NaaS Myth Busting

Four Ways NaaS Can Help Reverse CSPs 80/20 Spending Ratio

Communications Service Providers (CSPs) typically spend 80% of their budgets on integration and routine operations, leaving very little money to invest in innovative new services and technologies.

One reason for this disproportionate spending is that, traditionally, network domains and operational processes are tightly coupled, which requires that all new network elements be integrated with the Business and Operations Support System (B/OSS). Given that most CSPs maintain dozens of such systems, this results in significant cost and complexity.

Another factor is the reliance on manual involvement in routine operational processes. Technicians must access the B/OSS to gather the information they need to design and activate services. This adds cost to service fulfillment and limits scale.

In addition to high OpEx, the impact of this complexity is evident in excruciatingly slow time to market for new services (18 months is the norm) and lengthy service fulfillment processes.

Implementing Network as a Service (NaaS) can help CSPs overcome these challenges and reverse the 80/20 spending ratio. NaaS simplifies operations, streamlines new technology and service adoption, and enables cloud-like network experiences such as on-demand service activation, customer self-service, and subscription-based consumption models. In short, NaaS simplifies network and operations transformation simultaneously.

Network as a Service Myths

Analysts at Mordor Intelligence expect NaaS to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 33.05% between 2021 and 2026. Why? Because it offers abstraction in the form of model-driven orchestration, compartmentalizing the technology stack into different layers, including business support systems, service order management, and catalogs.

Still, the full scope and potential of NaaS is often overlooked. There are four common misconceptions that can prevent CSPs from enthusiastically embracing this model:

Myth 1: NaaS is simply a way to deliver virtualized business services.

NaaS simplifies operations for Communications Service Providers (CSPs), streamlines new technology and service adoption, and enables cloud-like network experiences such as on-demand service activation, customer self-service, and subscription-based consumption models. In short, NaaS simplifies network and operations transformation simultaneously.

Myth 2: Naas is strictly about OSS transformation.

With NaaS, network capabilities are summarized in a service catalog, exposed through open, standardized APIs, and services can be orchestrated and managed autonomously end to end.

Efforts such as MEF’s Lifecycle Service Orchestration (LSO) architecture, the Linux Foundation’s Open Networking Automation Platform (ONAP), ETSI’s Zero-Touch Service Management (ZSM) project, and TM Forum’s Open Digital Architecture (ODA) provide reference architectures and standard APIs that help overcome the constraints of traditional CSP operations. While each group approaches the problem from a different angle, their architectures and interfaces are fundamentally similar and complementary. 

Myth 3: NaaS is the same as Software-Defined Networking (SDN).

NaaS is not the same as SDN, but it does build on SDN’s open and programmable nature to help CSPs modernize and automate operational processes, from design through ordering, provisioning, optimization, and ongoing management.

Traditional CSP operations cannot efficiently or effectively support cloud-based business models, on-demand services, or even new technologies like 5G. To achieve this, automation—more specifically, closed-loop automation—is becoming mandatory.

Myth 4: NaaS is a futuristic, pie-in-the-sky vision.

CSPs can also combine NaaS, SDN, and Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) with closed-loop automation to optimize content and application delivery. This will allow them to support a wide range of 5G use cases such as industrial IoT, gaming, remote healthcare, autonomous vehicles, emergency services, and more. For some of these use-cases, operators will co-create services with partners.

In addition to high OpEx, the impact of this complexity is evident in excruciatingly slow time to market for new services (18 months is the norm) and lengthy service fulfillment processes.

The Real Deal

Many CSPs intend to control edge capabilities even if the infrastructure is provided by cloud partners, managing it in the same way they manage other network domains. A recent TM Forum Catalyst proof of concept, in which Blue Planet participated, demonstrated this concept, showing how a CSP can use closed-loop automation to deliver zero-touch Edge Compute as a Service (ECaaS). The project—supported by seven CSPs, including BT, Orange, TIM, Telus, Verizon, Videotron, and Vodafone—again showed how standard reference architectures and APIs make it possible for CSPs to implement NaaS and realize a dramatic percent reduction in time to market.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kailem Anderson is Vice President of Portfolio and Engineering for Blue Planet, a division of Ciena. His responsibilities include global ownership of Blue Planet’s portfolio strategy, direction, development, and introduction of new disruptive offerings in the areas of automation, orchestration, analytics, software, SaaS, and global services.

Well-established in the networking industry for 20 years, he has held various leadership positions at Cisco, IBM, and Microsoft, where he focused on introducing new technologies to market in the areas of networking, security, data center, automation, and SaaS.

Kailem holds a bachelor’s degree in Engineering and an MBA from the University of New South Wales and resides in Sydney, Australia.

For more information, please email [email protected] or visit https://www.blueplanet.com/. Follow them on Twitter @cienablueplanet and LinkedIn.