Leadership Insights – The future of telecoms network

Q: As more and more networks move towards embracing SDN and NFV – there is no denying the fact that today software getting is far more deeply entrenched inside the core of telecom networks – what is your opinion about the future of telecom networks? What are some of the key elements where operators of tomorrow will have to invest and at the same time – innovate in order to create wining differentiations?

Jay: The future of telecoms networks will be defined by their ability to deliver true end-to-end quality of service (QoS) and experience (QoE). Today, IP networks are largely ‘best effort’ and this limits their ability to deliver high performance applications and communications services. This is a massive barrier for innovation and the growth in IP.

Operators need to invest in real-time visibility into network performance so that they can improve QoS and QoE and unlock potential of IP. It isn’t enough to review performance after the fact. It needs to be real-time or users and services will be affected and the operator won’t know it.

An operator can gain real-time insights into things like session, service, application, MOS/R-factor scores, network and end-to-end SLAs. In this way visibility becomes a differentiator for their network offering and enables new services.

Q: Where do you think could be the biggest of the challenges in order to realize the full potential for their investments and become completely future ready?

Jay: Operators need more efficient networks. They need to consolidate infrastructure into less boxes while enabling a multiservice environment. There are so many network functions that adding a new piece of kit to tackle each one is inefficient and resource intensive.

Operators need network equipment that can serve multiple purposes with seamless integration. Otherwise, they will need to train staff to manage each individual network element and allocate resource to integrating each one. This is costly and limits the agility of the operator. It gets more and more difficult to change and scale up their networks if there are numerous network elements that need to be reconfigured and managed.

An operator that is future-ready will have network equipment that serves multiple purposes and is able to manage and deliver voice, video and other kinds of new and emerging services. It needs to be simple. It can’t be complex.

Q: How are you gearing up as an organization to provide future-ready, future-proof solutions to operators today?

Jay: We are listening to what operators want. We want to understand their pain points and create solutions that have a direct and immediate impact on their businesses. This is not business as usual. We are creating solutions to enable the future of their networks not reinvent the wheel multiple times year after year.

You can see this in the scalability of our session and application manager. It is ready to scale up to manage 100,000 concurrent sessions. That means it can handle large traffic volumes without QoS or QoE being diminished.

For operators, that’s critical as they grow their businesses and serve more customers. They need know they have a solution that is ready to scale and grow with them. That is what they asked us for and what we are delivering.

Q: What according to you are the big opportunities that can take operators to a secure a better and profiting future tomorrow?

Jay: It is all about adopting IP and being able to guarantee QoS and QoE on IP networks. The benefits of IP are obvious. It offers more flexibility and reduced costs but quality is still an issue. If operators can adopt IP and guarantee end-to-end performance from the transport to the application layer then they can drive profitability and deliver more high value services.

With the right solution, they can closely monitor SLAs in real-time and ensure they are maintaining them. This creates an opportunity to offer very strict and high-value SLAs to customers and in turn create new revenue opportunities.

Quality and network performance drive profitability and service innovation. Operators just need to explore how they are going to deliver QoS and QoE in the long-term and find a solution that is going to do that efficiently.