Mobile operators have been aggressively investing in 5G technology for years, and chances are you’re already seeing a return on your investment from mobile consumer broadband. But many innovative enterprise use cases still hold tremendous untapped potential. For example, the global Industry 4.0 market size was estimated at USD 146.14 billion in 2022, and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.9% from 2023 to 2030.
For innovative operations seeking to sharpen their competitive edge, cloud-based 5G networks provide tremendous performance, flexibility, and agility needed to unlock a wide range of revenue opportunities.
They offer higher throughput, lower latency, and improved quality of service compared to traditional enterprise networks. This lets them support data-intensive, enhanced mobile broadband use cases that can be monetized through network slicing.
5G also positions operations to take advantage of network-as-a-service (NaaS) revenue opportunities, building programmable, API-driven networks. They can then charge application providers for access to high-performance connectivity with QoS guarantees.
Operators can also boost enterprise connectivity revenue with ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLCC) and massive machine-type communication (mMTC) to support connected drones, XR applications, and other advanced use cases.
Automation is essential, but challenges remain
Although 5G networks can be tailored to meet the needs of specific applications and customers, manually customizing them at scale is impractical and cost prohibitive. Automation is essential for driving value from 5G networks. However, it presents its own set of challenges, such as:
- Disaggregated, highly diverse cloud and software components, each with its own automation building blocks
- Telco cloud component proliferation at scale, making it challenging to create automation flows
- Need for integration and compatibility with existing automation for non-5G networks
- Lack of unified tooling to develop and track automated telco cloud workflows
- Operator-specific telco cloud automation requirements that require customization
Unless you have the right tooling to tackle these challenges, it will be slow and costly to develop and deliver the customized enterprise services your customers demand.
Achieving telco cloud automation with workflow management
Since automation is critical for controlling the cost and complexity of 5G network cloud environments, it’s important to have strong workflow management tools. You need to be able to integrate a diverse set of automation fragments into an end-to-end process flow that lets you support new network builds, roll out new services fast, and maintain dependable, cost-efficient operations.
An effective network cloud workflow management platform should:
- Let you use pre-built automation building blocks and workflow templates that are easy to integrate, and support open APIs
- Be open to integrate building block automations associated with every type of component on the network, whether 4G or 5G, from any building block provider
- Include a set of pre-defined automaton building blocks that are stored in a catalog, so they can be easily accessed and reused
- Provide an easy-to-use, developer-friendly, low or no-code user interface to let you create workflows that span Day 0 and Day 1 deployment, testing, and Day 2 operations
- Supply a dashboard for monitoring and troubleshooting end-to-end process automation flows to help you understand how they are performing and where issues are occurring
Get details in depth
If you’d like to learn more about how a centralized telco cloud management platform can help you seize new revenue opportunities and unleash the full potential of your 5G network, download this new white paper, “End-to-end automated telco cloud workflows are critical for driving 5G value.”
