our solution and retire the legacy tools. With this approach, CSPs can achieve 2 key goals: (a) significantly reduce the business risk, sustain operational continuity, and reduce TCO and OpEx, and (b) operationalize new telco cloud and SDN-based networks and digital services.

Oracle Communications sponsored and participated in the panel below at FutureNet World on the 10/11th May 2022 in London.

Opening Keynote Panel – Future Networks: Injecting intelligent automation into network and service operations

• Leveraging ML & AI to manage networks and services: defining the roadmap
• Hype vs Reality: What has been achieved to date and what does success look like?
• How can CSPs leverage existing assets to increase automation? – rip and replace is not an option
• Opensource vs partner solutions: Assessing the options
• How are hyperscalers supporting telcos for automation: What are the terms?

Panelists

• Amy Cameron, Principal Analyst, STL Partners (Moderator)
• Juan Manuel Caro, Director Operations Transformation, Telefónica
• Jean-Benoît Besset, VP IT & Network Strategy, Orange
• Azhar Mirza, Group Vice President, Applications GBU, Oracle Communications