The goal is to prepare the network for new services with high demand in terms of extremely low delay and extremely high capacity that will come with 5G such as virtual reality and closed loop control in automotive and manufacturing.
The steps of the journey
On the first step, the introduction of Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) brings cost reduction, by getting rid of the dedicated hardware, and agility by launching an application faster.
On the second step, there is a mix of physical (PNF) and virtual network functions (VNF). The automation is taken to the service level, efficiency is increased, and more savings can be achieved in the datacenter.
On the third step, cloud native applications are added, enabling CI/CD, and the network spans to the edge. At this point operators can realize the full potential of the new services and address new revenues. It’s important to consider an orchestration solution that handles physical, virtual and container-based applications located either in private or public cloud.
How the journey aligns with the ecosystem
The alignment between open source initiatives and defined industry standards is also an important step on the realization of each step of the journey. Ericsson is a member of the Industry Specification Group for NFV and fully compliant with ETSI MANO covering NFV infrastructure, applications and network service management and orchestration. Besides that, Ericsson has been heavily contributing to ONAP on application-oriented service orchestration, such as the policy engine project, and leveraging open source on our products.
Start your journey now!
On the journey towards 5G networks, we can already now, with Dynamic Orchestration, automate deployment and service assurance by performing automated healing and scaling. Closed loop automation at the service level.allows the network to take corrective actions based on policies, predict what is going to happen in the network based on analytics and provide insights-driven automation paving the way for self-driving networks.
Watch the Telecom TV video where Marton Sabli, head of Orchestration for Solution Area OSS, was interviewed about the automation journey towards 5G networks.
Read more about Ericsson Service Automation with Dynamic Orchestration solution.
Read more about 5G networks
