Touchpoint explosion

Machine learning is the science of getting computers to act without being explicitly programmed. In the past decade, machine learning has given us self-driving cars, practical speech recognition, effective web search, and a vastly improved understanding of the human genome.”
Class synopsis for Stanford’s Machine Learning course on Coursera.

In a recent post, we discussed the complexity of managing virtualised networks. When we combine the device multiplication effect of network virtualisation (eg NFV / SDN) and IoT (Internet of Things), we’re on the verge of a touch-point explosion. OSS and related management suites will have device numbers to manage that are multiple times greater than today (even if via NMS/EMS or equivalents).

The human operator is already unable to identify all the important events and correlations that are taking place in even small, simple networks, so the larger, more complex networks of the future will be even more challenging. This is where computer assisted diagnosis and learning will be so important.

Predictive analysis, pattern matching, root-cause, efficiency optimisation and many other artificial learning algorithms will be fundamental building blocks of future OSS. If you don’t already have this capability within your OSS, what’s your roadmap for getting there soon?

Another interesting point to note around this touch-point explosion is how your OSS is licensed. Are you charged licensing fees based on number of devices managed?

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3 Responses

  1. Ryan
    What’s the relation between touch point explosion and device based licensing?

  2. I imagine it would be good to license device based which negates the licenses based on NBI, or ems or based on integrations, but pls do explain your view

  3. Really good question Steelysan

    I have a variety of different perspectives on this question. When you talk about “it would be good” whose perspective are you considering? The vendors of VNFs, sensors, EMS, etc who want revenues increasing and guaranteed?
    The CSPs who want to get costs of licensing down?
    The CSPs who want to charge licensing based costs to their customers?
    The end customers who want low implementation costs?

    In some ways, I’d like all to be true because that will mean the touch point explosion is bringing value to all participants and bringing exciting new projects to market.

    There are many different alternatives within this because vendors and CSPs will have varying revenue models, whether end-point quantity based pricing, banded pricing or fixed pricing. Similarly there will be a variety of interfacing options from connecting directly to devices or to EMS, depending on the capabilities of the interfaces and the OSS solutions that are connecting into them.

    Not sure if I’ve answered your question though.

    I’d love to hear your views too Steelysan.

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