Middle East, June 3, 2014 – Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) is today announcing that it is to launch a new portfolio of OSS (operations support systems) capabilities within its Motive portfolio of customer experience solutions. The aim of the portfolio is to harness the benefits of cloud technologies to reduce costs and enhance services via a totally new approach to automating a service provider’s operations.
The Motive Dynamic Operations portfolio creates a clear path for service providers to migrate to the cloud by making their operational infrastructure as agile as the virtualized network and data center. The portfolio innovates in three unique ways: a new foundation that can dynamically identify and track all network resources; fully automated, programmable OSS that can fulfil orders and assure services; and a ‘self-healing’ environment driven by big data network analytics that evolves from automated recovery to predictive management.
Today’s OSS environment is highly fragmented, manually intensive and costly to maintain, making it a substantial barrier to the dynamic delivery of cloud services., The Motive Dynamic Operations portfolio – to be launched later this year – will enable operators to realize the promise of virtualized networks offered by NFV (Network Function Virtualization) and SDN (Software Defined Networking) technologies.
OSS refers to the systems service providers use to manage their networks including service fulfillment to deliver new services and service assurance to keep the network running properly. While service providers are rapidly embracing innovations around IP networks, cloud technology and virtualized network functions, industry innovation in OSS has lagged.
Using Alcatel-Lucent’s OSS technology to drive automated operations and recovery, Telefónica has been awarded the industry’s Operation Excellence Award at the TM Forum event this week in Nice, France. The award is presented to the service provider demonstrating the most innovative and effective use of TM Forum Frameworx to deliver tangible cost reduction, risk reduction and improved time-to-market. Alcatel-Lucent and Telefónica announced plans in 2012 to streamline the operator’s OSS into a single, global software platform for greater network management agility and efficiency. In February, the two companies Lucent followed up with the announcement they were joining forces to accelerate Telefónica’s move to NFV.
Andrew McDonald, Alcatel-Lucent, President, IP Platform Business Division: “It is imperative to fundamentally change the current OSS approach before operators will be able to realize the promise of NFV and SDN. After launching both an NFV platform in Cloud Band, an SDN solution through Nuage Networks and a compehensive virtualized packet core, IMS and wireless network functions, Alcatel-Lucent is now bringing innovation to the OSS space with the launch of Motive Dynamic Operation, which delivers the OSS agility required for operating networks in the cloud.”
Alcatel-Lucent, an expanding player in innovative IP software solutions, has more than 300 OSS customers in 70 countries. Studies based on customer deployments show that unifying and automating OSS operations can result in a 30-50 percent reduction in time to market, a 50-70 percent reduction in time to service, and cost reductions of 25-50 percent. Thus, the new Motive portfolio will focus on the tighter integration and automation of service assurance and fullfilment functions. For the automation layer, Alcatel-Lucent will leverage the Motive Service Management Platform orchestration engine. Additionally, Motive’s Big Network Analytics technology will be tapped to drive the automation of the identification and resolution of service and network issues.
Alcatel-Lucent Motive Dynamic Operations will work with existing vendor equipment so it can be implemented as an overlay, alongside, or to replace an operator’s current OSS systems in support their transition to a cloud environment. To help operators fast track cloud development, integration with Alcatel-Lucent’s CloudBand™ NFV solution, Nuage Networks’™ SDN solution, and virtualized network functions, including evolved packet core (EPC), IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and radio access network (RAN), is ongoing and will enrich the solution over time.
