Accelerate your 5G journey with managed cognitive operations

Getting to the 5G “promised land” of skyrocketing revenues and business growth requires operational maturity: streamlining, digitizing and automating processes throughout the entire communications service provider (CSP) organization.

Ultimately, operational maturity is about making the shift from manual to automated and then to cognitive operations. With cognitive operations, rigid rules-based automation is replaced with processes based on machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) — supporting even more dynamic enterprise use cases, boosting productivity by a double-digit factor, increasing overall network and service quality by automatically triggering the most appropriate actions, opening up new monetization opportunities, and speeding up time to market through faster 5G service creation and deployment.

Yet most CSPs are still in the early days of that transformation, with some stuck in the manual operations stage — and they may need some assistance climbing up the steps of the operational maturity ladder.

Why does operational maturity matter?

Operational maturity is necessary because, in the 5G era, CSPs will have to dynamically create, customize, deliver and assure enterprise-focused services on a massive scale. (Consider a port or harbor, where dedicated 5G slices will need to be provisioned for every private and public company operating at that site.) 5G networks will also involve about 10 times more technologies and frequencies than previous-generation networks, with layers upon layers of new and old multi-vendor systems that will have to be managed by an ever-shrinking number of operations engineers.

The human-driven operating model is rapidly becoming impractical in the face of such complexity and diversity. Maturing operations with automated, intelligent approaches — where the process flow is no longer controlled by humans — and new digital business models where anything can be provided “as a service” will make it possible to launch and pilot 5G services quickly, then modify, re-purpose or decommission them just as fast. Conversely, a lack of operational maturity could be the major bottleneck to 5G business growth.

Of course, digitally transforming isn’t easy — and it won’t happen overnight. In the Nokia 5G Maturity Index, none of the CSPs we surveyed had implemented zero-touch automation and only 14% had a platform in place that allows them to launch new digital services on demand. For many CSPs, it is clear that major, disruptive changes will be required if they are to gain the operational maturity they need. That’s where an experienced partner like Nokia can help.

Managed service support can help you get farther, faster

No two CSPs’ 5G journeys will be exactly alike — they will have different requirements and encounter different challenges along the way. But with access to a modular, customizable portfolio of “micro” managed services and business models, they can outsource as many aspects of their operations as needed to meet their digital transformation targets.

With Nokia Managed Services, CSPs can pick and choose the areas they’d like our experts to manage on their behalf. For those looking to make the leap to cognitive operations powered by AI and machine learning, we can help with:

Service modelling and impact analysis for better end-to-end service quality
Analytics-driven field force optimization to cut down the number of work orders that go to the field
Automated health checks to reduce network element operations and management costs
Automation-assisted triage for more accurate ticket classifications
Cognitive energy management to cut energy costs without disrupting the customer experience
And much more
Cognitive operations, where business intent is formulated by humans but executed entirely by intelligent, self-aware machines, open up a whole new world of increased productivity, improved quality and faster time to market for 5G services. If you’d like to learn more, sign up for our upcoming webinar on October 7.  We’ll talk about how injecting AI into your operations can help automate complex tasks and fast-track innovation — and provide an inside look at how the Nokia Managed Services portfolio minimizes risk on the path to greater operational maturity.