The adoption of AIOps is transforming network management, helping operators optimize performance, automate troubleshooting, and enhance service assurance. Experts from AWS, NetScout, and neXt Curve discuss how AI-driven analytics are reshaping operations, from 5G slicing to predictive maintenance. With AI's continuous evolution, telecoms are leveraging automation to streamline processes and improve efficiency.
AWS is simplifying cloud infrastructure with fully managed stacks, reducing complexity for operators. NetScout enables real-time telemetry to enhance service quality, while industry analysts emphasize the shift toward a unified network view. As AIOps matures, enterprises will benefit from faster issue resolution and improved network reliability. Learn what’s next for AI-powered operations.
Alejandro Piñero:
Welcome back, everyone, to Fierce Network TV right here in Barcelona, covering MWC all week long. I'm Alejandro Piñero, your host, and we have an exciting panel all about AIOps, network management, and service assurance in the cloud.
Gentlemen, thank you so much for visiting us today. I know you fought the wind to get here and we appreciate that very much.
Leonard, let's start with you here. Let's talk about where we are with AIOps, and has it been implemented, and to what scale when it comes to network management?
Leonard Lee:
Yeah, I think it's a rather early days for it, and I think the practices around AIOps are things that are constantly morphing just simply because AI in itself is evolving so quickly, especially with the advent of generative AI and as operators are looking to apply it within the network as well as in their operations.
And so I think it's a frontier that I think a lot of operators are going to be exploring, and I think the good news is there's a lot of tooling that is being developed along the way as well as practices that are supporting this evolution of AI and what's needed to actually manage the operations as well as the development of these AI-enabled capabilities.
Alejandro Piñero:
Great. And Amir, from AWS perspective, service assurance in the cloud, that's got to be a key topic and key point of concern and consideration. What can you tell us about that?
Amir Rao:
So this week at MWC, we've made two major announcements. We brought our cloud at the edge on customer premises, Telco premises, to process high throughputs of traffic in what was historically known as 5G Core. Then we've extended it furthest to the edge at the base of the cell tower in a short form factor at the AWS Outpost server for Cloud RAN.
Why we are doing this? We are doing this because we are simplifying the multiple layers of the cloud, the hardware, the OS, the Kubernetes layer. And what it allows us is actually to simplify the service assurance experience for the operators because historically they've been used to managing appliances, which was either red, green, blue, yellow, working, not working. Now by minimizing that complexity of offering a fully managed stack, we can emulate the experience of a element-level system assurance, as well as a network-level system assurance driven by the cloud adoption.
Alejandro Piñero:
Excellent. And Rick, I did want to ask you to bring this to life, right?
Rick Fulwiler:
Sure.
Alejandro Piñero:
So Leonard is giving us a bit of context where we are with AIOps, but you guys have some real stories to tell, so we'd love to hear a little bit about that.
Rick Fulwiler:
Definitely, definitely. Not a problem at all. In fact, if we think about what 5G standalone brings to the table, it brings to the table basically slicing, right?
So one of the things that NetScout has done is we have a real-time data streamer now that's taking a curated data feed through an AI pipeline environment and then sending statistical information, telemetry, along with which particular enterprise is using which particular slice, and sending that to a AIOps environment, another third-party environment, and it's comparing that information against SLAs per enterprise. And that AIOps environment is then taking potential orchestration capability to go in and actually enhance or actually tune down the microservices that are delivering that particular slice environment.
Alejandro Piñero:
Brilliant. Well, let's close out here by thinking about what's next and what the evolution is there, and maybe we'll work down the sofa here.
Leonard, as a parting thought, what do you think is up and coming in AIOps and network management?
Leonard Lee:
Constant evolution and enablement with some of these new tools that are coming out. I mean, I think it's all about acceleration and there's definitely a focus on that, no doubt.
Alejandro Piñero:
Excellent. And Rick, any thoughts from you?
Rick Fulwiler:
I think from our perspective, I think it's looking at the culmination of combining what we're seeing on the radio access network, what we're seeing on the packet core network, and what we're seeing in terms of trouble tickets coming in and user experience, combining everything together to a holistic kind of view. And I think today, the traditional carriers is too siloed, but I think AIOps is going to actually start bringing that together from a common viewpoint.
Alejandro Piñero:
Excellent. Amir, you have the pressure of bringing us home here with the last answer.
Amir Rao:
I just echo the thought process. The promise of AIOps, what Rick just mentioned in terms of ability to actually bring the data together and triangulate the troubles and triangulate trouble tickets quickly to identify the fault, that is what is going to drive the next level of adoption by the enterprises.
Alejandro Piñero:
Excellent. Well, lots to look forward to. Gentlemen, thank you so much again for visiting us here on Fierce Network. I know Barcelona is crazy to say the least, so we appreciate your time.
Amir Rao:
It's lovely. Thank you.
Alejandro Piñero:
Take care.
Rick Fulwiler:
Thanks.
Leonard Lee:
Thanks you.
Rick Fulwiler:
Thanks.