Orchestration in the Network Rock & Roll Band

By Evan Kirstel (Linkedin) & @evankirstel (Twitter)

 Working with enterprise clients for decades, I have seen that there are no two companies or projects alike. When you look at them en masse, there are far more divergences than similarities. Of course, all of them have and are continuing to make investments in technology, with some in an all-out war to overtake their competitors. Research companies that portend to know the future provide reports and analysis on what they have gathered. They rarely provide anything of real value because they build models on a "rear-view" look at what is going on rather than a near- or far-future look ahead. Competitive analysis shows what competitors are telling Wall Street or what they want to tell the public and don’t reveal anything of substance.

I would like to address the transformation of digital networks. Enterprise networks continue to evolve, but only a few of them are prepared for the next wave of technologies such as 5G, IoT, and AI. These networks involve complex issues and are sometimes managed by people who lack foresight and tend to focus on technical problems, not emerging future-focused business models.

Here is an example: In a class on technology for a private client, the room was filled by finance and purchasing people. I asked: Why are you here? The finance people wanted to understand what effect the ROI, TCO, inventory, cost-benefit and other finance issues would have on the earnings per share (EPS) of the business. They weren’t interested in the new technology we were presenting. The purchasing people wanted to discover the features of the technology that were important for their requests for information (RFI) and requests for proposals (RFP).

I responded to both groups by telling them that was not why I was there. It doesn't matter whether these groups were enterprise companies or providers, neither group was interested in how the technology worked, how to manage it, or what the benefits were to users and customers. This was a bit disconcerting. The orchestration of the impact of a technology on business is key to finance, purchasing and nearly everything else in business.

According to Ericsson, here are the key benefits of their Dynamic Orchestration solution:

·      Simplified management for a multi-vendor environment

·      Agility to deploy enterprise services

·      Revenue growth with a full suite of enterprise services

·      Automation from ordering to assurance

Orchestration, according to Ericsson, "automates onboarding and continuous deployment for multi-vendor VNFs (virtual network functions) and network services resulting [in] around 30% time-to-market improvement." This is the "tune" that my class would have enjoyed listening to as they were learned about the business impacts of the technology. Growing a global or local business is complex and businesses should orchestrate technology through the lens of their customers. Providers often focus on features and complex techno-babble that slows the process down as customers try to "listen" to tunes they don't understand. Ultimately, teaching customers the "notes" in the tune accelerates the process which businesses can use to achieve their digital transformation goals.

 Summary: Businesses and providers need to coordinate both of their efforts in "orchestration" together to avoid playing off-tune. I would like to thank Ericsson for the opportunity to share some ideas and insights on this critically important subject and for taking the initiative to be a "thought leader" for this exciting technology.

Exhibit A - Benefits of Orchestration for Providers

Dynamic Orchestration enables the creation, provisioning and assurance of E2E services in an automated way. Key benefits include:

·      Speed in time to market: Automating fulfilment and customer onboarding means quicker service launch and reduction in associated operational expenses.

·      Zero touch Automation: Enables Self-service customer provisioning and closed-loop assurance to maintain customer SLAs.

·      Central management: Visualization of end-to-end services across multiple domains.

·      Open, Multi-vendor: With open-APIs the orchestration solution can easily integrate with multiple vendors.

·      Aligned to Industry Standards: The orchestration solution is aligned to ETSI MANO stage 3 specifications and TOSCA for service lifecycle management.

References:

https://www.ericsson.com/en/blog/2019/10/sd-wan-and-orchestration-the-ericsson-advantage

https://www.ericsson.com/en/reports-and-papers/white-papers/private-5g-networks

https://www.ericsson.com/assets/local/5g/documents/serving-the-5g-powered-business-report.pdf

https://www.ericsson.com/en/5g/5g-networks/get-up-to-5g-speed-before-mwc-2020?utm_source=influencer&utm_medium=social_influencer&utm_campaign=bnew_global_mwc20_20200117