Inventory in Virtualized, Software- Enabled Networks

Software-based networks, whether in the form of SDN, NFV or network slicing, have the potential to fundamentally change how Communication…

Software-based networks, whether in the form of SDN, NFV or network slicing, have the potential to fundamentally change how Communication Service Providers (CSPs) deploy, operate and monetize their networks. They could enable a CSP to:

• Develop new, and enhance existing revenue streams
  
• Innovate with new, exciting services that go beyond commodity connectivity
  
• Engender increased automation of operational processes
  
• Reduce network OPEX
  
• Enable the use of commodity hardware and lower CAPEX.

Existing operational practice, often bound up in traditional OSS such as inventory systems, can be seen as an obstacle to these opportunities and these systems are sometimes considered as non-essential to future software-based networks.

In this paper, we consider the importance of inventory’s role today, and what that role will become tomorrow — assessing where inventory will remain relevant in its current form and where it will need to change to support an increasingly dynamic network.

We will then look at the evolutionary steps CSPs can take once today’s inventory becomes too passive, manually intensive and reactive for services comprised of truly dynamic and changeable resources.

Learn more in this white paper.