Many operators have indeed already started this journey. The journey consists of three steps.
The second step of the journey
In this second step, the network becomes a mix of physical network functions (PNFs) and virtual network functions (VNFs), containing both the legacy hardware and the new virtualized infrastructure. This new duality brings new challenges too, of course. Managing a heightened complexity and dealing with the increase in operational costs in order to manage this hybrid environment are two such examples. To have a single orchestrator that can handle physical and virtual network functions as well as container-based applications is critical for simplifying operations.
The benefits of driving automation in data center transformation
By implementing closed loop automation, service providers can provide a wide variety of new services addressing the complexity of a hybrid environment. Closed loop automation, for example, provides assurance about the infrastructure, applications, and services across core, radio, and transport. As a result, efficiency increases significantly and additional savings can be achieved in the network. With this comes benefits to enterprises, such as new services being deployed in hours instead of weeks and the ability to make those services quickly available in self-service portals for ordering. A better user experience can also be achieved by implementing analytics-driven closed loops.
As an example of the impact of introducing service automation, a tier 1 service provider in the US that went through this process ended up shortening its time to market from 21 days to one hour.
If you’ve already implemented closed loop assurance, congratulations! You’re ready for the next and final step of your automation journey: network slicing.
Read about accelerating your automation journey with Ericsson Service Automation with Dynamic Orchestration.
Read the first blog post of this series, 5G orchestration: The automation journey.
Read Arvind Duray's blog post about Orchestrating enterprise virtual networks.
Read more about Network automation
