How can service providers successfully adapt to changing market dynamics, support disruptive technologies, and stay ahead of the competition? A critical cornerstone for success lies in how they manage their infrastructure.
To keep pace with ever-increasing data volumes, communication service providers must roll out more fiber for B2B and B2C market segments as well as additional fiber connections to mobile sites. This should be done in combination with the introduction of new technologies, virtualizations and cloud applications requested by today’s gigabit society. Therefore, CSPs must operate a hybrid network infrastructure based on a mix of physical, logical, and virtual resources, and passive inside and outside plant infrastructure provided by many different suppliers.
While hybrid infrastructures offer service providers more possibilities and greater agility than traditional infrastructures, they also increase complexity. This is due to different telco technologies that are now merged with IT and data center techniques, in combination with resources provided through partner ecosystems, for instance based on cloud models. All these different resources and dependencies between the individual infrastructure elements need to be managed properly throughout the entire lifecycle.
To overcome common challenges that arise when managing hybrid infrastructures, such as outdated inventory management systems, poor data quality, and a lack of visibility throughout the network, CSPs must utilize a comprehensive database of all assets, resources, connections, and dependencies to feed their planning, operations, and service assurance and fulfillment processes.
A unified resource management solution across the hybrid infrastructure network will provide greater visibility into digital infrastructure, eliminate data silos, and improve data quality throughout the organization. Ideally, CSPs should look for a management solution with an open architecture and standard interfaces to expose data to other systems.
Ulrich Schälling, Head of Business Line Networks at FNT Software, discussed which features and capabilities CSPs should look for in a unified resource management solution in Pipeline Magazine. Read the article here.
