This blog is co-authored by Ravi Calyanakoti, Principal Systems Architect, Dell Technologies.
Once 5G RAN systems are operational, they need to begin delivering and maintaining 5G services, which requires additional capabilities such as service management and orchestration (SMO) and intelligent control.
Service management and orchestration goes beyond infrastructure automation (covered in our previous blog) to automate how services are managed and delivered in a heterogeneous network. The standards for Open RAN, as set forth by the O-RAN Alliance and other industry groups, provide for much more automation than is found in a traditional RAN system. The SMO solution and RAN Intelligent Controllers (RICs) manage this extreme automation.