Devops transition is ‘No. 1 pain point’ as operators embrace virtualization.
As operators move to embrace virtualization on the road to “5G,” can the workforce keep up? Many leaders in the space have worked to aggressively retrain employees – shifting emphasis from hardware-based functions to software development, data engineering and similar roles – but the development and operations transition is a persistent sticking point.
Ann Hatchell, head of Open Network Marketing for Amdocs, discussed this in an interview with RCR Wireless News during Mobile World Congress 2017.
“I think probably the No. 1 pain point, it always sort of comes down to this, is the ability to transition their own workforce,” Hatchell said, drawing on conversations with operators going through what’s often called digital transformation. “Virtualization is a cultural challenge. It’s a challenge just in terms of the resources that have been dedicated to lots of functions. It means really a retooling and a reskilling. Many [customers] have their own training programs to start bringing these organizations together. I think it’s a lot of cross-training. That is what I’m hearing. It’s interesting because as the technologies converge across multiple domains, that means addressing these challenges.”
And the challenge is likely to only become more prominent given the increasing velocity around virtualization.
“A year ago,” Hatchell said, “I thought we were reaching an inflection point around the launch of commercial services in [network functions virtualization]. That’s gotten energized even further with a lot of the implementations around software-defined [wide area networks].” Now, she said open source will further “help operators accelerate the efforts globally. The trajectory of this has been very interesting.”
To that acceleration, perhaps the most significant recent movement was from early in February when AT&T made its enhanced control, orchestration, management and policy platform, ECOMP, open through The Linux Foundation. Building on that action, the latest is the merging of ECOMP with Open-O, a similar initiative led by Huawei, China Mobile and other Asia-Pacific partners. The new open source platform has been dubbed ONAP.
The idea is to harmonize ECOMP and Open-O for “real-time, policy driven software automation of virtual network functions that will enable software, network, IT and cloud providers and developers to rapidly create new services.” The Linux Foundation said it would establish governance and membership structure for ONAP, with the board set to guide business decisions, marketing and ensure alignment between the technical communities and members.
“Now you’ve got the potential for what we believe will be the de facto standard for open source virtualization,” Hatchell said of ONAP. “We’ve got more eyes on the problem – so you can accelerate the platform and make it accessible to operators globally.” She said the combined platforms consist of around 10 million lines of code.
Amdocs has been involved in AT&T’s ECOMP since its creation. The open source technology is currently being tested by Orange in its Polish operation; Amdocs is serving as the technology integrator.
“There’s now a broad platform comprising about 10 million lines of code … you need help to operationalize it,” Hatchell said. “This is where Amdocs will come in and help our customers take the code base for ONAP, different modules and help them operationalize it.”
