NICE, France--MYCOM OSI president and CTO Mounir Ladki said many operators globally are entering a second, more complex, stage in their journey towards becoming "digital service providers".
Speaking to FierceWireless:Europe at the TM Forum Live event, here, the next generation service assurance and automation company's CTO said that many operators have completed the first phase in their transformation, but that the next steps along the path will throw up even greater challenges in the coming years.
"There has been some progress; the first phase has been done," Ladki said, adding: "Right now we are at the dawn of a massive transformation," when operators will have to learn how to become enablers of the "new digital economy".
That means moving to the cloud, using analytics tools, providing real-time support and SLAs, and having the ability to connect billions of devices, Ladki commented. "It means automating much more than they have today," he said.
The question is: do operators have the appetite for such a move? Do they want to ride that wave?
Some may choose to remain in their comfort zone, but the incentives for change are there, Ladki noted. One obvious such incentive is the threat presented by the likes of Google and other OTT players that want to bypass operators where they can.
Furthermore, mobile operators have grown so rapidly over the past few years that their operational support systems (OSS) have become overly complex monsters that do not provide a clear oversight or support good customer experience.
"They did not anticipate this growth," said Ladki, noting that some MYCOM OSI customers had up to 30 OSS systems before the company gave them "a simpler view" with a single system.
The company unveiled a product at TM Forum Live that automatically directs NFV orchestration actions based on information on faults and quality of service degradation.
The MYCOM OSI product formed part of a TM Forum Catalyst proof of concept that will be used to draw up a set of best practices and standards as part of the forum's broader research into new ways to solve common industry challenges.
For more:
- view MYCOM OSI's NFV announcement
- see the TM Forum's information on Catalyst projects
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