Network automation:

Getting to zero-touch
By Sean Kinney

SEPTEMBER 2019

JUNE 2016

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 FEATURE REPORT
Introduction
5G is often described as the first G
“born in the cloud.” But what does
that mean exactly? Well, it means
managing the sheer complexity of
5G and the billions of devices of
varying service levels it will support,
requires a new, more IT-focused ap-
proach to building a network. This
idea of cloud-native designs under-
lies network slicing, the automated
service-delivery capabilities seen by
many telecom leaders as the key to
unlocking 5G profitability. But to get
from where networks are today, with
many network functions virtualized
and some applications running in a
mix of private and public clouds, to
a zero-touch future where networks
use data feedback to essentially run
themselves, requires major technolog-
ical and operational shifts that could
make or break 5G success.
From virtualization to automation
The telco cloud conversation has
been ongoing for some time as com-
munications service providers look to
build networks that provide the agili-
ty and dynamic service delivery gen-
erally associated with webscale play-
ers. But, as 5G is quickly becoming
available around the world, the im-
portance of “cloudifying” increasing-
ly IT-centric networks will be a major
differentiator in the marketplace.
2
VMware Vice President of Solu-
tions for Telco NFV Gabriele Di Pi-
azza shared his perspective on the
current state of telco cloud maturity
and looked ahead to how the combi-
nation of 5G and latency-sensitive
applications will prompt further in-
vestment in virtualized, distributed
cloud infrastructure.
He said VMware has about 70 com-
munication service provider custom-
ers in production, serving up a variety
of use cases for approximately 600 mil-
lion subscribers. The process started “This particular proof-of-
with adoption of network functions concept and the capabilities that
virtualization and is evolving more we’re seeing with the benefits of
broadly into pervasive telco cloud. cloud-native – that absolutely is
“We actually embrace a cloud con- a glimpse into the future.”
cept across the network,” Di Piazza
Bill Stone, VP, Technology
said. “I think the journey has been
Development and Planning,Verizon
accelerating over the course of the
last couple of years. We’ve seen it
ramp up across the different regions. element of its Evolved Packet Core,
The trend is, that if I look at network operating on its live network and
expansion, capacity expansion, new serving customers.
network functions deployed, typical- The proof-of-concept trial with
ly this has been in a virtualized cloud Ericsson is the first container-based
infrastructure. There are, of course, wireless EPC technology deployment
different levels of maturity based on in a commercial network in the world,
the customer journey.” according to Verizon and Ericsson.
Verizon’s cloud-native EPC trial “This particular proof-of-concept and
In July Verizon discussed a trial be- the capabilities that we’re seeing with
ing conducted In Hillsboro, Oregon, the benefits of cloud-native — that ab-
that it said is both an industry first solutely is a glimpse into the future,”
and a glimpse of its network’s future: said Bill Stone, VP of technology de-
a fully cloud-native, container-based velopment and planning for Verizon.

Stone said that Verizon has been dil-
igently working to virtualize a good
portion of its core network, and “this
is the next step in the process, where
we’re moving from virtual machines
to cloud native.”
That’s important because while vir-
tualization provides some reduction
in operational and hardware expens-
es, moving to contained-based oper-
ations “greatly increases some of the
operational simplicity.” He said that in
the trial, Verizon is leveraging orches-
tration capability from open-source
Kubernetes that enables it to bring in
additional capacity much more quick-
ly, with much greater agility.
“The capabilities we get with better
orchestration enables us to remove
and abstract some of that complex-
ity,” he went on. “Automation with
orchestration is absolutely key, and
critical in our being able to manage
and provide the type of reliability
that Verizon is known for. The lesson
learned is that, this technology is ap-
plicable to our networks and it does
what we need it to be able to to do, to
maintain the reliability and the ser-
vice levels going forward in a more
complex environment.”
“Part of what we get when we move
from the virtual machines into the
cloud-native, container-based envi-
ronment is basically, the applications,
the network functions themselves
are being scaled and built differently:
microservices, instead of having big,
monolithic code,” Stone said. “We have
much smaller, more granular chunks
of code, which enables us to scale up
and scale down the network function
— think of adapting to different ca-
pacity levels, with much more granu-
larity. That also enables us to do soft-
ware upgrades in a much more easy
manner, where we don’t have to take
down big chunks of code.”
While the PoC involves an LTE core
network element, using Ericsson’s
Packet Core Controller deployed as a
cloud-native and microservice-based
Mobility Management Entity (MME)
in an existing pool, the trial has more
implications for Verizon’s 5G ambi-
tions than it does for its LTE network,
according to Stone, who referred to
FEATURE REPORT
cloud-native implementations like
this one as “directional technology”
for the carrier.
“That was one of the primary rea-
sons why we engaged with Ericsson
on this, because we’ve had our eye
toward this for the next-generation
core,” Stone said. “This is a glimpse into
what we’re going to be capable of.”
As Verizon evolves its network to-
ward 5G and new use cases, Stone said,
it needs additional functionality in its
network. With cloud-native, container-
ized network core elements, “it’s easier
for us to bring that new functionality
into the network much more quickly.
The emphasis is going to shift from
the 4G core to the 5G core over the
next couple of years. That’s why the
plan is to have a fully cloud-native,
container-based on 5G from day one.”
Image courtesy of Ericsson.
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 FEATURE REPORT
Building a new network from cloud to edge
While some greenfield players (more
on that later) are able to immediately
embrace cloud-native network design
and reap the benefits that come with
it, those cases are few and far between.
For most operators this is an incremen-
tal transition that gradually shifts
from legacy systems to cloud-based
systems. Through that transition, NFV
provides some degree of automation
and serves as a jumping off point for
forward-looking investments.
“With 5G…it actually gives
[carriers] a new entry point
to come in and reassert
themselves in this architecture
and play a role in the next
generation cloud architecture.”
Shekar Ayyar, EVP and GM, Telco
and Edge Cloud, VMware
4
Shekar Ayyar, VMware’s EVP and
GM of Telco and Edge Cloud, de-
scribed NFV as one “ingredient of a
telco cloud. This is the idea that a car-
rier can take what were otherwise
core network functions that were
generally deployed on purpose-built
hardware and you can now make
them available as software work-
loads on top of infrastructure that’s
virtualized by, let’s say, VMware.” The
advantage here, just like in a typical
data center, is decreased costs. But,
for telcos, there’s the added benefit
of service agility.
NFV gives way to a “broader thesis
around how you can operate the entire
telecom network as a cloud. You can
provision resources from a telecom
network, access them more on demand
and deploy services much quicker.” He
said VMware is a “strong believer” in
the idea that, “You can’t do 5G…with-
out a virtualized infrastructure.”
With that virtualized infrastruc-
ture in place, a telco cloud is now part
of the broader pool of public, private
and hybrid clouds. And that’s import-
ant, he said, lest telcos suffer the ill
effects of “cloud isolation.”
“There’s this massive wave occur-
ring in the telco community,” Gelsing-
er told a packed house at the Moscone
Center. “5G is ushering maybe the big-
gest capital investment build out for
the rest of our careers. Telcos will play
a bigger role in the cloud universe.”
Gelsinger’s comments were followed
by a customer testimonial video fea-
turing Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg,
CTO Kyle Malady and Verizon Busi-
ness CEO Tami Erwin. Malady, speak-
ing of VMware, said, “As we move into
the world of hybrid clouds…I think
you guys are well-positioned.”
VMware COO Sanjay Poonen said
the company’s expertise in data cen-
ter, cloud and SD-WAN, coupled with
the move to 5G, provides “a great
opportunity for VMware to step in,”
noting that customers engaged with
traditional telco vendors like Nokia
and Ericsson are “forcing them to cer-
tify our NFV stack. That’s what’s hap-
pening with Vodafone,” which began
working with VMware in 2017 on an
NFV roll out.
Ayyar continued to say that carriers
have “largely missed the boat on the
cloud revolution. With 5G…it actually
gives them a new entry point to come
in and reassert themselves in this ar-
chitecture and play a role in the next
generation cloud architecture.”
Di Piazza said,“We do think telcos
will be part of the cloud fabric. You
could say that 5G, it’s almost a moment
in time that becomes a calling card for
carriers to transform themselves.”
Pervasive cloud computing capable
of handling a variety of distributed
workloads are needed to move the
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 FEATURE REPORT
industry from where it is today to the
full vision of network slicing–bespoke
data pipes created automatically on
demand. This gives users the appro-
priate connectivity for the necessary
application while allowing operators
to optimize the allocation of network
and spectral resources.
“If you read through the overall cor-
porate pitch, the corporate strategy
from VMware, is really any applica-
tion, any device, any cloud with in-
trinsic security,” Di Piazza said. “This
is our corporate, core strategy. If you
look at investments we’re making…
it’s interesting how this matches well
to some of what our customers in tel-
co are doing right now. It is a roadmap
of cloudification. You need to be able
to program your network.”
Edge
Early commercial 5G deployments
in the U.S., South Korea, the Middle
East and Europe are focused on deliv-
ering an enhanced mobile broadband
experience to consumers. However, as
5G networks scale and mature, oper-
ators will look to create new service
revenues based on massive support
for the internet of things and ultra
reliable low latency communications.
The latter–applications like mobile
virtual reality or precision industrial
control, will require a distribution of
the compute power generally associ-
ated with a centralized data center
6
out to the network edge, closer to the
user or device.
As it relates to virtualized edge
cloud infrastructure, “I would say
exploratory conversations were hap-
pening late last year, the beginning of
this year and we’re working at archi-
tecting and trial implementations,”
Di Piazza said. “5G architecture re-
quires a different type of latency,
which requires separation of the
control and user plane. 5G, especially
the 5G core, is what’s being planned
for today. But there are many other
cases. We have examples where MEC,
or multi-access edge computing, re-
quires distributed data centers or
distributed compute nodes. I’d say
it’s passed beyond exploratory.”
Discussing how he sees carriers de-
ploying virtualized edge infrastruc-
ture, Di Piazza paraphrased: “Will
they still be the dumb pipe allowing
services to ride on top of the infra-
structure? I do think there’s a genu-
ine interest in [operators]owning the
edge infrastructure and opening that
up for a variety of business models.
Maybe the business model is just con-
nectivity. I think the reality is they
are starting to see the opportunity to
build from there.”
Intel’s Caroline Chan explained
how the combination of 5G con-
nectivity and edge computing
will allow enterprises to tap into a
wealth of unused data, gaining new
levels of visibility into potential
revenue-generating processes.
Chan, vice president and general
manager of the 5G Infrastructure
Division within Intel’s Network Plat-
form Group, told a packed room in
the Marina Bay Sands Convention
Center that the vision is to create a
“data-centric world,” but right now
only 2% of that data, regardless of the
source, is actually used.
5G is currently serving in a limited
capacity to provide enhanced mo-
bile broadband to consumers. As the
standards and technology continue
to evolve, the goal is to use 5G to sup-
port massive internet of things and
ultra-reliable, low latency communi-
cations. That’s where edge computing
comes into play.
First off, to take advantage of the
latency benefits 5G opens up, com-
pute resources have to be closer to
the user–whether that’s you, me, an
industrial robot or a security cam-
era; that’s just physics. Second, in
order to use data to initiate an ac-
tion, you need the ability to conduct
real-time data analysis. But with
these edge investments, what’s the
business case?
“Let’s look at how we monetize 5G
and edge,” Chan said. She gave the
example of a smart venue, which she
characterized as a “fertile ground” for

innovation that also brings a global
reach as “sports transcend all cultures.”
For example, Intel worked with
Arizona State University on an IoT
project (LTE was the connectivity
medium, but use your imagination).
Sensors collected a variety of met-
rics for retailers in the venue. The
learning: people in the cheap seats
spend more money per person on not
just tickets but things like food and
merchandise than people who buy
premium seats. “That kind of data is
very valuable for people in that mi-
cro-ecosystem.”
From LTE to 5G, Chan laid out a
proof of concept Intel worked on in
conjunction with the National Hock-
ey League. Following a U.S. Supreme
Court decision that allowed for
state-level sports gambling, the NHL
wanted to explore ways to make gam-
bling more engaging.
“The league decided to put sen-
sors in the puck and in the athlete’s
skates, collecting 4,000 data points
per second. What can you do with it?”
By using 5G as a transport mecha-
nism to feed that data into edge com-
pute infrastructure, gambling can
now be more dynamic and based on
instant, real-time game stats. “It’s a
scenario that really shows you what
can happen if you take in real-time
data, calculate with an algorithm and
feed it back–all done with very, very
minimum latency.’
She continued: “When you look
at that whole scenario…it really
shows you what can happen with
a wealth of data…with real-time,
that is monetization.”
What are the carriers doing?
AT&T
Elsewhere in the carrier cloud
world, AT&T, which has been a trail-
blazer in network virtualization and
the use of open source orchestration,
recently signed major cloud deals
with both Microsoft and IBM. With
IBM, AT&T Business Solutions will
put internal applications into the
IBM cloud and AT&T will be IBM’s pri-
mary SDN provider. With Microsoft,
AT&T is “migrating most non-net-
work workloads to the public cloud
by 2024,” the company said, describ-
ing the goal as “becoming a ‘public
cloud first’ company.”
AT&T also recently announced a
partnership with VMware-parent
Dell Technologies around combining
their respective expertise in open
source software to develop solutions
to enable the ongoing transition to a
cloud-native, automated 5G network.
The companies specifically called out
NFV, SDN and multi-access edge com-
puting as priorities of the partnership.
AT&T has been steadily virtualiz-
ing its network functions and was
FEATURE REPORT
instrumental in the development of
the Open Network Automation Plat-
form, open source software hosted
by the Linux Foundation. Dell devel-
oped then made open source through
Linux Foundation its EdgeX Found-
ry, an interoperability platform for
internet of things devices at the net-
work edge.
Sam Saba, Mavenir’s vice president
and head of APAC, said four genera-
tions of cellular were all about con-
necting people whereas 5G is about
connecting people and everything else.
So how do operators connect every-
thing in a way that helps offset the
billions that go into doing that? You
need three things, Saba said: An in-
frastructure migration to NFV and
cloud; adopting open radio access
network solutions; and a cloud-native
core network.
He called out Japan’s Rakuten, an
e-commerce provider that’s poised to
enter the market as a fourth MNO.
“They’re effectively a fully open
source, cloud-native network from
core all the way to the access. They’re
real pioneers in this space. They’re
taking full advantage in essence of
everything I talked about.” Saba said
Rakuten, a Mavenir customer, is “seen
as a proof point for all of this virtual-
ization and the way we now want to
change the way we’ve been building
mobile networks.”
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 FEATURE REPORT

Rakuten and Reliance Jio
To be clear, neither Reliance Jio in
India or Rakuten in Japan currently
offer 5G services. In fact, Rakuten
recently delayed the launch of its
LTE network. Nevertheless, the two
operators have taken a similar ap-
proach to quickly and cost-effective-
ly constructing their networks that
could very well put them in poll po-
sition when it comes time to launch
and monetize 5G. And while the vast
majority of operators don’t have the
luxury of a greenfield build, there are
still some key lessons that can apply
to carriers working to balance the
capex lift of 5G while fighting an up-
hill ARPU battle.
Reliance Jio lit up its LTE network
in September 2016 and today is the
largest operator in India with some
350 million subscribers. “While we
were rolling out the 4G, first of all
we didn’t want to have any legacy in
our network,” Vivek Dixit, Reliance
Jio vice president, said during the 5G
Asia event this week. “We totally fo-
cused on an all-IP network. The thing
that we were doing is about IT basics.
broadband, massive IoT and ultra-re-
liable, low-latency communications
will seamlessly span distributed
edge compute and storage equip-
ment and centralized data centers,
both running the full gamut of vir-
tualized network functions, giving
operators and users a whole new
level of agility. We’re not exactly
there today because, well, that’s not
how networks have ever been run or
operated before. But they can (and
hopefully will) be.
Cisco provided a wide-range of solu-
tions in Jio’s build generally designed
to facilitate massive and rapid scal-
ing. For instance, Cisco tech made it
possible for new Jio customers to get
SIMs activated in about 15 minutes.
Open APIs provide fault reporting
and remediation, performance man-
agement, capacity planning, traffic
engineering, network inventory re-
porting and more, according to Cisco.
The automation platform uses prod-
ucts like the Evolved Programma-
ble Network Manager, Data Center
Network Manager, WAN Automation
Engine and Network Service Orches-
trator among others.
Cisco’s Sanjay Kaul, president of ser-
vice provider business in Asia Pacific
and Japan, laid out three dimensions
of service provider transformation.
First, you’ve got to have a flat, all-IP
network. Second is “data center and
Image courtesy of Cisco.

It’s not a telco skill.”

This is an important point. A stand-
alone 5G network capable of auto-
matically provisioning network and
spectral resources into a bespoke
slice requires a much more IT-cen-
tric approach. Enhanced mobile

8
 FEATURE REPORT

cloud transformation. Typically we

build these massive data centers.
Now, as the data is proliferating, a lot
of the data is happening at the edge
of the networks. It’s a fool’s paradise
to bring all that data back to the cen-
ter. Third–and “this is a difficult one,”
he said–is the “Uberization of OSS and
BSS, which essentially means making
those functions happen as needed

Image courtesy of Rakuten

with no manual intervention. “There
will be orchestration, automation of
this entire layer so we can make it
very agile, very flexible.”
“Everything should be automated,”
Dixit said.
Jio and Rakuten have a lot in com-
mon. Cisco and Mavenir are both
major vendors as is radio vendor
Airspan. Cisco is providing Rakuten
with NFVi and orchestration tools;
Mavenir is providing NFV-based
RCS tools for voice and messaging;
Airspan was picked for its Air5G
platform, which supports open RAN
architectures and can connect with a
virtualized baseband.
And there’s one more common-
ality--Tareq Amin. With Jio, Amin
served as senior vice president of
technology development and now
he’s Rakuten Mobile’s chief technol-
ogy officer. Based on those recurring
vendor selections, dude clearly knows
what he likes and what he likes is
cloud-native networks.
Rakuten Mobile CTO Tareq Amin discusses the operator’s cloud-native network build.
The dreaded DevOps realignment
Di Piazza of VMware said, based on
VMware’s customer engagements,
that the cloudification of commu-
nications networks is prompting or-
ganizational shifts within operators
“bringing together the IT aspect, the
network aspect, the B2B aspect, the
business services aspect, in a way
that we’ve never seen before.”
Di Piazza continued: “It’s like the
cloud technology is influencing the
operational transformation in car-
riers. There’s a dynamic where of
course there is cloudification hap-
pening and moving to the edge for 5G,
but there’s also a transformation in
B2B services from wide area network
services to software-defined WAN.
There’s also an aspect of how to man-
age IT and data center across private
and public cloud.”
And another aspect of this genera-
tional shift in cellular is within the
operator itself and goes beyond tech-
nology. There has to be a new way of
thinking supported by internal re-
alignment. A more dynamic, flexible
network requires a more dynamic,
flexible organization with skill sets
tailored to the IT-centric networks
that are coming online in key geogra-
phies around the world.
“There needs to be an IT DNA. We

9
 FEATURE REPORT
call it a cloud DNA,” VMware Vice
President of Solutions for Telco NFV
Gabriele Di Piazza told RCR Wireless
News in a recent interview.
He continued: “We are finding a
major dynamic right now where we
start to see the organizational dy-
namic happening in a telco, in a car-
rier right now, bringing together the
IT aspect, the network aspect, the
B2B aspect, the business services as-
pect, in a way that we’ve never seen
before. It’s like the cloud technology
is influencing the operational trans-
formation in carriers.”
Di Piazza explained that the ad-
vent of 5G, which comes with in-
vestments in both centralized and
distributed (edge) virtualized cloud
infrastructure, requires an embrace
of software-defined everything and a
cloud-native, cloud-first strategy.
He said telcos need to think about
how to consistently manage IT and
data center functionality across pri-
vate and public centralized and edge
clouds. “On top of moving from the
core network to the edge network
with 5G, there’s an aspect of bring-
ing together all the different cloud
environments. IT becomes perva-
sive, software becomes pervasive,
cloud becomes pervasive. Now we’re
talking about digital transformation
in terms of processes, skills, abilities,
all the way from product ideation
10
and engineering to sales and market-
ing and so forth.”
Di Piazza said: “We probably might
see a variety of successes and fail-
ures. I actually think this is highly
dependent on the DNA of a compa-
ny to transform themselves. Do you
have the right skills from a brand-
ing perspective, from a marketing
perspective, from a sales and sup-
port perspective? The economics of
leveraging and implementing large
scale, webscale, once youo do it, how
can I leverage this for more than
placing my network functions? Can
I evolve to a different business mod-
el I think it’s opening up a whole
new series of questions.”
Opening up the RAN
For mobile network operators
looking to upgrade to 5G, the vendor
community is dominated by a limit-
ed number of end-to-end suppliers.
Aside from the obvious economics
this paradigm prescribes, in a soft-
ware-defined, 5G world, this lack of
openness can potentially limit agility
and innovation.
But it doesn’t have to be that way
according to John Baker, senior vice
president of business development at
Mavenir. In a keynote session at 5G
World, Baker provided an update on
the development of virtualized and
open RAN, describing the potential
for a major shake up in the vendor
landscape on the back of open inter-
faces, platforms and ecosystems.
“I think it’s one of the biggest
changes that’s really going to come
out in the 5G world,” Baker said.
“Open RAN really is the ability to
change the vendor ecosystem. What
we’ve seen is a whole bunch of
vendor lock-in that has really hap-
pened through the standardization
processes. Openness is now starting
Image courtesy of Rakuten
 FEATURE REPORT


to appear in the industry, which I quickly spin-up new services. But Nokia’s 5G cloud RAN
think is going to bring a lot of new if they’re all using the exact same goes commercial
innovation and new vendors into equipment, “It makes it very hard In August, Nokia claimed the
this marketplace.” for the operators to compete. The world’s first commercially deployed
Baker described vRAN as just one operators have a lot of hard deci- 5G cloud RAN; the vendor didn’t spec-
application within a broader open sion-making to do. If they have a ify the carrier but a tweet from an
RAN architecture. “With vRAN as an problem, they give it to Nokia and official Nokia account suggested the
application, you can run other appli- Ericsson. If operators focused on tech was being exhibited at a Verizon
cations side by side. The base station forcing open interfaces, there’d be Enterprise event in Dallas.
of the future, it will look like an iP- a lot more vendors in the market. According to Mark Atkinson, who
hone. We’re soon going to see base Something’s got to change to ensure heads up the 5G and small cells busi-
stations with their own app stores. If the future of the mobile industry.” ness unit within Nokia’s Mobile
I’ve got multiple vRAN applications
coming to market…I can change my
vendors overnight. It’s going to be
healthy competition.”
“RAN is where all the dollars are
spent,” Mavenir SVP John Baker said.
And, in the U.S., those RAN dollars
primarily go to two vendors–Nokia
and Ericsson, he said.
Base stations today are a cabinet
and radio with the necessary plumb-
ing, he said. With a virtualized RAN,
you swap out those proprietary boxes
for general-purpose servers running
specialized software. “We’re looking at
Image courtesy of Nokia/Twitter.

exploiting how virtual RAN changes

the cost make up of building a net-
work.” This can amount to something
in the neighborhood of 40% savings, he
said. “That’s really what’s driving the
network operators to focus on this. It’s
all about openness in the future.”
With 5G, the big differentiator
for operators will be the ability to

11
 FEATURE REPORT
Networks Business Group, “Cloud RAN
is key to achieving higher scalability
and a more agile business. As service
providers deploy 5G, they will face the
need to extend their subscriber base
and offer new types of services to
address the enterprise market, partic-
ularly those in the industrial sectors,
where performance and reliability is
key,” he wrote in a blog post.
He continued: “This is a significant
achievement and sets the stage for
further innovations. Cloud RAN is
key to achieving higher scalability
and a more agile business. Innovation
speeds up as software cycles become
more rapid, so new services are rolled
out faster [ … and] improving opera-
tional efficiency and retaining max-
imum flexibility to meet unpredict-
able demand in dense areas.
“As service providers deploy 5G,
they will face the need to extend their
subscriber base and offer new types
of services to address the enterprise
market, particularly those in the in-
dustrial sectors, where performance
and reliability is key,” he wrote, saying
that cloud RAN provides a platform
for innovations to serve those sectors.
Atkinson went on to say that the
5G cloud RAN implementation was
enabled by Nokia’s cloud base station,
which “splits traffic to ensure each
connection gets the service it needs.”
Describing the architecture, Atkinson
12
said that time-critical functions are
processed at the cell site by distribut-
ed units connected via Ethernet fron-
thaul, while a centralized control unit
“performs non-real-time functions
fully virtualized and more cost-effec-
tively in a centralized data center.
“This flexible mix of local and
cloud-based processing is a real game
changer,” he added. “This means that
we can combine performance, scal-
ability and efficiency at its best – in
the radio unit (RU), distributed unit
(DU) and centralized unit (CU).”
Service assurance in a cloud-native world
The complexity of future 5G net-
works, simultaneously handling con-
sumer, enterprise and machine-based
data transmission, requires invest-
ments in network automation. But,
as operators take a step-by-step to
automating operational processes,
the rewards are clear but the risks
are myriad and speak to both technol-
ogy-facing decisions as well as a shift
in internal structure and culture.
EXFO VP, SASS Division, Abdelkrim
Benamar said, “Automation is ex-
tremely powerful if you make the
right decisions but if you start to
make wrong decisions, automation
only increases the damages. This is
why I believe there will be a mix of
open loop automation for some ele-
ments of the network coupled with
“Automation is extremely
powerful if you make the right
decisions but if you start to make
wrong decisions, automation
only increases the damages.”
Abdelkrim Benamar, VP, SASS
Division, EXFO
some closed loop automation.”
He continued: “To be able to have
real meaningful building blocks
for powerful automation, it’s not
enough to just have the right data
from probes…It’s also to have a deep
knowledge of the underlying topol-
ogy of the network so not only you
can asses issues related to signaling
on the control plane or issues related
to usage of services on the user plane
but be able to correlate those issues.”
From the service assurance per-
spective, operators are currently
focused on adding capacity to net-
works and then thinking about
assuring the services that ride on

increasing capacity levels. But, as we
move to cloud-native 5G networks
able to provide network slices likely
tied to stringent SLAs, service assur-
ance is imperative to creating new
5G revenue streams.
Benamar gave the example of
automated troubleshooting and
called it out as an automation use
case that’s working today but is
one step in a multi-step process. “I
think the zero-touch thing…that’s
an end goal. All of this ca start to be
automated so we help…engineers
flag issues and identify the most
impactful and take action and then
implement that next best action as
an intermediate step toward fully
self-healing networks.”
So, given the complexity and opex
management improvements network
automation enables, at what point do
operators become comfortable enough
with closed loop systems that they take
their hands off the wheel so to speak?
“That’s the $1 billion question,”
Benamar said. “I think it depends on
the culture of the service provider.
Some are a bit more conservative,
they’re not early adopters, they go
step by step. They will take on non-vi-
tal parts of the network and auto-
mate things. It really depends on the
culture of the service provider.”
“For a couple of years we’ve been
discussing how the world of assurance
“With 5G, you’re starting to
introduce...the concept of
slices. You actually start to
charge for and create specific
services. Now you’re moving
to a much more dynamic
approach to assurance.”
Gabriele Di Piazza, VP Products
and Solutions, Telco NFV, VMware
is changing,” Di Piazza, said. “With
5G, you’re starting to introduce…the
concept of slices. You actually start
to charge for and create specific ser-
vices. Now you’re moving to a much
more dynamic approach to assurance.”
He continued: “A slice is some-
thing that’s created in a specific
moment and includes a certain pool
of resources then it decommissions.
Assurance needs to follow the same
pattern. You need to set up some-
thing real-time and start predicting
something at every moment.”
Enter Uhana, a firm that specializes
FEATURE REPORT
VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger discusses the Uhana
acquisition during VMworld 2019.
in using artificial intelligence tools
deployed in an operator’s cloud to
provide subscriber-level performance
data. VMware announced its intent to
acquire the company in July and Di
Piazza said everyone has moved onto
VMware’s campus and product discus-
sions around integration of Uhana’s
tech into VMware’s telco portfolio are
progressing in earnest.
Conclusion
As we’ve laid out here, building a
cloud-native network is a difficult
task and, in practice, has really only
been accomplished in these greenfield
network builds not anchored by legacy
systems in need of a massive and ex-
pensive overhaul. That’s even trickier
in the context of uncertain consumer
profitability from 5G and the notion
13
 Featured Companies
FEATURE REPORT
Ｑ A
& monitoring and optimization, can be automated
with
Futurewei
Technologies
Jane Shen
Senior Director, Technical Planning
Q
At a high-level, how would you characterize
operator investments in network functions
virtualization and the automation capabilities that
come with NFV and software-defined networking
for LTE networks?
A “It started with the goal to achieve Opex
saving, but quickly morphed into laying
the foundation for next generation network.
That is Capex spending to make Telco network
modernized to meet the increasing demands from
users and applications, bringing in new revenue
streams. AT&T’s network cloud investment is the
best example.”
Q As the industry goes through a generational
upgrade to 5G, how does network automation
need to be enhanced near-term to address en-
hanced mobile broadband services delivered using
the non-standalone 5G standard?
A “For core network, the introduction of CUPS
(4G/5G) allows distributed user plane
deployment. It adds complexity to deployment
and subsequent maintenance; Virtualization of
the network has been adopted by more and more
MNOs, which makes the network automation more
14
feasible than ever. Near-term, automation in user
plane VNF deployment is a must. Vendors have
developed various one-stop deployment tools/
frameworks to automate the process.”
Q When we consider a cloud-native network,
operators will use a mix of public, private
and hybrid cloud environments dynamically mov-
ing workloads across the edge, cloud and core.
In this multi-cloud environment, what are some
of the primary considerations operators should
make to ensure consistent management, orches-
tration and visibility.
A
“In telcos where multi-cloud environment
is used for future network, an abstraction
layer of the underline multi cloud environment is
required to ensure consistent workloads manage-
ment and orchestration. The heterogenous cloud
complexity needs to be abstracted and open to
upper software management layer via APIs. The
NFVI in ETSI NFV architecture can be expanded to
support various clouds and platform types (bare
metal, VM and container).
Secondly, a centralized OSS management with the
ability to share operational data from various cloud
environments is key. Using AI/ML on shared oper-
ational data can further improve the unification of
management, orchestration and visibility across all
cloud environment.
Last, it’s essential to sort out all stakeholders’
responsibilities and find a practical operational
model. E.g. the problem-solving chain in times
of network issues. There will be more stake
holders involved in multi-cloud environment.
Collaboration can be challenging.”
Q
In the long term move towards network
automation, how will artificial intelligence and
“It’s all about automation and
zero-touch.”
John Baker, SVP, Business
Development, Mavenir
that real profitability comes after the
network has been broken apart and
glued back together with software.
machine learning accelerate automation capabilities?
A Long term, telco systems’ current 4
operational phases: planning, deployment,
using a unified framework to share operational
data for better operational services. Artificial
intelligence and machine learning can be used
for anomaly detection, root cause analysis and
recovery decisions. These can reduce human
involvement in network operation (and in the long
run possibly fully automate). These new technol-
ogies have already been used extensively in IT/
web scale companies with large hosted networks
for automation. It’s a proven technology, yet to be
adopted., orchestration. The heterogenous cloud
complexity needs to be abstracted and open to
upper software management layer via APIs. The
NFVI in ETSI NFV architecture can be expanded to
support various clouds and platform types (bare
metal, VM and container).involved in multi-cloud
environment. Collaboration can be challenging
Q In the long term move towards network
automation, how will artificial intelligence and
machine learning accelerate automation capabilities?
A
Long term, telco systems’ current 4 opera-
tional phases: planning, deployment, mon-
itoring and optimization, can be automated using
a unified framework to share operational data for
better operational services. Artificial intelligence
and machine learning can be used for anoma-
ly detection, root cause analysis and recovery
decisions. These can reduce human involvement in
network operation (and in the long run possibly ful-
ly automate). These new technologies have already
been used extensively in IT/web scale companies
with large hosted networks for automation. It’s a
proven technology, yet to be adopted.
“It’s all about automation and ze-
ro-touch,” Baker said. “I think that’s
really where the key to the future
of operating mobile networks is. If I
predict four or five years, if it carries
on like it is today, 5G will probably
be the last generation of technology
that rolls out because mobile opera-
tors just won’t be profitable.”
Featured Companies

Huawei
Huawei is a leading global information and communications technology (ICT)
solutions provider with deployed solutions in over 170 countries, serving more than
one-third of the world’s population. Founded in 1987 and headquartered in Shenzhen,
China, Huawei is a privately-held, 100 percent employee-owned company with more
than 180,000+ employees dedicated to customer-centric innovation. The company
has established end-to-end capabilities across the carrier networks, enterprise and
consumer markets by providing competitive solutions and services. In 2018, Huawei
recorded sales revenues of $107 billion USD.

15
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