outsourced noc – white paper ipx part 2 by tel...
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Smart IPXIPX
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Outsourced NOC – white paperPart 2 by Graham Hillman Tel: +442070016700. www.smartipx.com
In part 1, we looked at the case for outsourcing.
In part 2 of this blog, we will look at cultural barriers to outsourcing and arguments commonly made against it, look further at the new operational models that support NOC outsourcing and answer why NOC outsourcing is more feasible now than ever.
The Cultural Barriers to Outsourcing
In certain sections of the Telecommunications industry, there remains a strong resistance to outsourcing practices. The Communications Service Providers (CSP) and Mobile Network Operators (MNO) that managed to survive the 2001/2 tech bubble burst have established highly developed networks. Almost without exception, they have their own Network Operations Centre (NOC) facil-ities. These facilities are seen as the ‘heart and brain’ of the company. Sometimes, the NOC are even claimed to be the competitive key differenti-ators because of the high quality of their services
Many of these organisations have spent years building up NOC facilities. As a result, trying to deconstruct such monoliths is nearly impossible. Nevertheless, there is a deterministic reality that cannot be ignored which is that new entrants have no cultural impediments to being agile and that “traditional” CSP with hierarchical struc-tures and vast operational & technical empires find it hard to compete either in terms of agility, “satisfaction performance” or scalability.
We are now seeing that investment was made in networks over the past 10-20 years are now coming to end of life and it’s hard to see how capex will keep
NOC up to date. A technological life-cycle that was previously 15-20 years long is now less than 10 years and in the near future will approach 7 years in terms of upgrade requirements as 2G/3G moves to 4G/LTE in mobile with 5G already in test labs.The “refresh period” is getting shorter and shorter. Strowger - 50 years, Crossbar - 20 years, eDigital P2 based switches - 10 years, SIP and application functionality < 5 years and 3G>4G>5G 2-3 years. All driven by the demands of consumers who want more and more features and the latest technology without wanting to wait - so the IP world is upgrading rapidly with IPX and tech-nologies such as WebRTC and VoLTE at the core.
Original article August 2007 — Revised version December 2014
The New Operational Model
Competitive business models are constantly evolving. The bundled packages for Voice, Mobile, Internet and IPTV have now inundated the market and a lot will consolidate over IPX interconnects over the coming years. Convergence is always a complex and resource intensive activity to manage. Can the Service Provider (SP) do this with only their existing staff? Can the same staff do the old and new operational work simultaneously, while learning about the new technology and carrying out the prolonged migration works required? Upgrade and people upskilling are all challenges here.
New entrants in the telco space do not have the historical cultural legacy and problems of the incumbent PTT and SP. Their entry-cost-bases are significantly lower in comparison with the existing SP and they are already more flexible and open to different ways of functioning, including using outsourced networks and NOC as an advantage, alternative way to carry out business. New commer-cial models call for new operational models.
It is very easy for incumbents and established service providers to slide into traditional ways of approaching large-scale network and service changes,
namely: RFI, vendor selection, high capex spend,
retraining, opex increases, migration activities and trimming down old technology equipment staff. This is quite the normal within a large CSP, however, the costs are very high compared with some alter-native innovative options and such large undertak-ings often run into delays and unforeseen costs.
There needs to be general industry recognition that using a traditional approach to networks and NOCs in all the changes required will incur mounting costs, and arguably, pose further problems and risks. Rapid deployment and the global nature of the activity is a key differenti-ator in being successful. Large CSP and transport providers are not best placed to exploit environ-ments that are niche, nimble and innovative. But they can partner with companies such as SmartIPX to achieve the same outcome without the risk.
Why is NOC outsourcing more feasible now than ten years ago?
Network activity has become open, transparent and much less proprietary in its nature. Many network, systems and software metrics can now be read easily with open implementation software, such as Nagios and Solarwinds. The measure-ments broadly fit into two camps ─ hard network statistics and soft customer driven metrics. Some key performance indicators (KPI) are:
➤ Number of trouble tickets and mean time to restore (soft);
➤ Percentages of voice call connectivity, ASR % NER% (hard);
➤ Utilization of network % (hard);
➤ Dropped packets (hard);
➤ Time to answer call (hard);
➤ Trouble ticket cause analysis (soft);
➤ Mean Opinion Score (MOS) (hard).
The ‘Roadmap’ report builds on Telco 2.0’s original ‘Two-sided’ telecoms business model
Source: http://www.slideshare.net/ashutosh.p/global-telecom-trends-by-2020
International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards are far more evolved now. Operational Support System (OSS) tools are much more powerful and affordable than before. Outsource agreements can also transfer the risks and costs of manufac-turer support away from the SP onto the managed service supplier, which is one problem less to worry about. This means that telcos and ISP are able to request the inclusion of performance measure-ment in their Service Level Agreements with any Managed Outsource Service Supplier (MOSS).
The emergence of soft process, such as Prince 2 & ITIL, where operational standards (provi-sioning, project management of a new service, change management, fault management, etc.) can be measured and controlled in a way that really works well in IT and IS environments. Historically these didn’t work too well in telecommunications because the underpinning process was linked to vendor solutions that were proprietary, requiring sometimes substantial additional cost. The generic nature of operational management has only become possible as the penetration of next gen networks has increased from below 10 % early 2000 to > 80% in Europe for 2014 onwards.
Arguably, one can go as far as suggesting that the NOC has been de-skilled, certainly at tier 1 and maybe in some cases as tier 2. This can lead up to scenarios when more standard skill sets and ‘process’ orientated formats shape up the NOC environment
This relative ‘ease to manage’ enables the Telco’s to improve their network performance, stabilize and cap their operational costs through the use of MOSS. On the other hand, it is in the interest of the independent MOSS to provide valued services.
In Conclusion
Any poor working operational practises that are not cost effective and inefficient will soon be replaced by a new operational model. NOC will not be immune from the changes and the re-align-ment of the new Business models required by the Service Providers. Thus, MOSS or Managed Network Operation Centre (MNOC) emerging as a viable and impending alternative practice
Because the NOC activities have become commod-itised and are now expected to provide a high quality ROI against specific defined KPI based upon customer satisfaction & response, versus their original cross-silo, unmeasured presence, that there is now a very clear case for outsourcing NOC services fully, in line with the new technical-lead, customer-first focus.
The outsourcing of NOC is even more relevant than ever as a viable solution for SP looking to meet the demand for divergent service driven by the continuing consumerisation of both the IT and Telecoms sections.
Graham Hillman 1st December 2014, London
For more information - Graham Hillman +442070016808. [email protected], Visit us at: www.smartipx.com or you’re welcome to visit us at the Docklands Business Centre, Tiller Road, London E14 8PX
About SmartIPXSmartIPX provide Network Surveillance and outsourced NOC services in our 24*365 service desk, based around Diagnostic Activity
& Problem Resolution, Fraud Management, L1/L2 triage and L3 engineer based activity, with QoS on ticket & call handling.
Participants in the IoT Provider Ecosystem
Source: http://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/global/Documents/Technology-Media-Telecommunications/gx-tmt-Ioteco-system.pdf