If ONAP is the answer, what are the questions?

ONAP provides a comprehensive platform for real-time, policy-driven orchestration and automation of physical and virtual network functions that will enable software, network, IT and cloud providers and developers to rapidly automate new services and support complete lifecycle management.
By unifying member resources, ONAP is accelerating the development of a vibrant ecosystem around a globally shared architecture and implementation for network automation–with an open standards focus–faster than any one product could on its own
.”
Part of the ONAP charter from onap.org.

The ONAP project is gaining attention in service provider circles. The Steering Committee of the ONAP project hints at the types of organisations investing in the project. The statement above summarises the mission of this important project. You can bet that the mission has been carefully crafted. As such, one can assume that it represents what these important stakeholders jointly agree to be the future needs of their OSS.

I find it interesting that there are quite a few technical terms (eg policy-driven orchestration) in the mission statement, terms that tend to pre-empt the solution. However, I don’t feel that pre-emptive technical solutions are the real mission, so I’m going to try to reverse-engineer the statement into business needs. Hopefully the business needs (the “why? why? why?” column below) articulates a set of questions / needs that all OSS can work to, as opposed to replicating the technical approach that underpins ONAP.

Phrase Interpretation Why? Why? Why?
real-time The ability to make instantaneous decisions Why1: To adapt to changing conditions
Why2: To take advantage of fleeting opportunities or resolve threats
Why 3: To optimise key business metrics such as financials
Why 4: As CSPs are under increasing pressure from shareholders to deliver on key metrics
policy-driven orchestration To use policies to increase the repeatability of key operational processes Why 1: Repeatability provides the opportunity to improve efficiency, quality and performance
Why 2: Allows an operator to service more customers at less expense
Why 3: Improves corporate profitability and customer perceptions
Why 4: As CSPs are under increasing pressure from shareholders to deliver on key metrics
policy-driven automation To use policies to increase the amount of automation that can be applied to key operational processes Why 1: Automated processes provide the opportunity to improve efficiency, quality and performance
Why 2: Allows an operator to service more customers at less expense
Why 3: Improves corporate profitability and customer perceptions
physical and virtual network functions Our networks will continue to consist of physical devices, but we will increasingly introduce virtualised functionality Why 1: Physical devices will continue to exist into the foreseeable future but virtualisation represents an exciting approach into the future
Why 2: Virtual entities are easier to activate and manage (assuming sufficient capacity exists)
Why 3: Physical equipment supply, build, deploy and test cycles are much longer and labour intensive
Why 4: Virtual assets are more flexible, faster and cheaper to commission
Why 5: Customer services can be turned up faster and cheaper
software, network, IT and cloud providers and developers With this increase in virtualisation, we find an increasingly large and diverse array of suppliers contributing to our value-chain. These suppliers contribute via software, network equipment, IT functions and cloud resources Why 1: CSPs can access innovation and efficiency occurring outside their own organisation
Why 2: CSPs can leverage the opportunities those innovations provide
Why 3: CSPs can deliver more attractive offers to customers
Why 4: Key metrics such as profitability and customer satisfaction are enhanced
rapidly automate new services We want the flexibility to introduce new products and services far faster than we do today Why 1: CSPs can deliver more attractive offers to customers faster than competitors
Why 2: Key metrics such as market share, profitability and customer satisfaction are enhanced as well as improved cashflow
support complete lifecycle management The components that make up our value-chain are changing and evolving so quickly that we need to cope with these changes without impacting customers across any of their interactions with their service Why 1: Customer satisfaction is a key metric and a customer’s experience spans the entire lifecyle of their service.
Why 2: CSPs don’t want customers to churn to competitors
Why 3: Key metrics such as market share, profitability and customer satisfaction are enhanced
unifying member resources To reduce the amount of duplicated and under-synchronised development currently being done by the member bodies of ONAP Why 1: Collaboration and sharing reduces the effort each member body must dedicate to their OSS
Why 2: A reduced resource pool is required
Why 3: Costs can be reduced whilst still achieving a required level of outcome from OSS
vibrant ecosystem To increase the level of supplier interchangability Why 1: To reduce dependence on any supplier/s
Why 2: To improve competition between suppliers
Why 3: Lower prices, greater choice and greater innovation tend to flourish in competitive environments
Why 4: CSPs, as customers of the suppliers, benefit
globally shared architecture To make networks, services and support systems easier to interconnect across the global communications network Why 1: Collaboration on common standards reduces the integration effort between each member at points of interconnect
Why 2: A reduced resource pool is required
Why 3: Costs can be reduced whilst still achieving interconnection benefits

As indicated in earlier posts, ONAP is an exciting initiative for the CSP industry for a number of reasons. My fear for ONAP is that it becomes such a behemoth of technical complexity that it becomes too unwieldy for use by any of the member bodies. I use the analogy of ATM versus Ethernet here, where ONAP is equivalent to ATM in power and complexity. The question is whether there’s an Ethernet answer to the whys that ONAP is trying to solve.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

(BTW. I’m not saying that the technologies the ONAP team is investigating are the wrong ones. Far from it. I just find it interesting that the mission is starting with a technical direction in mind. I see parallels with the OSS radar analogy.)

If this article was helpful, subscribe to the Passionate About OSS Blog to get each new post sent directly to your inbox. 100% free of charge and free of spam.

Our Solutions

Share:

Most Recent Articles

No telco wants to buy an OSS/BSS

When you’re a senior exec in a telco and you’ve been made responsible for allocating resources, it’s unlikely that you ever think, “gee, we really

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.