Blue Planet Blog

How Telefónica is evolving its OSS to support network automation

Omdia's James Crawshaw details how Telefonica is working to apply SDN and automation capabilities across its network and OSS, and the results of several use cases that were successfully tested.

The future of 5G: How services will evolve

How enterprises understand, interact with, and derive value from their networks is being redefined. 5G, IoT, and the edge are working together to position CSPs, enterprises, and consumers to benefit, says Blue Planet’s Kailem Anderson.

How Network as a Service is transforming the customer experience

Communication service providers must upgrade their infrastructures to cope with accelerating technology development and customer demand. Networks as a Service (NaaS) is the key to redefining network infrastructure to be more agile and responsive, giving network customers the same level of service that they have come to expect from cloud infrastructure companies.

What's Powering CSP Digital Transformation in 2021?

Digital transformation is altering business before our eyes, and companies are relying on their communication service providers to support it. That means CSPs must undergo a transformation of their own, says Blue Planet’s Kailem Anderson, with profound ramifications for technology infrastructure.

Omdia: Migrating OSS to the Public Cloud

Public cloud was once seen as suitable for hosting websites, maybe some customer-facing portals – but not OSS. That mindset is shifting, with service providers taking a variety of approaches as they migrate their operations software to the public cloud. Omdia analyst James Crawshaw discussed this trend with Blue Planet's Kailem Anderson and Microsoft's Rick Lievano.

When it comes to Digital Transformation, service providers choose Blue Planet

Service providers and network operators are finally breaking the cycle of failed attempts to modernize and automate their network services. Joe Cumello details how a growing list of global CSPs and network operators are using Blue Planet to create a transformative customer experience.

Blue Orbit Partner Spotlight: Tech Mahindra’s drive to become a Continuous Integrator

In Blue Orbit Partner Spotlight blogs, we will highlight innovative solutions from Blue Planet’s partner ecosystem and discuss the market trends that are driving them.

Service automation: For customers, the details matter

For the sometimes frustratingly over-hyped topic of service automation, it can be hard to discern between real capabilities and marketing fluff. Blue Planet’s Kailem Anderson cuts through the hype and focuses on the key details that make for a truly differentiated service automation solution.

Software-defined transport provides the basis for 5G network slicing

5G network slicing empowers communication service providers (CSPs) to offer a new suite of differentiated services featuring on-demand, customer controlled self-service options. A network slice is an end to end, logically separate network partition with unique network performance and latency characteristics to serve a particular use case or enterprise. To deliver true network slicing, CSPs need a cross-domain network slice orchestration architecture that stitches together domain-level slices to form an end-to-end slice spanning the RAN, edge, transport, and the core network domains. In the architecture implemented by Telefonica iFUSION, the software-defined transport network (SDTN) controller is used to provide the domain-level slice management capability. Anil Rao is the Research Director and Lead Analyst for network and service automation research at Analysys Mason, covering a broad range of topics on the existing and new-age operational systems that will power operators’ digital transformations. His main areas of focus include automation of service creation, provisioning and service operations in NFV/SDN-based networks, 5G, IoT and edge clouds; the use of analytics, ML and AI to increase operations efficiency and agility; and the broader imperatives around operations automation and zero touch networks.

Leading Digital Transformation with Business Value Mapping

For service providers looking to find success with digital transformation, conducting a Business Value Mapping (BVM) exercise can be key in quantifying and achieving the full impact of a Digital Transformation initiative, says Blue Planet’s Sam Torrente.

The TM Forum NaaS framework decouples network and OSS to enable dual-speed digital transformation

The TM Forum-proposed Network-as-a-service (NaaS) framework is designed to help communication service providers (CSPs) accelerate digital transformation and enhance service agility by decoupling the Operational Support Systems (OSS) and Business Support Systems (BSS) from the underlying networks. This framework leverages model-driven abstraction and open APIs to expose all network capabilities and resources – virtual and physical – into a service catalogue so that CSPs can compose services dynamically and automate service lifecycle management. Another concept of NaaS has emerged, which is a business model that is similar to the popular Software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, where CSPs expose network services to offer enterprise business services and put the end-customer in control of when, what, and how much of those services they want to consume using digital channels such as self-service portals. However, these seemingly different concepts of NaaS are aligned and complimentary. By simplifying and standardizing communications between the OSS/BSS and the network, they will bolster CSPs’ ability to make on-demand services like 5G network slicing a success. Anil Rao is the Research Director and Lead Analyst for network and service automation research at Analysys Mason, covering a broad range of topics on the existing and new-age operational systems that will power operators’ digital transformations.His main areas of focus include automation of service creation, provisioning and service operations in NFV/SDN-based networks, 5G, IoT and edge clouds; the use of analytics, ML and AI to increase operations efficiency and agility; and the broader imperatives around operations automation and zero touch networks.

TIP’s transport SDN workstream, MUST, puts CSPs in control of network automation

Six leading communication service providers (CSPs), Deutsche Telekom, MTN, Orange, Telefónica, Telia Company and Vodafone, have joined forces to standardise the open transport SDN architecture and achieve vendor-agnostic network programmability. The prevailing diverse SDN standards and automation frameworks have caused confusion and have slowed down network automation progress. This collaboration is therefore an important milestone; CSPs are taking control of the standardisation process, to not only accelerate transport network automation, but also to prepare for 5G network slicing. The CSPs are working together as part of the Telecom Infra Project Open Optical and Packet Transport (TIP OOPT) project group and have launched a new workstream titled Mandatory Use Case Requirements for SDN for Transport (MUST). The group will create technical use case specifications, focusing on key topics such as partial optical network disaggregation, IP and optical multi-domain and multi-layer co-ordination and network slicing. It has already released a white paper (Open Transport SDN Architecture Whitepaper), which provides an in-depth explanation of the MUST initiative.

Blue Planet powers your cloud-first strategy

Cloud-native intelligent automation software provided in a SaaS-based consumption model is required to help service providers maximize their business agility and fully realize the advantages that moving their OSS to the cloud offers, says Blue Planet’s Kailem Anderson.

Blue Orbit Partner Spotlight: How Infosys is building a blueprint for digital transformation

In Blue Orbit Partner Spotlight blogs, we will highlight innovative solutions from Blue Planet’s partner ecosystem, and discuss the market trends that are driving them.

Tier-1 Pan-Asian service provider assures MPLS services and ensures customer satisfaction with Blue Planet

Blue Planet’s Don Jacob details how one service provider was able to assure their MPLS services and, more importantly, cut down SLA payouts by proving the root cause of service reachability issues.

Implementing real-time service assurance, a customer case study from Crown Castle

Integrating AI and machine learning into network and service operations centers can help service providers evolve from reactive to proactive operations. Here's how Crown Castle is using these technologies for real-time assurance, and the related business.

New Blue Orbit partner program brings more than just technology to digital transformation

The path to digital transformation and network automation is about more than intelligent software – you also need intelligent people to help guide you through this complex journey. Blue Planet's Paul McCluskey details how the team has been working diligently with the world’s leading system integrators within our new Blue Orbit partner ecosystem.

Federation: Building the single source of truth for your network

Recently, Australia-based service provider Telstra International shared how they have dramatically simplified management of network resources with a new, dynamic inventory management system based on Blue Planet Inventory. Telstra calls its new system “Veritas,” which fittingly means truth in Latin. In this article, Marie Fiala details how Telstra’s adoption of BPI has also enabled the company to minimize risk of change, lower OpEx, and improve service delivery for its customers.

TIME dotCom Accelerates Troubleshooting Network Issues by 47% with Blue Planet

To provide a more reliable service to connect Asia with the rest of the world, Malaysia’s leading internet service provider upgrades its network with Blue Planet software. Dion Leung, Ciena’s regional managing director for ASEAN, discusses how route optimization enables digitalization for TIME dotCom’s growing customer base.

Become a hero for your customers and colleagues: how to troubleshoot and fault-fix your network faster

Understanding traffic flows across your network can be a massive help when it comes to managing routing changes and optimizing your peering. But Jürgen Hatheier, CTO EMEA at Ciena, points out that by adding performance data, and being able to correlate that performance data with traffic and routing data across the network, you can troubleshoot and fault-fix service degradation faster – and become a hero for your customers and colleagues.

Rethinking NaaS as a journey to openness and automation

NaaS can feel like an abstract concept, and various misconceptions abound on what it is and what is possible. But as Blue Planet’s Kailem Anderson explains, NaaS has measurable and quantifiable benefits that are achievable today.

Are you missing a major opportunity to take your network operations to the next level?

Modern IP MPLS networks are highly dynamic, which is great news in terms of handling incidents and keeping your customer-facing services online. Unfortunately, though, being ‘dynamic’ also means rapid routing changes, which create a raft of challenges when it comes to troubleshooting, fault-fixing, and even planning for new service deployments.Jürgen Hatheier, CTO EMEA at Ciena, explains how many service providers are constrained by unconnected monitoring systems and manual processes to correlate on network, traffic, and routing performance. And why this could be a major missed opportunity to speed up troubleshooting and fault fixing, while also optimizing resource utilization, route performance, and new service planning.

Planning for 5G Success: A Tale of Two Operators

The industry is moving forward with 5G deployments, motivated by differentiated service offerings. Here's how 5G Automation is helping two mobile network operators plan their own path to 5G success.

Today’s virtual world is making inroads into the 5G world

Over the last months, we’ve all adapted to new ways of working, socializing, and living, as coronavirus pandemic precautions have been instituted across the globe. The relative ease with which our communications networks have dealt with the corresponding shifting connectivity demands is positive foreshadowing of networks’ ability to handle the dynamic, bandwidth-hungry applications of the 5G world. Industry experts discussed our state of preparedness at a recent FutureNet World panel.