Kent McNeil
Vice President of Software
Blue Planet, a division of Ciena
Kent McNeil, Vice President of Software, Blue Planet, shares his views on how combining orchestration and federation accelerates digital transformation.
Service providers are on the path to digital transformation. The key to achieving an efficient, profitable business is seamless, automation-assisted operations. Getting to that desired state is no small feat for service providers whose networks and processes have evolved over time.
Federating operational systems and network data
Next, the network has to keep running to support those services. OSS have typically been designed to handle specific workflows, with highly customized software. Network design and capacity planning are done by separate tools. Static inventory exists in spreadsheets. Neither reflect the current network state. There are fault management systems, collecting alarms and performance metrics, yet no quick way to prevent or resolve troubles.
What is needed is federation of multiple data sources and synchronization of planned and real-time data, to obtain an accurate view of the network and its services (without creating yet another system or database). Blue Planet Inventory (BPI) is a flexible software platform that federates data from service providers’ multiple legacy OSS, reconciles it with real-time network data, and presents it in a single dynamic view that reflects the current state of network and service resources from end to end.
The dynamic visibility provided by BPI helps providers simplify and optimize key operational processes. With confidence in the underlying inventory integrity, sophisticated analytics and policy control can be used to inform and automate plan-to-build, service-to-order and trouble-to-resolve workflows. The net result: an elevated user experience and better utilization of network investments.
Transforming business with agile operations
In combination, orchestration, inventory federation, analytics, and policy control are the building blocks for digital transformation – turning operations from an OPEX tax into a powerhouse asset. Service providers can leverage SDN, NFV and Cloud technologies to achieve greater levels of automation, deliver more dynamic services, and respond more quickly to customers’ rapidly changing requirements.