Industry stakeholders are still largely talking a technical vision of 5G. 5G must be economically proved, particularly in delivering value beyond connectivity. The report looks at the key factors in enabling 5G economic success, particularly the benefits of automation.

The report examines the current state of 5G, its current level of maturity, looking at the proposed 5G use cases, the economics of 5G, and the business opportunities from 5G.

Primer that examines the current state of 5G, its current level of maturity, looking at the proposed 5G use cases, the economics of 5G, and the business opportunities from 5G.

In this profile we look at how Accedian is building an active assurance capability, aligned with modern cloud native networks. Appledore Research were briefed on Accedian in Barcelona at MWC 2022 and as part of our work on the IBM Cloud Pak and Cisco Crosswork Solution Profile.

“Accedian are aiming to move testing beyond troubleshooting, to become an active continuous part of network services” 

Active assurance provides a powerful technique to understand the status and performance of the network. It simulates a network flow using active agents across one or many link paths measuring latency, delay, and throughput for the data session. This provides the performance metrics necessary to confirm a consistent service level and to provide a high degree of confidence on actual data plane traffic performance. This technique is superior to older performance monitoring systems that poll, collect, and infer network performance characteristics. It is also essential to manage and monitor complex services such as network slicing that deliver customized service quality tunnels to individual users and applications.

The report is a primer on Machine Learning and AI, and forms a basis for understanding the opportunity in telecom and virtualization. It will form the basis for future research outlining operations, market progress and individual supplier’s advances.

“Catalog was dull!  Amdocs’ aim is to make it exciting; enabling digital transformation”

Amdocs Catalog is a next generation enterprise catalog, providing a unified commerce, charging and service/resource catalog. It provides the catalog platform for all of Amdocs solutions. Amdocs Catalog is built and delivered as cloud-native microservices. It is designed as a stand-alone solution that can federate existing BSS and OSS catalog systems, both from Amdocs and third parties.

This report profiles Amdocs’ micro services based DigitalONE and CatalogONE products and the underlying Microservices360 platform on which they are based.

Note: an updated perspective on Amdocs Microservices360 and microservices strategy is now available here. 

This document profiles amdocs’ NFV SD-WAN Package Solution, which is amdocs’ Management offering (OSS, Orchestration), in the context of Appledore Research’s on-going research stream and best practices.   This is one of a series of SD-WAN supplier profiles that Appledore is producing in 2018-2019.

The document looks at amdocs’ SDWAN Management features, positioning, differentiators, and analysis compared to our best practices.

Two version are provided: A “Full” detailed version and a “Short” marketing version.

The paper evaluates an ideal service assurance solution architecture for operations in the cloud and 5G era and a comprehensive method for proactively pre-testing throughout full lifecycle management. The outcome of this approach will yield lower operational cost in different deployment models.

Foundational changes are demanding new WAN networking realities and creating opportunity for CSPs.  The rise of public cloud; the rise of work-at-home, the rise of digital services and business, the importance of digital supply chain collaboration. Additionally, both the sophistication of and the consequences of security threats are vastly greater.

The net result is that enterprises are demanding end-to-end solutions, and telecom CSPs are best positioned to deliver those. In this forecast, we predict not only significant growth in the market for automated, managed security (rising to $17.6B in 2027) but also significant growth in CSPs’ share of that market – conditional on them raising their own game in automation.

We believe that success in security demands that CSPs provide it as an automated, managed service bundled with underlay and overlay transport.  We also believe that an effective, automated security offer drives additional transport segments – worth even more than the security itself.  This is a must-win market, and due to complexity, manual methods are not sufficient.

Our forecast looks at managed services for automated security across all six segments:

• Managed SDWAN
• Security Orchestration
• Next Gen Firewalls as-a-Service
• Native Cloud Security as-a-Service
• DDoS Protection & Mitigation as-a-Service
• Automated XDR as-a-Service

This forecast will be of particular interest to CSPs selling to enterprises, suppliers enabling CSPs with their enterprise growth plans.

Appledore top tier subscribers can access the report immediately in their Digital Lockers under Market Outlooks. For other inquiries please use the link below. 

This landmark report provides a high level forecast and detailed analysis of a major new multi-billion dollar revenue opportunity for telecom in enterprise, network and cloud security. Across over 50 pages, Principal Analyst Grant Lenahan dissects the state of security, and explains why automation of security offers such a critical new growth vector, in particular for CSPs – though with important qualifiers: the telecom industry must think differently and build automation into the core of new service thinking.

The report outlines the many places automation must be applied, reducing the ambiguity in the term, and offers examples of where the industry is moving in this direction. The revenue opportunity is quantified with a breakdown into delivery component segments. We offers recommendations for success, to minimize complexity and cost, and to maximize market gains.

CSPs profiled include BT, Lumen, ngena and Spirent. Vendors profiles include Akamai, Ciena, Ericsson, IBM, Nokia and VMware.

While extremely valuable as a standalone resource, Automating Security develops themes and industry trends explored in our earlier Security in the Network Cloud. Scroll down to read the full Table of Contents.

Appledore top tier subscribers can access the report immediately in their Digital Lockers under Market Outlooks. For other inquiries please use the link below. 

This paper investigates the end-to-end challenges to automation, and suggests OSS and process methods that will lead to higher levels of automation.

In 2021, in Telco as a Platform (TaaP) Appledore looked at the opportunities for growth from the disaggregation of telecom networks. We introduced a set of guiding principles that operators can adopt to help accelerate service creation and generate consistent new revenue streams.

By adopting Appledore’s criteria and regularly evaluating progress, CSPs can accelerate their efforts of becoming the cloud and communications providers of choice in their markets.

Starting in Q4 2022, Appledore will interview operators representing the global CSP market (and their platform vendors) to establish a looking to benchmark CSP and vendor progress in achieving Telco as a Platform goals and sharing platform success stories with an annual Telco as a Platform Report Card. This Research Note explains the evaluation process and gives interested parties a way to participate in this research.

OSS needs to change. It’s time for network operators to hit the productivity gym!

In this white paper we describe a modern, service-oriented management infrastructure, and specifically measure the Blue Planet Intelligent Automation portfolio and long-stated vision, against our documented recommendations for the future of OSS.

Much is at stake:

• we estimate that automation can reduce the cost of many network operations by 95-99%;
• that service demand intervals can fall by a similar percentage (weeks to minutes);
• that by the latter half of this decade, the industry will be spending between $11B and $27B (median: $18B) annually on software to yield this automation.
• many services are under competitive threat from public cloud vendors who have adopted these Sea Changes as part of their DNA and operate with a very low-cost structure.

This document profiles BT’s SD-WAN offering in the context of Appledore Research’s on-going research stream and best practices.

This solution profile is focused on Ciena’s Blue Planet software as it applies to ARG’s research into closed-loop automation, in this case specifically orchestration. It should be read in the context of “The Role of Closed Loop Automation in Virtualized Networks”, ARG 2016.

This profile analyses the portfolio of Ciena’s Blue Planet division in the context of Appledore’s recommendations on successful closed loop automation.  Ciena Blue Planet’s focus is delivering intelligent automation software and solutions to CSPs and they have taken the important step of separating their software products business from their core optical networking business.

The new Blue Planet division is leading Ciena’s delivery of SDN software management and orchestration for NFV, WAN and Cloud. They are also moving toward intelligent closed loop network orchestration driven by AI/Machine Learning.

Blue Planet has four major software products that support its intelligent automation solution. These provide cross technology and vendor support:

• Orchestration (both Multi-domain service and NFV-O);
• Inventory
• Analytics
• Route optimization and Assurance (ROA) targeted at cross layer IP and optical network management and optimisation.

Communication Service Providers (CSPs) are demanding lowered CAPEX spend on networks, lowered OPEX spend on running and maintaining their networks and improved customer experience from their networks. The whitepaper is aimed at senior decision makers within a CSP. It looks at how Cisco Crosswork Hierarchical Controller can automate the management of IP/Optical transport networks delivering quantitative benefits for all operators, be they mobile, fixed broadband or enterprise focused.

This report is FREE to download, courtesy of Cisco. However, your registration details will not be shared.

Telecom may be virtualizing, but we are far from cloud -native and from achieving its operational promise.   An extensive primary-research effort looking at best practices and candid industry opinion from across leading CSPs, NEPs, disrupters and web-scale players. We begin with first principles, look at current practice, industry objectives, gaps and recommendations for success.

This framework report documents the state of the art in orchestration – MANO and beyond — as of 2017. It surveys best practices in four critical areas, and the state of the art in implementation, looking across a wide range of CSPs and suppliers. It is part 1 of a two-part series.

This document profiles Deutsche Telekom’s SD-WAN offering in the context of Appledore Research’s on-going research stream and best practices.

New venue, new city, new dates – but was it plus ca change at Digital Transformation World 2022?

The TM Forum’s Digital Transformation World – the flagship convention for the telecom software industry for over twenty years – returned to an in-person event after a two-year Covid-enforced gap. Living up to the spirit of its transformation title, it has a new format, time of year and home venue for the next three years: Copenhagen’s Bella Centre.

The move could hardly be more apposite for the telecom software community: a shift away from familiar, yet brutally monolithic and ageing infrastructure: the Acropolis Center in Nice, long overdue substantial overhaul; cosmetic adjustments made over recent years failing to address its real problems.

Impressively, DTW 2022 attracted over 3,000 delegates to Copenhagen. But was it a case of plus ca change? Our Research Note looks at the themes and sentiments from across the event – keynote presentations and at the coal face with vendors and industry peers.

The changing role of inventory in dynamic, online, virtualized/cloud networks.

This report looks into the role of inventory in dynamic, hybrid and cloud-based networks, and how inventory must be re-structured to facilitate the benefits of virtualization.

This report investigates the business case and the market potential for CSPs to capture some of the growing public cloud market with Edge Cloud (the optimum combination of access network and edge computing). In particular, it looks at the key differentiation that CSPs can achieve in, what is likely to be, a very competitive market.

Public cloud has transformed the IT world; with applications that would have traditionally been managed by an enterprise on-site now being hosted in the cloud. However, some applications cannot be moved to centralized public cloud for reasons of latency, mission criticality and backhaul network capacity/cost. Similarly, many exciting and innovative new use cases are stalled by the limitations of end devices and the latency and communication capacity/costs to the centralized cloud. This is the opportunity for Edge Cloud!

In November 2021, Ericsson surprised the market by announcing its acquisition of Vonage, one of the original disruptors in the business communications market. Appledore looks at what this development means for Ericsson and the wider market, and offers answers to the key questions: why Vonage? Why now? What’s next?

For more on our coverage of Ericsson (including free-to-view content), see here.

This document profiles Ericsson’s “Dynamic Orchestration” solution, in the context of Appledore Research Group’s  best practices for closed-loop automation, which are derived form our framework report “Closed Loop Automation in Virtualized Networks”.  It is a critical tool for those looking to plan simplicity into our automated future.

This document profiles Ericsson’s Management Solution (OSS, Orchestration), for SD-WAN, based on the Ericsson Orchestration Suite.  It is profiled in the context of Appledore Research’s on-going research stream and best practices. This is one of a series of SD-WAN supplier profiles that Appledore is producing in 2018-2019.

The document looks at Ericsson’s SDWAN Management features, positioning, differentiators, and analysis compared to our best practices.

Google Cloud Platform

“Google Cloud for Telecom is so much more than just infrastructure.”

Along with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, Google is the third hyperscaler to target telecom with a proposition based on cloud infrastructure. In this independent 14-page report, we provide an overview of Google Cloud Platform for Telecom, from its 2020 launch to the latest updates one year on. We look at Google Athos in a telecom context, and survey Google Cloud’s latest CSP and ISV partnerships.

This document profile’s IBM’s portfolio in assurance and analytics, under its concept of “cognitive operations”.  The profile includes traditional product, as well as how IBM is augmenting them with leading edge AI/LM technology from Watson.

This in-depth document profiles Infovista’s Ipanema SD-WAN offering in the context of Appledore Research’s on-going research stream and best practices.  We cover infovista’s technology, features, relative positioning, market evidence / success and also how they integrate into the broader operational environment to support automation.

This is one of a series of SD-WAN supplier profiles that Appledore is producing in 2018-2019.

Document is 20 pages long with features, positioning, differentiators, and analysis compared to our best practices.

This document focuses on how catalog driven DevOps principles can achieve a high degree of re-use, cost reduction, and agility.  It further demonstrates that this approach complements the industry shift to virtualization and advanced orchestration, and provides a low-risk, gradual path toward agility.

Machine learning promises to solve complex problems in the telecommunication operational domain much faster, cheaper, and with more accuracy than the best human domain experts could ever hope to achieve. Machine learning applied correctly has the potential to predict, identify, and quickly isolate anomalies yielding positive business outcomes. This is possible now because of high quality data sets, advances in compute processing, and teaming telco domain experts with data scientist to develop robust machine learning algorithms. The best way to think about machine learning is that it minimizes a cost function such as reducing an error rate. Said another way it processes millions of data sets, searches for patterns, and the results have a higher rate of accuracy compared to traditional methods.

AIOps is the innovation platform to improve network availability, capital efficiency, and counter cyber-attacks in cloud networks. However, the telecommunication market has been very slow to embrace the automation of operations, relative to other industries. This unwillingness to restructure operations to take advantage of low-cost machine intelligence has had a direct impact on the financial performance of CSPs.

This report focuses on the predominant use cases in the telecommunications industry. We evaluate the supply and demand side economic drivers. We also consider the broader secular trends impacting the market for AIOps investments including future labor force declines. As with most fast-growing early-stage market segments business models and the ecosystem will adapt quickly prior to maturation. We profile some of the leading suppliers and identify new entrants from the larger ecosystem.

Scroll down for the full Table of Contents.

Network Data Management (NDM) is an essential segment within the Network Automation Software (NAS) market. We predict growth in spending on solutions in this category to rise to USD 1.7 billion in 2027. Yet this market is being contested by a ever-widening set of suppliers, including several large players from outside the conventional telecom vendor roster.

Over 20+ pages, this Market Outlook maps the significant shift in thinking (and practice) on data management in networks in recent years, and its relationship to today’s most fundamental concern for CSPs: automation. The report highlights the increasing importance of cloud and the influence of IT observability thinking in networks, and a dramatically different approach to inventory.

The report profiles a selection of diverse vendors whose offerings nonetheless incorporate the new principles for network data management and observability: Amdocs, Netscout and Nokia, Rakuten Symphony, Couchbase, Cloudera, Devo, Elastic, Splunk and Teradata.

Scroll down for the full Table of Contents.

Report on Netcracker 12 from analyst conference in Cannes May 2017

This document profiles Netcracker’s Management & Orchestration Solution for SD-WAN, based on the Netcracker Business Cloud.  This solution is Netcracker’s entry into the management of SD-WAN and related enterprise services (OSS, Orchestration), and is profiled in the context of Appledore Research’s on-going research stream and best practices. This is one of a series of SD-WAN supplier profiles that Appledore is producing in 2018-2019.

The document looks at Netcracker’s SDWAN Management features, problems solved, positioning, differentiators, and analysis compared to our best practices.

This document profiles Netscout’s nGeniusONE and Carrier Solutions.

This in-depth document profiles ngena‘s SD-WAN offering in the context of Appledore Research’s on-going research stream and best practices.  We cover ngena’s technology, features, relative positioning, market evidence / success and also how they integrate into the broader operational environment to support automation.

This is one of a series of SD-WAN supplier profiles that Appledore is producing in 2018-2019.

Document is 28 pages long with features, positioning, differentiators, and analysis compared to our best practices.

This document reports on Nokia analyst day 2017 in Nice France.

This document profiles Nokia Deepfield cloud and networks analytics platform.

This profile documents the intent, strategy, execution, and benefits of Nokia’s NSP solution.  In particular, we look at its fit in the context of ideal next-generation operation of the “telco cloud” and its ability to contribute to high degrees of automation, closed-loop operation and agility.  We compare NSP to Appledore’s published recommendations and to general practice in the industry.

In July 2022, Appledore was invited to attend an event cohosted by Nokia and the TM Forum on the topic of SaaS in Telecom. This was a good opportunity to hear from the leadership of a relatively new business line, as well as from multiple UK operators, on the topic of telecom SaaS. Nokia officially introduced Nokia SaaS to the market in November 2021.

This 6-page Research Note provides an introduction to Nokia SaaS and its positioning and significance for telecom CSPs, enterprises, and entrepreneurial developers.

Nuage and Asavie – Extending SDWAN to Mobile Devices

Appledore have argued that one of SDWAN’s great values is the automation of security, and therefore reducing or eliminating the most common vulnerabilities – configuration errors and therefore security holes, left by human error.  This new partnership greatly extends that security automation, to any edge devices connected to mobile networks, while simplifying the user experience.  At the same time, this strengthens Nuage’s offer, and increases the value proposition and revenues that CSPs can address with their managed SDWAN solutions (their “TAM”).

Assuring service performance and delivery in a modern cloud-native network requires more real-time data capture and analysis. It also demands a wider scan of the network infrastructure, as services no longer run in a single network domain but instead across many technology domains. The service chain itself could be hundreds of microservices distributed across multiple cloud providers. Observability is the knowledge of how multiple domains perform at any given time. Each of the network domain outputs is a credible source of understanding of how well the overall service is performing.

In this whitepaper, Appledore looks at how observability is critical to the successful delivery of 5G networks and how Netscout is enabling this.

Analysis of ONAP, its status, potential impact on the marketplace, and recommendations for Service Provides and Suppliers.

Appledore believes the mobile telecom industry is on an open RAN trajectory. In this report, we look at the Open RAN leadership and the standards ecosystems that have already formed or are being formed. Ecosystems which, by definition, we believe will have greatest influence on the speed of transition to Open RAN. This report complements our analysis of the value of Open RAN for operators in our Open RAN Value Market Outlook.

Despite Oracle already being one of the best-known brands in the world, we think that their last 2-3 years or so in the telecom space warrants a closer look. Something has been quietly going on in Oracle Communications, and how telecom regards it could be due a reboot.

This 8-page Research Note offers a new perspective on Oracle’s position in telecom, highlighting organizational and other developments that provide evidence of Oracle’s fresh new ambition – and heading – in telecom.

Service providers need extra sophistication to enhance their offerings to customers, but that the added complexity this brings tends to slow the rate at which they actually bring new offerings to market. In this 15-page paper, we explore the concept of “Orchestrated Innovation” as a way for CSPs to resolve this conflict, and profile a vendor that is realizing the concept with real-world deployments of its innovative platform: Inmanta.

Anyone with an interest in service orchestration, automation or innovation should read this paper for a new perspective on all three.

Note that this report is FREE to download, courtesy of Inmanta. However, your registration details will not be shared.

Rakuten Symphony has rapidly established itself as a fully-fledged supplier to the global telecom industry, backing up its disruptive vision of cloud-native networks with the software required to plan, build and operate them at scale, automatically: Symworld. In September 2022, it unveiled its offering for end-to-end Service Assurance, together with data points from several years of live operation at Rakuten Mobile.

In this profile, we assess what Symphony Service Assurance is, and how it makes possible some radical ideas about how to assure services – not only for cloud-native networks.

This profile is essential reading for:

• CSPs with an interest in evolving their assurance to respond to new operational and customer challenges.
• Suppliers in the service assurance market including fault management, performance management, configuration management.
• Systems Integrators in network automation software (NAS)

Independently researched by Appledore analysts, this download is free, courtesy of Rakuten Symphony. Details used for download from the Appledore website will not be shared. 

In this profile, we look at how one company, Rakuten Symphony, is building a new type of data platform, one that can support the movement of CSPs from physical networks to one fundamentally on the cloud.

“When you have to make real-time decisions, you need the information to be 100% correct and you want information to be live”

Observability in general is now a well-trodden path in hyperscale cloud. Observability in the context of a telecom-focused infrastructure is barely charted. By proving the observability framework at scale in Rakuten Mobile, Rakuten Symphony is in the vanguard of enabling this change in telcos.

Symworld Cloud Observability provides a cloud-enabled, cloud-neutral solution, for telemetry data management that is already proven in a Rakuten Mobile in Japan. Symworld Observability Framework is a critical part of the data infrastructure of the Symworld platform and provides a single environment for the consistent management of telemetry data from the Rakuten network cloud.

Independently researched by Appledore analysts, this download is free, courtesy of Rakuten Symphony. Details used for download from the Appledore website will not be shared. 

Squeezing in between TM Forum’s Digital Transformation World and MWC Las Vegas, Rakuten’s annual Optimism event might not have received the attention it deserved from the telecom community. But make no mistake: the update on Germany’s 1&1 offered important new insights on Rakuten Symphony’s progress in enabling telecom industry disruption beyond its native Japan.

In conversation with Symphony CEO Tareq Amin, Chief Revenue Officer Rabih Dabbousi, 1&1 CEO Michael Martin gave new details of 1&1’s progress and thinking on key aspects of its plans.

As well as highlighting achievements to date at 1&1, the discussion offered insights into industry-wide concerns including security and energy optimization.

In this profile, we look at how Rakuten Symphony has built a new type of data platform, a platform with an inventory that can support the movement of CSPs from physical networks to fully cloud-native.

Symworld Inventory provides a cloud-enabled, cloud-neutral solution, for network topology that is already proven at Rakuten Mobile in Japan.

“Rakuten is putting a single inventory at the heart of every operational process”

Rakuten Symworld Inventory, part of the Symworld platform, is a modern inventory solution that supports the need of recording the physical state of the network and the ever-changing logical state of the network through time. However, unlike many current OSS today, in Symworld everything goes through a single common inventory. Inventory touches every module in the Symworld platform. This is a subtle, but significant change in the role of the inventory in OSS.

Independently researched by Appledore analysts, this download is free, courtesy of Rakuten Symphony. Details used for download from the Appledore website will not be shared. 

This is Appledore Research Group’s major “framework” report on automated, next-generation assurance. It complements “The Role of Closed Loop Automation in Virtualized Networks” and serves ad the foundation for many profiles and future documents.

In this updated paper, we look at the evolution of Oracle’s approach to the management of real time network topology.

Oracle has traditionally focused on inventory to support the order to cash fulfilment-centric processes. Now with its acquisition of Federos, it can provide an integrated inventory platform, capable of supporting fault to resolution assurance-centric processes, a stepping stone on the road to network autonomy. The Oracle inventory platform will provide a real-time federation of the network from existing management system data and data taken directly from devices.. This provides a foundation on which AI/ML assurance intelligence can be built, making it an enabler for the transformation of network assurance and analytics for a telco, an enterprise, or their customers.

CSPs require an evolutionary approach to adopting cloud native networks and their automated operational approach. Federation, the aggregation of existing data and systems, is a key enabler of an evolutionary approach to network transformation and automation. It allows CSPs, with existing multivendor networks and hybrid physical and virtual networks, to gain a single view of the network and forms the basis for Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning (ML) on top of the real world network.

This Appledore paper is free to download, courtesy of Oracle. Registration details will not be shared. 

“Amdocs makes a smart buy in acquiring MYCOM OSI and catapults itself into the automated assurance market, giving it a viable path to network autonomy”- Patrick Kelly 

Amdocs announced on May 24, 2022, that it intends to acquire MYCOM OSI a private supplier of service assurance solutions for $188 Million in an all-cash deal.

Amdocs is sending a clear signal to the market that it intends to provide the full suite of solutions necessary to automate operations in telecommunication networks. With Mycom OSI, Amdocs gains credibility in the network and service assurance market. Mycom OSI also complements the broader solution focused on customer experience. 

In this 4-page Research Note, we look at the implications of this acquisition for CSPs and vendors alike. The report looks at the market impact on assurance vendors like Netscout, Infovista, TEOCO and Accedian. As well as the opportunities and challenges for full suite OSS competitors like Netcracker and Oracle.

An understated contract award in late 2021 between two relatively low-profile companies could turn out to have much greater long-term significance for players in the mobile market, especially in the hot areas of enterprise private networks, 5G and telco as-a-service. This Research Note takes a closer look at the parties involved – Working Group Two and CKH IOD – and the differences between private networks offered on a managed service vs as-a-Service basis, and explains why better-known mobile players (operators and vendors alike) should take note of this quietly significant development.

“NEC is aiming to solve three fundamental challenges in the market today for Open RAN. Reduce complexity, validate performance, and provide carrier-grade stability” – Patrick Kelly 

Appledore Research visited the NEC Open RAN Center of Excellence in London on May 12, 2022. 

The London CoE is one of six NEC CoEs around the globe. The others are focused on Radio (in Japan, India, and the US) and IP & Transport networks (in Turkey and Brazil). As such, NEC’s CoE is no mere lab, but a genuine hub for global knowledge sharing, based on its active open RAN projects as well as supporting the market introduction of new offerings (or new partnerships). The team at the CoE is expanding rapidly and is currently home to around seventy-five staff. The CoE site is dedicated to supporting the full Open RAN lifecycle, from pre-release product testing all the way through to live, in production sites. 

In this 8-page Research Note, we look in detail at the NEC lab and NEC’s strong ambition to lead the validation of truly open disaggregated Open RAN solutions.

As 5G deployments take hold, NWDAF brings us closer to realizing a new era of automation and insights that the industry has been foreshadowing for the past decade. At the same time NWDAF will disrupt the classic service assurance market.

In this 6-page Research Note we look at what NWDAF is, and summarize the offerings from suppliers including Amdocs, Ericsson, Huawei, Guavus, InfoVista, NEC, Netscout, Nokia, Rakuten Symphony, Samsung, Sandvine, Spirent and Viavi. 

This Research Note reviews Arden Media’s Private Networks Forum event from May 2021, with Appledore commentary and analysis on themes and presentations from a range of companies including Altiostar, Bosch, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, Ford, Google Cloud, Mavenir, Radisys, Viavi and Vodafone.

This Research Note provides an overview of the concept of spectrum-as-a-service, and a short profile of Federated Wireless, a leader in this field with a platform enabling novel commercial opportunities for telcos and other players such as neutral hosts and towercos.

This profile of Swisscom shows how they have evolved their enterprise architecture successively through generations, ultimately establishing a modern framework for supporting a future as a digital services provider (DSP).

“The industry should pat itself on the back for a job well done. However…” – Francis Haysom

TelecomTV’s annual Digital Service Providers (DSP) Leaders event gathers the great and the good from across the industry to talk turkey in a more intimate setting, but was the mood of self-congratulation shared? Appledore was there to join the discussion.

Subscription clients can access this research directly via their Digital Locker. For help or queries, contact us.

“The deployment by Vodafone of Cardinality, on the Google Cloud Platform, is a significant industry development” – Francis Haysom

Appledore sat down with Prashant Kumar, CTO of Cardinality.io, at Futurenet World in May 2022. We discussed their strategy and their recent successful deployment of a pan-European network performance platform at Vodafone on the Google Cloud Platform.

Subscription clients can access this research directly via their Digital Locker. For help or queries, contact us.

This Research Note provides initial analysis and commentary on the acquisition of Wind River by Aptiv.

How is service assurance changed by the demands of 5G, with its service-based architecture, telco cloud context and emphasis on new kinds of distributed services?

This Appledore research note is free to download, courtesy of Rakuten Symphony. Download details (email address) will not be shared. 

The launch of Nokia’s FP5 highlights how carrier-grade IP routing is about more than raw power. In this short Research Note we look at what the FP5 silicon offers, and what it means for CSPs and other buyers of high-capacity IP networking equipment.

Appledore subscribers will find this Research Note already in their Digital Lockers – log in for access.

“Amdocs has made dramatic changes to its forward-looking product line, branded Amdocs Intelligent Networking Suite.” – Grant Lenahan

Amdocs needs no introduction. Synonymous with telecom software, its engagements span the globe and the industry.

Based on an extensive detailed technical questionnaire, presentations, and many hours of robust discussion this 12-page report takes a deep dive on Amdocs’ End-to-End Service & Network Orchestration offering for cross-domain service orchestration (CDSO). The report includes a SWOT analysis making it essential reading both for telcos considering end-to-end service orchestration offerings, and for other vendors looking to establish a distinct and competitive market position.

This report is FREE to download, courtesy of Amdocs. Registration details will only be used to deliver the download, and are not shared with any third party. 

Subscription clients can access this research directly via their Digital Locker. For help or queries, contact us.

Blue Planet, a Ciena company, through a combination of acquisition and organic development has established a comprehensive orchestration offering under the “Multi-Domain Service Orchestration” banner. In this Solution Profile we look at MDSO in the context of our research on offerings, best practices and principles in cross-domain service orchestration.

The report includes a SWOT analysis, making it essential reading both for telcos considering end-to-end service orchestration offerings, and for other vendors looking to establish a distinct and competitive market position.

Ericsson makes extensive use of AI across its offerings from products to managed services. In this profile, we look at Ericsson’s current footprint of AI-enabled engagements, and future strategy. We call out strengths and potential risks for Ericsson and its customers in the still-early shift to more intelligent, automated operations.

For more on our coverage of Ericsson (including free-to-view content), see here.

This mini-profile summarises Ericsson’s involvement and interests in the Open RAN movement.

This profile provides an overview of Google Anthos, the software platform that Google hopes to make the Android of telecom network applications – a common environment that allows seamless deployment and lifecycle management for all telecom workloads, even the most demanding.

The profile includes a technical overview, looks at strategy, ecosystem & partnerships, key customer announcements, and provides a high level SWOT analysis of Anthos.

HPE is a global telecom ISV as well as supplier of specialized network functions, primarily its HLR/HSS solution. In this profile we look at how HPE, with its Service Director product, addresses the needs of next-gen, cross-domain service orchestration. We look at how it works together with NFV Director, HPE’s “cloud manager” for cloud native workloads, to deliver automation and agile innovation, with a focus on consistent intent-based operations from the highest-level service, down to cloud-native workloads.

The report includes a SWOT analysis, making it essential reading both for telcos considering end-to-end service orchestration offerings, and for other vendors looking to establish a distinct and competitive market position.

Together, IBM and Cisco have demonstrated a complete end to end Orchestration solution with Service Orchestration (IBM Cloud Pak), transport Domain Orchestration (Cisco Crosswork) and performance management from Accedian. In this profile, we review the combined solution demonstration, and offer a brief SWOT analysis for service providers evaluating their options in delivering end to end orchestration of new services.

iBM Cloud Pak for Network Automation is an AI-powered, service orchestrator that enables automation of network operations with the help of advanced analytics, AI and ML. In this 9-page profile, we take a look at its key features, market impact and offer a SWOT analysis.

“IBM has, in a very brief time, vaulted itself from a non-player to arguably a leader in cross-domain service orchestration.” – Grant Lenahan

IBM’s Cloud Pak for Network Automation (“CP4NA”) represents a significant shift in product strategy for IBM, moving them from being primarily an integrator in this space, to having an off-the-shelf telecom orchestration product. In this 12-page analysis, we take a deep dive on their offering, and how IBM is faring on fusing the speed and innovation of a startup with Big Blue’s traditional heft.

The report includes a SWOT analysis, making it essential reading both for telcos considering end-to-end service orchestration offerings, and for other vendors looking to establish a distinct and competitive market position.

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“Infovista is one of the last independent ISVs with its core portfolio in the service assurance market.” – Patrick Kelly

Infovista is a leading independent software vendor with a strong track record in the service assurance market. Beyond service assurance alone, it has a broad portfolio of solutions for network operators, focused on network planning & optimization; network testing & deployment; and service and experience assurance.

Launched in 2022, Ativa aims to combine operational tasks into a single holistic view of the entire network. In this 6-page profile Principal Analyst Patrick Kelly looks at Ativa and its significance within the Service Assurance market.

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Lumen was created to be a pure business-to-business telecom service provider. But this is much more than a rebrand. Based on in-depth technical discussions with Lumen, we assess the reality of Lumen’s “platform for innovation” positioning. In particular, to what extent Lumen has redefined its offerings and proposition for cloud-savvy enterprises.

This report makes a valuable read for C-suite leadership at both technology vendors and “Fortune 500” enterprises, as well as technology and strategy leaders.  For marketing and sales, it provides a tangible look at the art of the possible, as opposed to the art of wishful thinking – which always manages to disappoint in the end.

For product managers and enterprise business unit leads at communications service providers (CSPs) it’s a detailed reference for how one operator is addressing the current and future needs of business customers. For Lumen customers and partners – an independent perspective on how credible its claims to be different really are.

For enterprise CIOs, it provides a timely view of the themes and trends that telecom operators believe are behind their evolving needs.

“Strong capabilities and offerings… with credible evidence that their approach is an improvement on traditional approaches.” – Francis Haysom

Mavenir has been one of the champions of, and front runners in, the Open RAN movement. In this 8-page profile we look at the company, their impact to date in the open RAN market, and offer our own independent assessment of Mavenir’s strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

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The fact that Nearby Computing exists at all is evidence of how early stage the edge market is. This well-connected Spanish startup/spin-out has a particular take on what is needed to make telco-enabled edge applications work. With blue-chip backers and hedging its bets between a “spreading-out” telecom and “smartening-up” infrastucture companies, Nearby suggests that that “blurred” may be the new “laser-focused”.

Touching on edge infra, orchestration, 5G, Kubernetes and more, this short profile is a thought-provoking read.

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“Netcracker has a long history, and yet is entering a new phase with modern orchestration technology. ” – Grant Lenahan

Netcracker is one of the longest-established and most successful brands in the telecom software market. It has been investing significantly in R&D for orchestration over several years, and making progress with telco customers.

Based on an extensive detailed technical questionnaire, presentations, and many hours of robust discussion this 12-page report takes a deep dive on Netcracker’s cross-domain service orchestration (CDSO) offering. The report includes a SWOT analysis making it essential reading both for telcos considering end-to-end service orchestration offerings, and for other vendors looking to establish a distinct and competitive market position.

This report is FREE to download, courtesy of Netcracker. Registration details will only be used to deliver the download, and are not shared with any third party. 

Subscription clients can access this research directly via their Digital Locker. For help or queries, contact us.

This mini-profile provides a summary analysis of Nokia’s involvement and positioning in Open RAN.

Nokia AVA, unveiled in May 2021, comprises Nokia’s analytics, insights and AI/ML products, services and use cases. It offers AI-as-a-Service and taps the legendary expertise at Nokia Bell Labs. This profile provides an overview of the AVA portfolio and our perspective on its application witihin (and outside of) telecom operations in general and AIOps in particular.

For more on our coverage of Nokia (including free-to-view content), see here.

Nokia has one of the largest and broadest NAS portfolios in the industry. Digital Operations Center is Nokia’s all-new entry into next-generation, cross-domain, service orchestration. In this 12-page analysis, Appledore takes a deep dive into its capabilities.

The report includes a SWOT analysis, making it essential reading both for telcos considering end-to-end service orchestration offerings, and for other vendors looking to establish a distinct and competitive market position.

Subscription clients can access this research directly via their Digital Locker. For help or queries, contact us.

With recent organisational changes, Nokia has moved further into what Appledore considers a “post-OSS” era. Nokia Digital Operations is the latest name for an enlarged portfolio of existing and new software assets. We put that in context, and take a look at the heart of the portfoltio: the aptly-named Nokia Digital Operations Center.

For more on our coverage of Nokia (including free-to-view content), see here.

“Oracle’s Unified Orchestration is now part a broader Unified Operations suite aimed squarely at taking closed-loop operation from theory to reality.” – Grant Lenahan

Building on its established strengths in fulfilment and inventory, with the acquisition of Federos Oracle has a more explicit goal of “closing the loop” end-to-end. This is reflected in a broadened portfolio and capabilities, and some judicious re-branding.

Based on an extensive detailed technical questionnaire, presentations, and many hours of robust discussion this 16-page report takes a deep dive on Oracle’s Unified Orchestration offering for cross-domain service orchestration (CDSO). The report includes a SWOT analysis making it essential reading both for telcos considering end-to-end service orchestration offerings, and for other vendors looking to establish a distinct and competitive market position.

Subscription clients can access this research directly via their Digital Locker. For help or queries, contact us.

In this 24-page extended profile we take an in-depth look at Oracle’s Service and Network Orchestration (“SNO”) suite, which handles lifecycle management of both network-facing and customer-facing services, with an emphasis on multi-domain (cross domain) orchestration.  We drill into specific use cases that Oracle believes are particularly important, and in which they have invested. SNO, along with associated “OSS and BSS” fall within Oracle’s Communications Global Applications Business Unit (“CAGBU”).

We offer our assessment of SNO’s differentiators, and alignment to industry leading thinking on orchestration and automation. A SWOT analysis is included, and an overview of the multi-domain service orchestration landscape.

Radisys is a 1,000-strong telecom hardware, software and services company with longstanding involvement in Open RAN and its predecessors such as CORD. This short profile outlines the company’s position and potential in Open RAN, both as a sub-contracted vendor, and as a direct challenger in some segments of the market.

A solution profile of Splunk.

With a new CEO at the helm and a major pivot to SaaS under way, what are Splunk’s prospects in the telecom vertical? And how does it stack up against rival offerings from the likes of Elastic, Devo and others? What AI-based solutions in the telco market are reducing input cost and delivering economic value? This 8-page profile provides an up-to-date analysis.

It is a rare thing to be genuinely surprised by a vendor briefing, but Subex managed this with their recent briefing on their AI enabled Network Analytics solution. In this 14-page profile we offer an independent perspective on how Subex is applying its AI knowledge to network problem space, initially with a Capacity Management use case. This profile includes a SWOT analysis, and where we see Subex now playing within Appledore’s new taxonomy for Network Automation Software.

“VMware has transformed itself from a virtual machine infrastructure vendor into a cloud-native leader.” – Grant Lenahan

VMware “Telco Cloud Automation”, introduced within the last two years, builds on existing orchestration capabilities that VMware has developed to manage workloads and network services in cloud environments, both those that utilize its own virtualization/cloudification technology, and across clouds.

This 12-page report on VMware’s cross-domain service orchestration offering includes a SWOT analysis making it essential reading both for telcos considering end-to-end service orchestration offerings, and for other vendors looking to establish a distinct and competitive market position.

Subscription clients can access this research directly via their Digital Locker. For help or queries, contact us.

VMware is a leader in multi-cloud virtualization; capable of delivering software that runs on many platforms and now managing it across those platforms. With VMware Telco Cloud Automation, VMware is seeking to build on its leadership in telecom multi-cloud infrastructure management, providing a complete automation capability that can deliver value added services on the Telco cloud. 

VMware believes that automation and orchestration is the only way telcos can contain complexity. Cloud simplifies, but without orchestration it makes networks more complex. VMware’s strategy with Telco Cloud Automation is to enable multi-vendor, multi cloud, multi-location networks, leveraging its familiarity as the virtualization layer in many of those clouds. 

Spirent’s Lifecycle Service Assurance (LSA) solution suite provides network validation, service testing, and active service assurance. Spirent is a leading supplier to mobile CSPs and equipment suppliers with 55% of its revenue originating in Americas region. This profile provides key customers of Spirent, solutions in the service assurance domain, competitors, and our analysis of the company.

Spirent’s NFV Lifecycle Service Assurance (LSA) solution suite provides network validation, service testing, and active service assurance. Spirent is a leading supplier to mobile CSPs and equipment suppliers with 55% of its revenue originating in Americas region. This profile provides key customers of Spirent, solutions in the service assurance domain, competitors, and our analysis of the company.

This document profiles Talari Networks’ SD-WAN offering in the context of Appledore Research’s on-going research stream and best practices.

This is the May update of this “living document”.  If you purchased the original the update is free.

This report is part 2 of a series that looks at the evolution of Network Cloud Orchestration, by which we mean NFV-hybrid orchestration at all layers, supporting all core processes – including healing, scaling and capacity optimization.  We focus on achieving automation and cloud-native operations.
Part 2 – Supplier Roundup It contains 20+ supplier mini profiles showing where suppliers play and how they are transforming in the four major areas outlined.  We suggest first reading Part 1.

This report will be “living” and updated as new information becomes available.  The current update is U3, April 2018.

”The next decade will most definitely reshape the telco industry. Appledore Research believe that billions are up for grabs.”

Most industry pundits will publish a piece on the most important trends for the new year. In reality we know that it always takes longer for a business model or technology advancement to impact the market. We decided this year to look out a decade to 2030. We look at the trends we think will have the most impact on the telco market. We also estimate on the their potential economic impact to help guide our readers on where to place their bets. A new decade is the appropriate time to take stock of where our industry is and the likely direction it will take over the coming decade.The key trends are: 5G and beyond; AI driven network; Automation; Any Party Exposure, Distributed Ledger; Digital Twin; Digital Service Economy; Dynamic Autonomic Services; Edge Cloud; Industrial Automation; Security Management; the Utility telco and Opensource.

This market primer is a short version of our full market outlook especially for MWC2020.

Automated assurance not only simplifies and reduces costs, but introduces far more advanced testing-like methods to your arsenal. The introduction of automated assurance demands new thinking. Automated assurance metrics and capabilities must be considered and pre-engineered when Cloudified Network Functions (CNFs) and services are designed; it must be built into network automation models; and it demands that automation be a single method across provisioning assurance and capacity management (as is a general best practice for any closed loop). Mostly it demands that we think differently about what is needed, what is possible, and how and when to consider assurance operations at scale. The answer is: early.

This document profiles Verizon’s SD-WAN offering in the context of Appledore Research’s on-going research stream and best practices.

This document profiles Versa Networks’ SD-WAN offering in the context of Appledore Research’s on-going research stream and best practices.

This is one of a series of SD-WAN supplier profiles that Appledore is producing in 2018-2019.

Document is 22 pages long with features, positioning, differentiators, and analysis compared to our best practices.

This document profiles VMware’s “VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud” (often abbreviated “VMware SD-WAN” for brevity in this document) SD-WAN offering in the context of Appledore Research’s on-going research stream and best practices for “Telco Cloud” management and operations.  VeloCloud was an independent start-up, purchased by VMware in 2017, and being integrated with VMware’s NSX SDN product line (of Nicira origin).  VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud’s most unique selling proposition, made clear by its very name, is its “cloud-delivered” business model – both direct to enterprises and as a managed services platform for CSPs.  Cloud delivered can also pertain to its multi-tenant gateways (more on these often-misunderstood elements later).  Its second unique value proposition as Appledore observes them, involves “DMPO” or Dynamic Multi-Path Optimization” – a set of features to leverage multiple WAN paths and therefore deliver high quality transmission over “unreliable” Internet.

This is part of a series of SD-WAN solution profiles and research available from Appledore Research.

The focus of this profile is on VMware Smart Assurance which is comprised of assets acquired from Dell EMC, the parent company. For long term industry veterans most will recognize the core capabilities of VMware SMART Assurance as patented technology developed under SMARTS. VMware acquired proven intellectual property and a customer base that includes tier 1 CSPs.

VMware Smart Assurance is designed to help CSPs migrate from existing fixed network and compute architectures to cloud native, virtualized networks. Smart Assurance is positioned to support multi-vendor, multi-tenant infrastructure in the transport, physical, virtual, NFV and SD-WAN domains. The Smarts Codebook technology has been used in physical networks for decades. VMware is now applying machine learning and business impact analysis in the hybrid virtual network supporting its vCloud NFV and SD-WAN by VeloCloud assets.

In-depth profile of Vodafone’s solutions and strategy in SD-WAN, with a focus on agile and forward looking operations.

This research looks at the importance to CSPs in building differentiated services at the edge of the network.

It examines the related topics of edge computing, white box CPE and improved radio access technology in 5G.

In particular it looks at:

• The current direction and economics of 5G and network slicing
• The current direction and economics of universal CPE in CSPs
• Existing standard and ecosystem initiatives in edge computing

Appledore will be publishing complimentary detailed research on SD-WAN, Network Slicing, 5G and Edge computing in 2018