Enterprise automation and orchestration: what’s the holdup?
Summary
Communications Service Providers (CSPs) are losing billions in potential revenue as the adoption of cost-cutting automation and orchestration technologies continues to stall. Open application program interfaces (APIs) and catalogs are key components in the network architecture required to fully unlock the power of 5G and support end-to- end dynamic orchestration. One key attribute of the ODA (and other open architectures) is that it enables CSPs to create products dynamically, without having to write specific code, thereby reducing costs and time to market. By moving towards an architecture based on open APIs, operators can address these inconsistencies and dramatically reduce the time it takes to deploy new product offers. Although the telecom industry is yet to fully embrace centralized catalogs and open APIs on a wide scale, there are clear steps that can be taken toward increasing automation and orchestration, and some CSPs are already on their way.