OPINION
23
Maximise
your network
By Chris Gilmour, Technical
Practice Lead, and Mark Holder,
Account Director Axians UK
www.axions.co.uk
Next generation networks – it’s not
all software and bots – it’s doing
more with what you already have…
Now isn’t an easy time to be a communications service
provider (CSP). On one side there’s pressure to expand
infrastructure to deal with growing customer demands for
data and on the other, an increasing level of competition
and constant pressure to provide customers with new,
innovative services.
This combination of factors is generating networks that
are significantly more complex than was the case even
five years ago. Future-gazers are constantly predicting the
‘next big thing’ in tech, with many seeing automation and
artificial intelligence (AI) as the keys to differentiation that
can increase profit margins and solve network complexity
problems that hold business back.
But infrastructure changes are not restricted to software
and bots. It’s entirely possible that the fundamentals of
tomorrow’s networks are already in place, just waiting
for the innovation that will bring them to life. Modern
platforms, that is to say, those built within the last three to
five years, frequently hold vast amounts of functionality
and programmability that are simply not being used at the
moment.
Re-engineering your network
Throughout history, innovators have worked with limited
resources to create something groundbreaking, and
networks work on similar principles now. For any given
business there can be hundreds of opportunities to ‘tweak’
existing network configuration to make it work better,
more efficiently or more distinctively to add value to the
enterprise. There may even be scope for a whole new
product or product line; just as Play-Doh started life as a
wallpaper cleaner, but became a market-leading toy for
children, so a network can be programmed and changed to
make better, more wide-ranging, or simply new products.
The network is the key enabler of any CSP’s business,
and while it’s complex it’s also the place where costs can be
contained and services managed and generated. Customers
rely on it, so providers are understandably keen to maintain
a steady state, and it unquestionably consumes a great deal
of resources as staff work hard to provide the services that
customers increasingly rely on for their day-to-day needs.
But the fact remains that any modern platform is likely to
contain a substantial amount of unused capability that the
CSP could be exploiting to reduce costs, reduce customer
churn and increase revenue – but they’re not. Why?
Very often, the issue is one of resource. Communications
service providers are busy, with their heads down doing
the day job, so it can be hard to look up and survey the
possibilities. It’s hard enough launching new products, let
alone reconfiguring the very core of the business. But CSPs
also know that they simply can’t afford to neglect their
infrastructure and pin their hopes on ‘the next big thing’.
Network efficiency, meeting customer demand and creating
new services are the key to their continued success; they
must be able to respond to current challenges and future-
proof the business.
The situation facing CSPs today has parallels in some
of the best-known innovations in history. Alexander Bell’s
invention of the telephone wasn’t a standalone event,
it catalysed further progress. It led to Emil Berliner’s
development of new sound recording processes, which
in turn gave birth to the music industry. That industry
generated new customer needs, and goods and services to
meet those needs. Just as network capability does today.
The good news is that there is often more help and expertise
to be had, closer to home and more easily than CSPs realise.
Do more with what you already have
Expertise is everywhere
As the cliché goes, you don’t know what it is
that you don’t know (or, for those who remember Donald
Rumsfeld, there are known unknowns), but the chances are
that somebody else does know. Somewhere, probably closer
than you realise, is somebody who can get under the skin of
STEP 1
www.networkseuropemagazine.com