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- Permission to record Requested and granted
- Introduction 10 mins
- Recap on prior workshops #2 and #3
- Initial workshop# 1 focused on sharing experiences and state of the programs in different organizations
- Workshop #2 started to advance the definitions Identified in the Workshop #1 but there were concerns about the formal/administrative arrangements.
- Workshop #3 was SDO representation only ( not notified on the email exploder list) that reviewed a proposal WP01 to separate Multi SDO initiative discussions into two threads: one on formal administrative matters and the other open discussion workshop. It also proposed a schedule of meeting now recorded in page
Multi-SDO AN Meeting Schedules - Future agenda topics can be put in the meeting list schedules listed above.
- Work organization See WP01r1 at Work Packages ( WP)
- Key elements of the updated proposal are:
- Formal administration meeting notified to SDO using he Formal SDO Liaison Contacts List and emailed invitation to formal contact points.
- Open discussion meeting notified using Outlook invite using email list [email protected] whose participants are listed at List of Open Workshop Participants
- Agenda topics are different and expect outputs are different.
- Interval between formal meetings is longer than open meetings.
- Much of the open meeting work can be conducted online on confluence and through email communications.
- Where the open meeting identity activities that need formal liaison agreement these will be notified to the formal thread for discussion
- Note that Open Discussion group are primarily to exchange and share information and there is no IPR cover.
- Recap on prior workshops #2 and #3
- Work package sync up / kick-off
- Kick-off WP03 Business Vision & requirements: 25min
- Dong Sun provided an overview of the work package WP03
- Primary goal is to cover open discussion of both AN business vision including use cases and sharing of information
- this will lead to identifying more specific technical / detailed topics.
- (Note WP02 below provides a specific example of what is intended)
- Belief is that by exchanging information participants will naturally avoid overlapping other groups activities which will assist CSPs
- Dong Sun provided an overview of the work package WP03
- Kick-off WP02 Roadmap and Landscape 25 mins
- Lingli Denggave an overview of the challenge that Service Providers such as China Mobile are facing in adopting AN, and why a roadmap of current and planned activities with associated landscape diagrams will help the industry understand what needs to be done , which group need to coordinate with which other groups; and help CSP communicate the management challenges that they need to solve with vendors in order to successful adopt, deploy and operate Autonomous Networks.
- Key points arising from review of WP02 AN Roadmaps and Landscape
CSP requirements
Background
- Target architecture for AN involves many management fields and complex technology spanning business, service, resource and infrastructure.
- Requires the addition of a (network) AI management plane in addition to current operational Management Stack (Ed Note: FCAPS). The AI Management Plane relies on a systematic design for how Network data is collected, managed and distributed across and in multiple domains.
- AN standardization is far more complicated than previous standards and is beyond scope of any single SDO (Ed Note: domain skills, scale and pace of work required).
CSP perspectives on transformation
The WP02 proposed Roadmap and Landscape is part of setting CSP goals for long term evolution of automation.
- For most CSPs they are starting as journey towards to AN automation, and they are a long way from achieving their ultimate goal.
- CSPs need a climbing ladder that provides a step by step strategy and roadmaps for practical autonomous levels and their benefits. Specifically needs defining measures for Autonomous levels that allow CSP assess where they are and define what they wish are and provide guidelines for them to climb up until where they wish to achieve step by step.
- Various SDO working on different perspectives of AN and there are apparent notable redundancies and potential inconsistencies due to lack of coordination or exchange of information between different working groups. And sometime there are divergences between working groups within single organizations.
- Need Shared vision what people / SDO are doing and , where they are heading to, and how they could be leveraged collectively in terms of AN evolution.
CSP User Challenges
Goal is to establish a platform and a channel for Multi SDO information sharing i.e. who is doing what, and who needs to coordinate with whom on AN topic.
- Need industrial collaboration to create synergy between SDO work and support CSP procurement.
A shared overall landscape of SDO activities assists CSP build collaborations with suppliers, and adopt functionality, interoperable reference points and specifications from various SDOs.
CSP Requirements – User Stories
Some key CSP use stories are emerging from China Mobile studies.
- Kick-off WP03 Business Vision & requirements: 25min
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Introducing new Intelligent Application into network is not straightforward as it is not clear ‘how there is no practical overall design guidelines applied across different layer/domains that reduce the complexity of systematically introducing new applications, by providing a Systematic step by step solution ‘how to do it’
There are no clear guidelines covering:
- How to do introduce new application addressing dependencies and/or restrictions between domains or within separate AN process. Especially when there is AN redundancy within separate layer /domains.
- Systematic Overall systematic guidelines for the cross-layer or corss-domain collection, processing, aggregation, exchange and use of data as basis for building extended intelligence. And to
- How to avoid building silo solutions for each use case.
Systematic guideline are especially , which is expected to be especially important when trying to move to higher level of autonomous networks. Practical overall design guidelines applied across different layer/domains that reduce the complexity of systematically introducing new applications, by providing a Systematic step by step solution, where it is expected for the CSP to be able to enable and maintain autonomy applications in scale.
2. Transition form current automation/ autonomous level to a higher level
Not clear how layers /domains can coordinate across say network construction planning and operational capabilities; nor how updates to individual layer/domain achieves the required improvement to the overall network AN level capability assessment. Assessing domains individually without coordination and a common AN assessment levels /stages is challenging when Network Construction, Planning and Operations departments use solutions from different vendors each supplying infrastructure, n/w elements and management system whilst CSP work with 3rd party solution provider and SI, and where business systems are supplied by different vendors. Thus is unclear how to coordinate across internal ‘Serve Co’ and decompose the targeted level into specific requirements applicable to each individual domain to their vendor and suppliers, which could collectively be composed together in achieving the overall autonomy target.
Ed Note: What does one request from each party to achieve the overall transformation goal?
3. Operational maintenance of a current Automation Level
Even to maintain the same autonomous level of automation is challenging when using AI. The use and introduction of AI technology is data driven and calls for continuous iteration and update mechanisms for AI data and algorithms. This AI iteration has to track User, Service and Network dynamics to maintain stable and accurate operation i.e. keep the AI alive.
This needs an overall landscape of how CSPs can work together with suppliers across multiple layer and domains to create a systematic solutions, interoperable interfaces and define how they work together to support disaggregated and embedded intelligence functions used in , involving various Construction Planning and Operational procedures . (Ed note this requires operational functionality beyond current FCAPS).
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