Communication Service Providers (CSPs) regard business agility and operational efficiency as critical success factors for securing the win in the platform economy race. By transforming into Digital Service Providers (DSPs), they aim to speed up time-to-market, reduce operational costs, and maximize the benefits of 5G, cloud and emerging technologies.
To support their cloud transformation, CSPs can take advantage of business-driven workload placement: deploying and managing their virtual and cloud-native network functions (xNFs) in regional data centers, on specialized hardware, on-premises cloud extension (using AWS Outposts) and on AWS infrastructure to improve agility and optimize efficiency.
This flexible workload placement extends further with the introduction of 5G Network Slicing (3GPP TS 23.501, 23.502, 28.530). This allows virtual and independent logical networks to run on the same underlying network infrastructure, enabling resources to be dedicated - or shared - and optimized for a specific service or customer segment.
The Operational Support Systems (OSS) used by CSPs must adapt to enable this highly dynamic network behavior by automating the design, provisioning and lifecycle management of digital services, network slices and xNF resources. A cornerstone of OSS evolution is an inventory management (IM) platform that continuously adapts to an evolving, malleable network. This is also known as an active inventory system.
An active inventory system serves as a single point of truth by storing both current and planned network states. Based on this knowledge, it enables resources to be reserved for service provisioning, supports the logic required to identify current and future faulty states and enables the optimization of resource utilization – proactively and in real-time and proactively. The inventory system evolves from a storage-like platform to become an active hub that is integral to all network operations processes.
A strategic partnership between Netcracker and AWS has allowed joint customers of the two companies to be among the first ones to enjoy the benefits of evolved OSS and active resource inventory. Netcracker’s multi-vendor and cloud-native Active Inventory System on AWS enables CSPs to transition from an on-premises, centralized, monolith platform to a real-time distributed architecture.
It leverages AWS functionalities to address CSP inventory management challenges by providing a scalable, reliable and highly available infrastructure, while facilitating the flexible deployment and operation of dynamic networks.
This white paper explores how AWS Services and tools, coupled with Netcracker’s Active Resource Inventory platform, can help CSPs transform to a modern cloud-based inventory management solution to enable dynamic digital services.
