BCA Show Preview - 2019 - 6

Incorporating:

SHOW PREVIEW | 18 - 20 June 2019

MARINA BAY SANDS & SUNTEC SINGAPORE

2019 Trends to Watch for
Telecoms Operations and IT
It's an annual affair for Ovum, to have packed meetings, briefings and presentations, reflecting on key
developments, trends and rumors at Mobile World Congress (MWC) Barcelona...

WC has always been known as a
specialized conference for the telco
industry, but this has somehow changed this
year. It is now one of the world's greatest
showcases of enterprise technology and
emerging trends ranging from artificial
intelligence to the long-awaited 5G connectivity.
The overarching theme at this year's MWC
was 5G. This was not unexpected, given
that we are currently in the 5G investment
and commercialization cycle. However,
perhaps more noteworthy were the specific
IT technologies and operations that were
highlighted as key building blocks in this
bigger 5G story.
Telco IT and operations topics were
much more in evidence this year than in
previous years. This is mainly because
communications service providers (CSPs)
will totally need new IT platforms and
operations structures as well as cloud-native
architectures if they are to develop, deliver,
manage, and monetize new 5G services.
Ovum has highlighted three key takeaways
from MWC19.

Transforming Operating Models
What operations changes are we seeing
more of? Green field investments by the likes
of new Japanese operator and e-commerce
company Rakuten are still the exception

to the rule, but we are seeing significant
investment by CSPs seeking to transform
their legacy systems, such as Telefonica UK's
end-to-end BSS/OSS suite deal with NEC/
Netcracker. Also, judging from conversations
at MWC19 with vendors and operators, a
broad mix of cloud-native transformations
is finally being embarked on rather than
just talked about. DevOps, continuous
integration and continuous development
(CI/CD), microservices architectures and
containerization, big data management, and
AI - all these have made it onto the to-do list
for the major CSPs. This is partly because 5G
requires a totally different set of structures to
enable and monetize new services.

Collaboration, Partnering,
and Open APIs
Collaboration and partnering is the
second theme Ovum is highlighting here.
Collaboration has been building up a head of
steam for several years now, but this year felt
that much more intense, especially with hub
and lab announcements. This is partly driven
by the fact that so many 5G-based business
models will depend on diverse partner
ecosystems. There was also an interesting
twist to the collaboration theme at MWC19 in
the shape of open APIs not just being opened
up to third parties, but also feeding back

of the 5G world. There was a particularly big
focus on the automated network management
use cases of AI at the event, with numerous
vendor announcements. Several operator
sessions were also held on the role of AI
and the operator automation opportunity for
improved customer experience, suggesting
this is also picking up.
In addition to the insight provided in this
article, Ovum may provide recommendations
and further opinion on the latest
transformation technology trends.

Author: Kris Szaniawski,
Practice Leader, Telecoms
Operations and IT, Ovum
Kris Szaniawski

into CSPs' internal operations. Open APIs do
not just support cross-industry developer
collaboration; they can also facilitate easier
link-ups between vendors as we saw at MWC.

Massive Impact of AI
on Network Automation
Finally, we come to the growing impact of
AI on operations. AI featured as one of the
big themes at this year's event, and as we
have been hearing, AI increasingly permeates
everything, driven partly by the need for the
technology to support the speed and scale

Ovum is a market-leading data, research
and consulting firm focused on helping
digital service providers and their technology
partners thrive in the connected digital
economy. Through its 150 analysts and
consultants worldwide, it offers expert
analysis and strategic insight across the IT,
telecoms, and media industries. With 23
offices across six continents, Ovum offers
a truly global perspective on technology,
communications and media markets and
provides clients with insight including
workflow tools, forecasts, surveys, market
assessments, technology audits, and opinion.
https://ovum.informa.com

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BCA Show Preview - 2019

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