Breaking legacy silos in OSS/BSS: A recipe for CSP success!
In today's telecom industry driven by 5G technology, communications service providers (CSPs) encounter both challenges and opportunities. To thrive, CSPs would be beneficial in adopting a comprehensive end-to-end (E2E) approach by integrating Operations Support Systems (OSS) and Business Support Systems (BSS), breaking down traditional silos, optimizing core business processes, and aligning with customer needs to deliver superior service experiences.
A holistic approach that breaks down legacy silos enables CSPs to unlock new revenue streams and elevate the service experience. 5G promises many new revenue opportunities for both consumers and enterprises undergoing radical digital transformation.
Recent research from Ericsson Consumer & IndustryLab indicates that a “significant 20 percent of smartphone users expect differentiated 5G connectivity, seeking elevated and consistent performance linked to demanding apps or key locations. They are willing to pay an average premium of up to 11 percent for a 5G plan that ensures elevated network performance.” The satisfaction and user-loyalty-focused report - called 5G value: Turning performance into loyalty Ericsson highlights the CSP business case potential for 5G as a growing number of subscribers around the world express increased satisfaction with 5G.
To get in the best position to capture new revenue opportunities, the first step is dismantling silos to achieve flexibility, agility, openness, and standardization. However, CSPs face multiple challenges, including the need for robust E2E solutions, silo elimination, effective partner management, automation, cost optimization, transitioning to agile ways of working, supporting advanced 5G monetization, and participating in standardization initiatives like TM Forum Open APIs.
Successful leaders are breaking the silos across legacy boundaries
Successful value-driven business outcomes ultimately depend upon choosing the right strategy when undergoing a significant technological evolution. CSPs should architect, deploy, and implement these changes as they see fit to realize better outcomes across operations and business support systems.
To remain competitive and expand revenues, CSPs should evolve, overhaul, and modernize the disparate legacy stacks, applications, and technology silos that have long comprised their business processes and operational workflows. Adopting agile new ways of working helps CSPs build, manage, and operate in an automated, centralized manner that runs efficiently, minimizes risk, and fully monetizes 5G investments. Breaking down OSS/BSS silos for better 5G monetization discusses the challenges facing today’s service providers and the steps that industry-leading telecom service providers, such as Telia and Telstra, took to evolve their operational and business processes to break the silos across OSS/BSS domains. It explores further how Telia and Telstra are evolving their service architectures for optimal 5G outcomes.
This new, agile operational ecosystem must be able to integrate breakthrough technology components:
- BSS software components
- OSS software components
- TM Forum’s Open Digital Architecture (ODA)
- Industry-standard Open APIs and frameworks
- Cloud and edge computing
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)
- DevOps tools and methodologies for software development that impact the CSP’s entire workflow, ecosystem, and life cycle
Source: Breaking down OSS/BSS silos for better 5G monetization
Telia and Telstra, are making strategic capital investments to implement advanced, zero-touch OSS and BSS driven automated operations and digitalized experiences with new ways of working by evolving their OSS/BSS. With these forward-looking initiatives, and the benefits of tighter integration and autonomous, automated workflow processes, it’s easier to efficiently monetize 5G and improve the service experience.
CIO Silobreakers – How successful leaders are transforming OSS/BSS across legacy boundaries: An interview with Ida La Spisa, CIO of Telia Sweden shows how Telia, under the leadership of CIO Ida La Spisa, successfully transformed its OSS/BSS systems across six countries of operation. By implementing a common architecture, involving all countries in parallel transformation projects, and focusing on reusability, Telia aligned its transformation with business priorities, secured top management support, and remained flexible in response to changing circumstances. Emphasizing communication and avoiding excessive customization while prioritizing simplification further fueled continuous evolution in transformation efforts across the group.
“So it’s not just to have a common platform among the six countries. But making sure we use the opportunity to really rationalize our products, making common products for all six countries. So, in all the six countries, we aim for the reuse of our products towards the end customers, as well as the processes that are being used in order to activate… much more automation in order to increase customer satisfaction and reduce definitely the time to market towards our customers.”
Source: Ida La Spisa Telia CIO (formerly Telia’s Head of Products and Production Services)
A TM Forum case study details how Telia’s partnering strategy with Ericsson and its adoption of TM Forum assets are helping it achieve sustainable change. Ericsson is working with Telia to build a modern architecture that transforms engagement management, party management, core commerce management, and production, detailed in Telia’s OSS/BSS evolution toward 5G digital service delivery.
Standardization is the key to automation
Ericsson recently achieved the milestone of 10 certified TM Forum Open APIs at the "gold" level. This demonstrates the commitment to openness and industry standards and an ability to effectively integrate and utilize these APIs in products and solutions. This accomplishment signifies readiness to collaborate within the industry and support interoperability among various telecom stakeholders.
My API Story: Reducing risk inherent in facilitating new complex interactions features Aurelie Zanin, Head of Solutions, Ericsson Business and Operations Support Systems, who explains the importance of TM Forum’s Open API program in the Business and Operations Support Systems portfolio.
Aurelie expresses a strong belief in TM Forum's Open API program, citing its cost-effective approach to simplifying integration in the telecom industry and reducing the associated risks. She emphasizes the alignment of Ericsson’s Vision with TM Forum's objectives and highlights three specific TM Forum Open APIs as particularly valuable to Ericsson: Product Catalog Management, Customer Management, and Product Ordering. The practical use of these APIs in real-life scenarios benefits CSPs in many ways from increased efficiency and reduced operating costs to faster innovation and improved customer experiences. These APIs are deployed globally and have been integrated with other APIs to create comprehensive solutions.
"Embedding microservice-based Open APIs in our product portfolio helps our customers to innovate faster, shorten time to market, and provide a unified customer experience."
Source: Aurelie Zanin, Head of Solutions, Ericsson Business and Operations Support Systems
Enabling seamless OSS/BSS for service exposure business opportunities highlights the necessity for CSPs to upgrade IT systems to leverage business opportunities arising from service exposure. This entails a seamless integration of OSS and BSS. The integration is crucial for CSPs to collaborate effectively with partners and enterprises, enabling end-to-end service creation and monetization. In summary, CSPs need tight OSS/BSS integration to fully capitalize on service exposure and related business prospects.
Create opportunities for network slicing by evolving BSS/OSS
CSPs need to align business and operational strategies with emerging network capabilities to successfully capitalize on the revenue potential of 5G’s new value. However, this cannot be effectively supported by siloed and fragmented legacy telecommunications Business and Operations Support Systems (BSS/OSS). If CSPs are to fully realize the potential of network slicing, then evolution in BSS/OSS should be instigated as a strategic priority. A recent eBrief Unlocking 5G network slicing opportunities with Business and Operations Support Systems explores how network slicing requires evolution across BSS and OSS. The enhanced capabilities of 5G standalone (SA), automated network slicing, and service orchestration can play a vital role in delivering unique service characteristics and assured service quality. Business and operational strategies need to align with emerging network capabilities to successfully capitalize on 5G revenues.
"As the true value of 5G emerges with 5G standalone, BSS, OSS, and networks must work together cohesively to ensure that processes, workflows, and experiences are optimized end-to-end. Openness and flexibility are strategic imperatives for simple, agile, and more efficient 5G service creation and monetization.”
Mats Karlsson – Head of Solution Area Business and Operations Support Systems Ericsson
Furthermore, Three steps to unleash the power of 5G network slicing, demonstrates how the strategic implementation of network slicing and the evolution of BSS/OSS systems can empower the delivery of superior service experiences.
Be ready to evolve your OSS/BSS workflows
Legacy technology systems operating in silos face challenges in meeting the demands of 5G, leading to bottlenecks and poor user experiences. To address this, a shift to unified, agile approaches is necessary, integrating core commerce, orchestration, monetization, and analytics systems. Automated and centralized BSS and OSS are crucial for reducing costs, time to market, and accelerating revenue generation from new products in the 5G era. This transformation enables efficient operations, risk minimization, and maximized monetization of 5G investments for CSPs.
Read more
Download the Breaking down OSS/BSS silos for better 5G monetization eBrief
Download the Unlocking 5G network slicing opportunities with Business and Operations Support Systems eBrief
Read also our recent blog Three steps to unleash the power of 5G network slicing
Read the My API Story: Reducing risk inherent in facilitating new complex interactions
Read the recent blog on Enabling seamless OSS/BSS for service exposure business opportunities
Read the Telstra Prepaid Transformation - Ericsson case study
Read the Ericsson and Telia deliver zero-touch automation to enhance customer experience
Ericsson Business and Operations Support Systems:
Explore OSS/BSS
Read more about core commerce for superior telecom customer experience
Read more about service orchestration for better service quality
Read more about 5G monetization to improve top line revenue capture
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