Turn Your Technology Stretch into a Strategic Leap

Recently, NETSCOUT's Chief Solutions Architect Richard Fulwiler joined Heavy Reading's Principal Analyst Ruth Brown for an informative session aimed at exploring the changing 5G landscape and how the resulting increase in network complexity is driving demand for lower latency, higher bandwidth, and ultrareliable services.

During the copresented Light Reading webinar, "Rethinking AIOps—It's All About the Data," Brown set the stage with a brief market introduction focused on how the magnified requirements are changing the way operators are designing, developing, and managing the networks of the future.

Highlighting the myriad challenges imposed by multilayer stacks and the introduction of new configuration languages and tools, Brown outlined the main reasons why many telcos are now looking for a viable way to address the scale and scope of daily operations. In addition to overcoming the challenges surfaced by disaggregated, cloud-based, programmable topologies, Brown touched on the ongoing need to reduce risk and ensure the stability of the network.

She went on to recommend that operators really need to look for solutions that support the continued technology shifts and inevitable network expansion.

For many, this search will culminate with the adoption of an artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) solution that can support end-to-end network visibility and service automation.

Other market observations included the following:

• To ensure they are providing an excellent customer service experience, operators are moving away from being reactive to events in favor of empowering real-time network reactions.
• Every day, 5G networks are generating petabytes of data across many different domains and third-party workloads.
• The telco industry struggles with obtaining and processing the volumes of siloed source data at a speed that can support real-time insights and actions.

Webinar participants further confirmed these insights by responding to a poll on where they see AIOps fitting into their telco network strategy.

The results, as summarized in the chart below, leaned heavily toward automated network operations and predictive analysis applications.

In part two of the webinar, Fulwiler emphasized the challenges facing telcos regarding the data used in automation and machine learning processes.

With the growing need to equip different teams with the extensive analysis of volumes and categories of information and insights to improve key processes, accelerate tasks, and enhance decision-making, Fulwiler confirmed that telcos should be scrutinizing their AIOps approach by asking the following questions:

• Can the solution automate the ingestion of high volumes of data?
• Is machine learning leveraged to analyze data?
• Do the presented results assist with predicting, alerting, or advising on issues?
• Will the solution empower teams to take more initiative in their decision-making?

Fulwiler then stepped through a technical deep dive detailing NETSCOUT's latest AIOps innovations, including the highly scalable purpose-built architecture and smart visibility approach. Presenting value-driven use cases, he offered online participants an intimate view of how packet-level, user-plane data makes the difference and emphasized NETSCOUT's ability to integrate with the AIOps ecosystem gracefully.

To learn more about the 5G SA, NWDAF, network slicing, SLA management, and monetization use cases featured in the webinar, watch the replay on demand.