2021-03-22 Multi-SDO Autonomous Networks Open Discussion Workshop #4 Meeting notes

Date

22 Mar 2021

Apologies

Input Material

• WP01   Administration:   MSDO-WP01r1- Admin-7.docx
• WP02   Landscape Roadmap: MSDO-WP02- Landscape-Roadmap-4.docx
• WP03  AN Business Vision & requirements:   MSDO-WP03- Business Vision requirements -1.docx, Presentation MSDO proposal v1.2.pptx

Meeting Agenda

• Permission to record
• Introduction 10 mins
  1. Recap on prior workshops #2 and #3
  2. Work organization See WP01 at Work Packages ( WP)
• Work package sync up / kick-off
  1. Kick-off WP03 Business Vision & requirements: 25min
  2. Kick-off WP02 Roadmap and Landscape 25 mins
  3. open discussion on WP02 and WP03 50 mins
• Schedule of discussion and call for Proposals and participant outreach 10 mins
• Next steps

Call for IPR Declaration – IPR Statements for Use in Meetings

Recordings

Topic: MultiSDO AN Strategy Meeting

Topic: Multi-SDO AN Workshop#4: Overall Work plan sync up & Business Task force kick off
Start Time : Mar 22, 2021 01:57 PM

Meeting Recording:
https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/KQI5Y0K66axvWa8L-4CYlcMyBN7cUdCawWi-vY1AskDh2QiltmYPiu_BW9HKCozq.eVlordPC_2m5jCvn

Access Passcode: .J.6%VMP

Meeting notes

• 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 the:  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.
      
• 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 in order to develop a common view of AN from business perspective by interested SDOs and/or companies , the initial deliverable could be a joint whitepaper. 
      • this will lead to forging a common base and 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
  • 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 successfully 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 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 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, 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.

1.Introduction of new Intelligent application to AN

Introducing new Intelligent Application into network is not straightforward as 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:

• • • 1. 1. How to 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.
         2. Overall systematic guidelines for the cross-layer or coss-domairo collection, processing, aggregation, exchange and use of data as basis for building extended intelligence. 
         3. How to avoid building silo solutions for each use case, which is expected to be especially important when trying to move to higher level of autonomous networks, where it is expected for the CSP to be able to enable and maintain autonomy applications in scale.

2. Transition from 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 3^rd party solution provider and SI,   and where business systems are supplied by different vendors. Thus is unclear how to 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 solution, interoperable interfaces and define how they work together to support disaggregated and embedded intelligence functions, involving various Construction  Planning and Operational procedures .  (Ed Note: This requires operational functionality beyond current FCAPS).

In summary CSP are looking for SDO  participation in Open Roadmaps and Landscape discussions with a focus on cross layer challenges by:

• • Creating a roadmap of Published and Work in Progress asset from relevant SDOs:
    • identify who is doing what?
    • who should collaborate with whom
    • identify  cross domain cross  layer reference points /interfaces 
    • identify when  cross organization collaboration  would be needed

Success criteria coming from the CSP perspective: Help CSP evaluation of SDO work plans and results to assist in evaluating potential partners.

• open discussion on WP02 and WP03 50 mins

Initial steps are:

• • • • Experience sharing in form of Roadmap SDO tables.
      • identify common use cases and common objectives for collaboration for building e2e solutions.

Noted:

• • • • Solutions likely to come from multiple SDOs.
      • Capturing future SDO plans into the Roadmaps items probably needs formal agreement across SDOs.
    • Next actions discussed and captured in Action List below.

• Schedule of discussion and call for Proposals and participant outreach 10 mins

List of future meeting topics  added to Multi-SDO AN Meeting Schedules at :  Multi-SDO AN Meeting Schedules

• Next steps

Participants invited to create additional Workpackage proposals at:    Work Packages ( WP)

AP Participants reminded that  we are looking for a SDO  inputs on definitons  of interest based  to the table -  Topic / SDO Matrix  -  proposed at  workshop #3

Discussion on how to populate  the  WP02 SDO Completed and Planned AN Activities Tables

Suggested that participants each fill out a couple of examples for those SDO that they are familar with. Inital focus is on published available documents.

This is so that we can review on the next call on the 26th April to see if this table structure is workable.

Action Points

Current

• ALL Participants:  All participating SDOs to update Topic / SDO Matrix  (Topic / SDO Matrix - AN-SDO Collaboration) before  workshop on 26 Apr 2021 
• ALL Participants: Each participant: Fill out a sample for specification for their areas of expertise based on public SDO information.
  
• Dave Milham Deng Lingli: Create CSP User Stories based on WP02 presentation.
• Dave Milham: Create a page with the SDO activity covering function interface /reference point table based on WP02 table.
• All Co-ord by email with subsequent review in meeting 26 Apr 2021 
• Dave Milham Create a working page for a compendium of architecture diagrams (Noting that team does not think a single diagram will capture all aspects of AN for all stakeholders.)
  
  

• TM Forum will prepare an updated WP01 proposal.
• TM Forum will send out invite for Open Workshop scheduled for 22nd March

Next Meeting details

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