Carriers are motivated to scale their operations, reduce cost and bring innovative services to market. While new service offerings are the engine of growth, they are also more complex and expensive to provision. Network Automation 2011 will bring together leaders among service providers, network equipment vendors, and providers of network management and operation solutions to discuss industry challenges, present new ideas, and share best practices around the topic of network automation.
Beyond Automation
Automating service provisioning and network configuration is one of several areas for potential improvement. Current approaches to translating service models into configuration changes are overly dependent on manual intervention from experts with detailed knowledge of the network and, where automated systems are used, they often use complex scripting code that is expensive to maintain and slow to adapt to requirements for new product offerings. In addition, there are limited mechanisms to ensure the consistency of multiple, interdependent configuration changes.
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New standards and technologies, like NETCONF and YANG, are now available to address these configuration management issues.
However it is necessary to widen the scope beyond the operational relevance only of network automation. Customers, once they embrace automation concepts very quickly turn into an enabler for new solutions, architectures and innovations.They actually create entirely new designs and workflows rather than 'just' operating existing ones more efficiently.
Indeed, network automation concepts are not only proposing sequence of commands automation. They also push developers to create new designs and architectures.
Another important issue is green automation. Networks are large consumers of energy and it is important for operators to reduce costs and demonstrate an environmentally conscious approach. Network automation plays a critical role in achieving these goals. |
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• Why is automation important for network operations and will it fulfil its promise?
• What are the latest technologies and approaches that will streamline network operations, increase agility, and reduce costs?
• How are carriers planning to leverage these in the short and long-term?
• What solutions must network equipment vendors provide to enable network automation?
• What are the technical issues involved in deploying network automation systems and processes?
Responses will be given during the Network Automation conference to be held in Paris next 08 to 10 November 2011.
The Conference agenda is online |
