Automation is an imperative for Operators as they journey towards Autonomous Networks.
It’s not enough to automate individual tasks. What’s required is a cross-domain hyperautomated approach to entire business processes and workflows.
Automation is a key enabler for the telecoms industry if it is to fully achieve its ambition. Great progress has been made in Service Assurance and Customer Experience in recent times, owed in part to GenAI, but also owed to the maturity of collaboration skills and processes, but more complex areas of operation remain under-developed and immature. Let’s examine the the promise of the 5G opportunity. 5G brings new levels of network and service complexity – the dynamic provision and retirement of services and network slices; cloud-native, software-defined virtualisation; private networks and network slices with fluctuating demands and performance metrics; constant upgrade and introduction of services in a DevOps environment; and so on.
It means that manual processing of any task or workflow is not really an option for Operators any longer – automation is not a choice, it’s a necessity.
There is simply no way that an Operator can provide the required levels of service, performance, efficiency, and lack of human error without automation in a next-generation network environment. But the challenge now is to create hyperautomation. What is that?
Automation is key, but Hyperautomation will be imperative
Automation in general has become firmly established on every Operators agenda – some are further along on their journey, some are taking an enterprise-wide approach to deploying automations, others an incremental approach (either is possible).
But let’s just consider what basic automation really is. It’s the operation of a repetitive task that would traditionally have been performed by a human. With humans in the loop, tasks may take longer, they may be more costly in terms of resources, and they may also be prone to errors.
Automating any task is simple – define the state, then if it’s ‘x’, perform ‘y’, but if the state of the task is ‘z’ then do something else. That’s automation at its basic level. Then, once each individual task in a broader process has been automated continuous flows can be achieved. Imagine a customer wants to order a new fibre connection.
This involves multiple, related tasks, some of which need to be performed in sequence, others of which can be performed in parallel. For example, we need to check that the person requesting the service is an existing customer. If not, then we need to set up a new account and perform credit checks, and so on.
We also need to know if the new fibre service requires any hardware, such as a router, whether fibre is available at that premise, or if not, how closely it passes. If a router is required, we must check the inventory, to see if we have the requisite model in stock. If it is, then it needs to be shipped to the correct address. The inventory will also tell is if fibre is available — and where. And so on.
So, we can automate much of this via relatively simple steps – and these multiple automations can be orchestrated to work together to create a wider impact.
Then we get to hyperautomation. This is the integrated and orchestrated automation of an entire cross-domain business processes. Let’s consider a few real-world examples.
Let’s go back to our fibre example to consider other parts of the overall series of activities. A new customer wants a broadband connection. We have set up the account and run checks to see if there is a connection to the property. We also know that we need to reserve hardware from the stock and dispatch it to the registered address.
But we also need to know the type of connection that’s available and the nearest access point. Now, what is the scope of the work required to complete the connection? What are the resources required (a site visit; a remote activation)? If a new fibre is required what permissions are required? Do we need to contact a sub-contractor to deploy the fibre? Have they been contacted?
It’s not difficult to imagine the requirements for the entire process. Every step of the process needs to be orchestrated and automated. This is an example of hyperautomation – and goes way beyond our earlier example, because it spans different domains and resources – even going outside the operator organisation to include managing tasks with sub-contractors.
Hyperautomation of network slices
Consider a more complex scenario. An outside sports broadcaster wants to cover a skiing event over 3 days in a remote region, so needs access to a network that can support their needs for a limited period of time.
The service could be delivered in the old way, via cabling and the installation of new, temporary equipment. But hyperautomation gives us a different approach. The broadcaster knows it needs a certain level of performance, where the network is required, when and for how long. They may not understand how the performance is delivered, but they have baseline KPIs that make sense to their operations – for example, consistent, high-performance uplink (getting all that footage into the home), without lag or jitter.
How can a service provider deliver this?
The provider must match the broadcaster’s need to their requirements automatically, provision the service, ensure SLAs are met, maintain performance, ensure QoE, invoice, take payment, and so on, throughout the lifecycle of the slice. On completion, the slice then needs to be shut down, so that capacity can be reallocated to another customer.
All of this can be hyperautomated. And that’s the point – if any of this has to be accomplished manually, then the broadcaster may well prefer to return to (costly) manual ways of working.
Hyperautomation is a cross-domain, cross-process necessity. We’ve gone beyond automation of repetitive tasks, and then orchestrating them together. Every aspect of a business workflow or process must be seamlessly integrated and hyperautomated so that they all work in parallel.
And, if operators can’t achieve this new state of hyperautomation, then they won’t be able to monetise their investments in the service platforms that can support the slice-based services they wish to deliver.
Hyperautomation with We Are CORTEX
The We Are CORTEX platform provides hyperautomation software, tailored for telecoms and Operators. It enables seamless transition from legacy manual (and automated) processes to hyperautomated, agile systems that can streamline entire business processes and workflows (with compliance, of course, built in).
Hyperautomation with We Are CORTEX allows Operators to retain all existing automations, while supercharging them through connection to enterprise-wide processes and workflows throughout the organisation – enabling you to deliver new use cases and monetise investments more effectively.
Contact us today to find out more about hyperautomation – or download our whitepaper by filling out the form below.
