Month: June 2022

Categories
Cloud Insights

Don’t let the infrastructure management cloud your mind

Implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to reduce provisioning time by 65%

IT infrastructures are generally imagined as big rooms with huge servers and systems connected with a web of wires. Provisioning of this infrastructure has always been a manual process for the service providers in the connectedness industry, which leads to a lot of accuracy and consistency issues. The advent of cloud computing helped in addressing most of these issues. However, the configuration consistency, manual scalability, and cost issues persisted. Also, deploying complex infrastructure solutions requires considerable effort from cloud architects. These efforts are neither easy to repeat nor modified in a single shot.

To overcome these challenges, service providers can implement a DevOps Infrastructure as Code (IaC) methodology, which helps in automating the manual, error-prone provisioning tasks. It allows service providers to define the final state infrastructure, application configurations, and scaling policies in a codified way. This, in turn, reduces the dependency on cloud architects and provisioning time significantly.


Infrastructure as Code (IaC) helps the service providers to define the cloud infrastructure, application configurations, and scaling policies in a codified way.

Categories
IT Agility

Close the gap in network inventory to improve customer service

Leverage an RPA-based solution strategy to address inventory data inaccuracies and have a better insight into your network

Network inventory is the cornerstone for any service provider. To deliver seamless network services, assets and infrastructure (computers, routers, servers etc.) are a must. And the inventory available with an operator determines the kind, quality, and capacity of any services they offer. Therefore, these assets are crucial as service providers in the connectedness industry cannot operate without them.

However, service providers face several challenges in managing the completeness and accuracy of inventory data. Inventory data issues majorly arise due to human errors by field engineers, multiple sources of truth as a result of mergers and acquisitions and non-digital data storage formats. These issues eventually increase the lead time for new installs/repairs, high volumes of calls by field technicians to the customer care, frequent provisioning fallouts, etc.

Service providers must take a holistic solution approach to tackle the core challenges that are crippling them from effectively managing the network inventory data integrity issues. Manual data reconciliation projects are proving to be ineffective as they are labor-intensive, time-consuming and cannot handle network environments that are rapidly changing. Adopt an RPA-based automated inventory reconciliation framework to accelerate data integrity programs and improve service.

Figure 1: RPA-based Automated Inventory Reconciliation Framework


Service providers’ network inventory systems are often 20-30% out of sync with the physical and logical state of the network. An RPA-based automated inventory reconciliation framework can accelerate data integrity programs.

Categories
Software Intensive Networks

Building a 360° Network Cockpit

Implement an intelligent network visualization solution powered by Graph technology to deliver network insights faster.

Owing to rapid network expansion, major service providers in the connectedness industry are facing a critical challenge with the rise of data silos in their ecosystem. As a result, network data is dispersed across a variety of siloed and disjointed systems. This makes deriving insights from data collected across diverse assets more difficult. Several disconnected systems that consist of untraceable integrations and interfaces must be integrated to get a comprehensive view of the massive dataset. As a result, the service providers face inefficient network and resource utilization, delays in rolling out new network designs, and ineffective network troubleshooting.

There is a necessity for service providers in the connectedness industry to build a real-time 360° Network Visualization to drive smart decision making. Most service providers have started to implement Graph databases to address the problem of data silos and information irregularities in Network management. To be effective, service providers must develop both upstream and downstream data ingestion strategies. In this insight, we explore these two key components in-depth and identify the key capabilities required to build them effectively. Incorporating the 360° real-time network visualization approach can create a convergent and intelligent view of the network. In the Connectedness market, it helps to meet the growing demands of Network Planning, Network Operations (NOCs), and various user communities.


Eliminate data silos and irregularity challenges in Network management and accelerate design rollout by 33%.

Categories
IT Agility

Attract and retain customers with enhanced broadband service coverage

Leverage a unified serviceability framework to improve the service qualification

Today, most service providers in the connectedness industry are challenged in determining the service availability for different customer addresses as it is cumbersome and time-consuming. Ineffective broadband service qualification results in the poor customer experience of the existing customers and the unserviceability of new customers. Hence service providers need to focus on improving the serviceability for retaining and enlarging the customer base. The major factors contributing to ineffective service qualification include:

  • Lack of support for multiple technologies (e.g.) Copper, Fiber, IPTV, Cable, Fixed Wireless
  • Lack of agility to accommodate the real-time needs of the customer
  • No standard address and service repositories
  • Inaccurate measurement of loop length, resulting in reduced service offering

Service providers can leverage a unified serviceability framework to overcome these challenges and improve the serviceability of the customers. It assists in responding to customer requests rapidly with improved customer engagements and real-time responses for service qualification inquiries. Further, it helps to improve the overall broadband qualification coverage and customer experience.


Ineffective broadband service qualification results in the poor customer experience of the existing customers and the unserviceability of new customers.

Categories
IT Agility

Achieve security objectives at speed with automated vulnerability management

Reduce time taken to fix security vulnerabilities by 50% with vulnerability analysis best practices

Cyber-attacks are increasing every day and are now the third-highest global risk, according to the World Economic Forum. GSMA’s mobile telecommunications security threat landscape report of 2019 says, “there was a 55% increase in breaches caused by open-source software vulnerabilities”.

Addressing security vulnerabilities is a top priority for service providers in the connectedness industry because a cyber-attack could disrupt services for millions of customers, impact customer’s trust, and deteriorate service provider’s brand & reputation. To achieve the required security objectives, service providers must adopt a structured approach to vulnerability management. Vulnerability management, which is the process of finding, assessing, remediating, and mitigating security weaknesses for known assets, gives service providers the ability to assess the status and risk of unknown hardware/software.

Depending on the service provider’s infrastructure size and state of the configuration management database (CMDB), finding the responsible asset owner can be a highly challenging and cumbersome task, resulting in lead times of up to many weeks. Therefore, vulnerability management must include automation to discover new vulnerabilities, perform risk assessment, and assign it to the right team for a quick resolution.


Addressing security vulnerabilities with speed is a top priority for service providers as a successful cyber-attack can essentially disrupt service for millions of customers

Fig:  Steps followed in field service operation showcasing the importance of spare information