The secret to winning in Service Assurance? Updating your thinking faster than competitors

Network downtime can cost millions per hour, so service and network assurance have never been more critical. But here’s the interesting thing – have you also noticed that many organisations still rely on reactive firefighting supplemented with a few rules-based automations, heavy use of CLIs, alarm lists and human-centric “tick and flick” incident management?

When presenting at the annual global OSS architects conference for one of the world’s biggest carriers, a really interesting dilemma became apparent:

1. This network and service assurance problem was causing them grief so they were incredibly excited about the possibilities of using AI/ML techniques; but
2. They’d tried dozens of different off-the-shelf and home-grown systems across their variety of subsidiaries that hadn’t come close to living up to expectations yet

This dilemma seems to represent a great opportunity

The operators and vendors who crack the code to embrace cost-effective, real-time, AI-driven, intent-based assurance are going to rewrite the playbook.

Famous investor, Ray Dalio observes, “The people who usually stay ahead are not the ones with the most knowledge, but the ones who update their thinking the fastest when new information presents itself,” so today’s article explores what new information might apply.

Ray’s quote is especially relevant in the telco service and network assurance space, where rapid innovation and complexity both demands and facilitates constant adaptation. Yet our Assurance solution GUIs often still bear a striking resemblance to those from decades ago. New information and possibilities, especially around AI, have definitely presented themselves, but perhaps we haven’t leveraged them to their full extent yet.

But before looking at the opportunity side of this coin, I’d like to look at the current pain-points in relation to service and network assurance from two angles first :

1. From the perspective of operators who are tasked with assuring the networks
2. From the perspective of vendors who are trying to sell to those operators and improve their situation

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Key Pain Points for Operators

Operators that are tasked with assuring increasingly complex, hybrid networks face several persistent hurdles:

1. Long sales cycles when an OSS transformation is urgently needed (the Buyer side of the Buyer / Seller chasm), with operators needing to navigate and justify an expensive and risky procurement event
2. Myriad data quality and integration issues
3. Clunky, legacy interfaces with steep learning curves forcing reliance on tribal knowledge
4. User dashboards that do not provide a unified, end-to-end view of network health and service status
5. Lack of role-based customisation, leading to information overload for NOC staff and under-utilisation of advanced features
6. Tools and operators struggling to cope with the velocity and volume of of today’s highly complex and dynamic networks
7. Rigid rule-based engines that require extensive coding for even minor workflow changes
8. Proprietary platforms locking operators into a single-vendor roadmap with slow feature releases
9. Fragmented data and siloed monitoring tools leading to blind spots in end-to-end visibility
10. High rates of false positives flooding NOC teams and delaying true issue resolution
11. Manual, rule-based processes unable to scale with virtualised and hybrid network complexity
12. Integration challenges across multi-domain / multi-vendor environments slowing down holistic assurance initiatives
13. Skill shortages and reliance on tribal knowledge hindering adoption of new assurance paradigms
14. Many of my tier-2 telco clients are consistently faced with quotes for OSS transformation that are 10-20% of their annual revenues, which simply isn’t viable. There’s a largely untapped tier-2 market for more cost effective solutions… which could be achievable if thinking through the lens of simplification / reduction of the OSS Friction Continuums shown below

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Key Pain Points for Vendors

Vendors that aim to deliver next-gen assurance solutions must navigate their own set of obstacles:

• Long sales cycles when new projects urgently needed (the Seller side of the Buyer / Seller chasm), with operators running drawn-out procurement events, demanding proof of ROI and compatibility with legacy systems (what we refer to as jumping through hoops – or the burning rings of fire – like in Madagascar 3 below)
  
• Complex technical integration makes every implementation bespoke, ensuring seamless interoperability with diverse legacy OSS/BSS platforms
• Living up to buyer expectations and evolving requests during project implementation
• Differentiation challenges in a crowded AIOps and assurance market
• Balancing the need to develop a strong roadmap of R&D / innovation, whilst still needing to maintain legacy capabilities and integrations
• Keeping abreast of the ever-changing environment (network, IT, integration, process, standards, AI/ML / analytics, etc) in which an OSS inter-relates with
• Balancing agile release cycles with the need for robust testing, quality assurance and minimising disruptions in live operator environments
• Designing subscription and consumption-based pricing models that are simple to understand, predictable for operators yet profitable for the vendor
• Competitive pressure from the 700+ vendors offering OSS/BSS and related products
• Delivering round-the-clock technical assistance and managing a distributed support workforce to meet SLAs across multiple time zones
• Demonstrating quantifiable service assurance gains, cost savings and operational efficiencies to accelerate sales cycles and overcome buyer scepticism… but having clients that either don’t let their suppliers share these metrics or simply don’t collect the benefit data after implementation

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Major Changes and Opportunities in Service and Network Assurance

But rather than just citing the negatives, there are also many reasons for optimism:

• Many of the points on the friction continuum can be easily minimised, which should (in theory) reduce the size of the Buyer – Seller Chasm, thus reducing sales cycles
• There’s never been more pressure on telcos to optimise every part of their business so transformation is an ongoing necessity
• There are a multitude of tech-centred solutions under development that offer great potential for improved service and network assurance, including (but certainly not limited to):
  • AI and AIOps enabling predictive, self-healing networks and reducing mean time to resolve/detect/know/restore/etc (MTTx)
  • Machines to take up the assurance load with zero-touch, intent-based, closed-loop automation frameworks that minimise manual interventions and accelerate fault remediation
  • Cloud-native microservices assurance platforms delivering elastic scalability
  • No-code / Low-code multi-vendor interoperability solutions to reduce the integration tax
  • Digital twins of network segments for accurate “what-if?” simulation / prediction, impact analysis and root-cause diagnosis
  • Edge computing and MEC assurance for faster response at the network edge
  • Secure access service edge (SASE) converging security and service assurance at the cloud edge
  • Novel MUIs and GUIs that streamline assurance operations
• Most of the major incumbents in the industry have too much “sunk development” (ie they have millions of developer hours incorporated into their products that they can’t bring themselves to throw away. This means we’re seeing “adding AI” or “AI wrapper” reinventions rather than starting from a blank “AI first” canvas using some of the dot-points above (see also this call for OSS innovation, which is probably in need of an update if I’m being honest!)
• Just like the MP3 market before the iPod, there is lots of existing demand with a yearning for better designs and less complexity
• There are a multitude of ways in which we can challenge, enhance and modernise our OSS beliefs

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The telco service and network assurance landscape is proliferating in all directions at breakneck speed. Organisations that update their thinking fastest, embracing some of the possibilities above (eg AI-driven automation, intent-based frameworks and open, standardised architectures, etc) will turn these challenges into competitive advantages.

In our previous post, we provided 4 videos of novel OSS designs and discussed agentic experience (AX). In the Buyer – Seller Chasm series we provide a range of suggestions for how buyers and sellers can improve the OSS buying experience.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. I can promise you 100% that we don’t have all the answers or ideas. We’d love to hear from you about how to solve the two part dilemma mentioned above (ie carriers are excited about, but also unfillfilled [yet], when it comes to service / network assurance)